On May 1st, at 2:30 p.m., in the Rock Conference Room, Jill Walker Rettberg will present, “Technologies of the Self: How We Use Selfies, Blogs and Wearable Devices to See and Shape Ourselves”

In this presentation, Jill Walker Rettberg will look at technologically mediated self-representations in a variety of genres, from selfies, Facebook profiles, Tumblrs, automated diaries, and the quantified self movement with its many forms of self-tracking.

These modes of self-documentation are also “technologies of the self” in Foucault’s sense: techniques we use to shape and discipline ourselves, both individually and as a society.

Rettberg analyses today’s vernacular self-documentation in the context of the history and theory of visual self-portraits and textual diaries, and as an important part of today’s algorithmic culture.

Bio: Jill Walker Rettberg is professor of digital culture at the University of Bergen in Norway, and is visiting scholar at UIC’s Department of Communciations until July 2014. Her book “Blogging” was published in a 2nd edition by Polity Press in 2014, and she has also co-edited an anthology of critical writing on World of Warcraft (MIT Press 2008). In addition to work on electronic literature and social media, her recent work has also made use of digital methods to visualise network relationships in electronic literature. Her research blog is http://jilltxt.net. She is currently writing a book about selfies, social media, and algorithmic self-representations.