DISCO Network DISCO Summit 2024 Day 2
Day 2: Saturday, June 15, 2024
9:00 am - 10:15 am
Black Innovation with Rayvon Fouché, Aaron Dial, Ron Eglash, Michael Bennett, Aria Halliday, and Tonia Sutherland
Black folks have a tradition of being innovative in ways not understood and expected by traditional markets, dominant cultural formations, or information platforms. As the world is enamored, fascinated, enraptured, troubled, or simply confused by the potentiality of generative AI, is there a place and a role for Blackness to participate, contribute, or intervene in this next technoscientific atmospheric river? What will Black innovation and creativity look like in a world propelled by a network of AI trained on past utterances that did not see Blackness as meaningful? How can Blackness and Black innovation and creativity disrupt expected technoscientific futures?
10:30 am - 11:45 am
Digital Possibilities with Stephanie Dinkins, Hagar Masoud, Ria Rajan, Cezanne Charles, and Audrey Bennet
"Digital Possibilities" presents an intergenerational panel of arts practitioners who explore the critical role deliberate exploration and practical research play in understanding and shaping digital technologies and culture. The panel showcases the transformative power deeply engaging digital technologies can have on molding practical, aspirational, and equitable understandings of self and society. Panelists discuss how practice can leverage discovery, curiosity, out-of-the-box thinking, and leadership to mine and challenge opportunities, or the lack thereof, for beauty, potentiality, subjugation, and liberation that digital technologies often carry. The panel also engages thought about how future, present, and past technologies combined with narratives centering on underutilized, underrecognized communities can be coaxed or developed to produce technological ecosystems that produce nuanced, open, and equitably informed digital tools, platforms, and collaborators.
1:00 pm - 2:15 pm
Majority World Digital Infrastructures with Lisa Nakamura, Marisa Duarte, Ivan Chaar Lopez, Meryem Kamil, Huan He, and Jasmine Banks
Digital infrastructure shapes access, representation, and cultural politics. Indigenous, Asian and Southeast Asian, Palestinian, U.S. Mexico border, and women of color uses of digital networks are often represented as niche or marginal, sequestered in area studies, ethnic studies, and women studies, yet the U.S. and Western Europe are the numerical minority.
2:30 pm - 3:45 pm
Legibility and Community in Digital Studies with Huan He, Kevin Winstead, David Adelman, Aaron Dial, Jeff Nagy, Rianna Walcott, and Brandy Pettijohn
As junior scholars, the Digital Inquiry Speculation Collaboration Optimism (DISCO) Network postdoctoral fellows faced unique challenges negotiating the tensions of being legible for academic employment and serving digital studies projects that foster collaboration and community. This panel discusses best practices for being young career scholars in critical identity and digital studies.
The DISCO Summit is a two-day interdisciplinary summer symposium about digital social inequalities in celebration of the third year of the DISCO Network. The DISCO Summit will include nine panel conversations about the past, present, and future of the intersection between digital technology, culture, race, disability, gender, sexuality, and liberation.
The DISCO Network is a collaborative, intergenerational group of scholars dedicated to envisioning a new anti-racist and anti-ableist digital future. The DISCO Network comprises six labs across five universities: the Michigan Hub at the University of Michigan Digital Studies Institute (PI: Lisa Nakamura, University of Michigan), HAT Lab (PI: Rayvon Fouché; Northwestern University), DAF Lab (PI: M. Remi Yergeau, University of Michigan), Future Histories Studio (PI: Stephanie Dinkins, Stony Brook University), PREACH Lab (André Brock, Georgia Institute of Technology), and BCaT Lab (Catherine Knight Steele, University of Maryland-College Park). The DISCO Network is supported by the Mellon Foundation.
This event is free and open to the public. The DISCO Summit provides a platform for scholars, students, artists, practitioners, activists, and community members to convene and engage in dialogue about racial inequality, histories of exclusion, disability justice, techno-ableism, and digital racial politics within the academy, the technology industry, and beyond. We especially welcome individuals whose interests lie in the intersection of the digital and identity and have found difficulties pursuing their endeavors at their home institutions.
Registration is required to attend the DISCO Summit:
The deadline for in-person registration is Tuesday, May 14, 2024. Due to limited space in the venue, in-person registration will close once we reach our maximum capacity. Register to attend in-person: https://myumi.ch/MrQwg
The deadline for Zoom webinar registration is Wednesday, June 13, 2024. Register to attend via Zoom: https://myumi.ch/N61QZ
Accessibility statement: We strive to make our events accessible to all participants.
- All attendees are requested to wear well-fitting masks. Masks will be provided at the event space.
- Communication Access Real-time Translation (CART) services will be provided.
- The event space is ADA-compliant.
- Gender-neutral and accessible restrooms are available in the event space.
- A quiet space will be available.
- The event planning team has worked to mitigate potential sensory triggers, such as loud buzzing sounds or flickering lights, in the event space. Individuals with sensory sensitivities should be aware that there is a possibility of unpredictable sound or lighting changes during the event.
- All attendees are requested to refrain from using scented products, such as perfume or cologne. Unscented products (e.g., soap, hand sanitizer) will be provided at the event space.
- A digital copy of the event program will be made available at least a week prior to the event.
- For those who are unable to attend the event in-person, a livestream viewing option is available.
- More detailed information about the event space (including how to access it and how the space will be arranged) will be made available on our website.
- If there are additional ways that we can meet your access needs, please indicate this in the registration form. Please register as soon as possible as some accommodations may require advance coordination.
For all inquiries related to the DISCO Summit, please contact Cherice Chan, DISCO Network Program Coordinator, at chericec@umich.edu.
