The Chain Writing Project

Written by Dr. Kylie Jarrett

The Chain was a writing project within the Intersections: Feminism, Technology and Digital Humanities (IFTe) networking project. It links entries from a range of people brought together to explore intersectional feminist concerns within Digital Humanities.

This project – and the Chain itself – was designed to respond to contemporary circumstances where we can’t meet easily, where we are zoom-swamped – and zoombified – and where glancing interactions are rarely possible. We were missing times and moments when ‘breaking out’ wasn’t a zoom function, when serendipity didn’t have to be programmed, when ‘walk throughs’ were in physical space, and where interventions followed on. We were missing the kinds of entangled modes of thinking and doing this kind of flow more easily enabled; writing about media art, coding that speaks to theory and/or practice that finds articulation in words. The Chain become one of the spaces in which we explored these stories.

The Chain include speakers, contributors, members, investigators, advisory group members of IFTe, theorists, artists, activists. Each link responds in some way to the entry proceeding it and offers a suggestion for an entry to follow.

The links of this chain – and its various digressions – brought into conversation people and ideas that, together, built a narrative(s) that collectively articulates the scope and vision of intersectional DH in all its messy, dynamic, and potentially contradictory forms.

We intend to continue developing this chain of thought during the larger project that emerged from this network: the IRC/AHRC funded Full Stack Feminism project.

This research/project was funded by UKRI-AHRC and the Irish Research Council under the ‘UK-Ireland Collaboration in the Digital Humanities Networking Call’
(grant numbers AH/V00199X/1 and IRC/V00199X/1).