Schedule
(Week 1) March 31 - Cezar Chavez Day
If you are interested in reading about the history of the labor movement, this is a great article: Ceasar Chavez and the Organized Labor Movement
(Week 2) April 7
(Week 3) April 14
Principle: Examine Power
Data feminism begins by analyzing how power operates in the world.
(Week 4) April 21
Principle: Challenge Power
Data feminism commits to challenging unequal power structures and working toward justice.
(Week 5) April 28
Principle: Elevate Emotion and Embodiment
Data feminism teaches us to value multiple forms of knowledge, including the knowledge that comes from people as living, feeling bodies in the world.
Form groups for book presentations
(Week 6) May 5
Principle: Rethink Binaries and Hierarchies
Data feminism requires us to challenge the gender binary, along with other systems of counting and classification that perpetuate oppression.
(Week 7) May 12
Principle: Embrace Pluralism
Data feminism insists that the most complete knowledge comes from synthesizing multiple perspectives, with priority given to local, Indigenous, and experiential ways of knowing.
(Week 8) May 19
Principle: Consider Context
Data feminism asserts that data are not neutral or objective. They are the products of unequal social relations, and this context is essential for conducting accurate, ethical analysis.
(Week 9) May 26
Principle: Make Labor Visible
The work of data science, like all work in the world, is the work of many hands. Data feminism makes this labor visible so that it can be recognized and valued.
Data Feminism Chapter 7: Show Your Work
First draft data context protocol
(Week 10) June 2
Data Feminism Conclusion: Now Let’s Multiply
Peer review of first draft data context protocol
Second draft data context protocol
(Week 11) June 9 - Data Context Protocol
Final draft data context protocol
Final Gathering
“I was going to die, if not sooner than later, whether or not I had ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you.
What are the words you do not have yet? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language.
And, of course, I am afraid—you can hear it in my voice—because the transformation of silence into language and action is an act of self-revelation and that always seems fraught with danger. But my daughter, when I told her of our topic and my difficulty with it, said, “tell them about how you’re never really a whole person if you remain silent, because there’s always that one little piece inside of you that wants to be spoken out, and if you keep ignoring it, it gets madder and madder and hotter and hotter, and if you don’t speak it out one day it will just up and punch you in the mouth.
I began to ask each time: “What’s the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?” Unlike women in other countries, our breaking silence is unlikely to have us jailed, “disappeared” or run off the road at night. Our speaking out will irritate some people, get us called bitchy or hypersensitive and disrupt some dinner parties. And then our speaking out will permit other women to speak, until laws are changed and lives are saved and the world is altered forever.
Next time, ask: What’s the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it’s personal. And the world won’t end.
And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don’t miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And at last you’ll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.”
Audre Lorde, Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet