My current research examines the discourses and practices that emerge at the intersection of the body and technology.
My
dissertation, Towards a Radical Body Positive: Reading the Online Body Positive Movement, analyzes the digital expression of "body positivity," a philosophy of body acceptance framed in opposition to mass mediated messages promoting a limited and exclusionary ideal of the female body. It is a visual, discursive and textual analysis of five participatory websites that situate themselves as body positive spaces. I take a close look at these visual and textual chronicles to examine how the digital practice of body positivity is conceptualized and enacted, untangling how narratives of authenticity, embodiment and empowerment are deployed when the body is performed and disseminated online.
