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Orfalea Center Graduate Students
Cedar Brown
Cedar Brown

Departments

Linguistic

Research Clusters

Global Genders and Sexualities 

Affiliation Period

8/2023 - 6/2024

Email

Research Project
Platform Trans-inclusion: Geopolitical Implications of Pronoun Commodification
Research Description
My research asks how appropriating and commodifying pronoun inclusion can construct platforms like Zoom and Instagram, and the multinational companies that control them, as sympathetic subjects. This distracts from their role in perpetuating inequality through global capitalism. In a zine and short educational graphic video, I discuss the way that companies construct themselves with respect to pronouns, connecting this to the exploitative effect these corporations have on people in the Global South.
Research Interests

Sociolinguistics; Gendered power relations; Pronoun Commodification; Digital Humanities; Intersectionality; Technology and global relations; Digital Activism.

Orfalea Center Productions
  • Video & Zine: Platform Trans-Inclusion: Geopolitical Implications of Pronoun Commodification

  • Syllabus: Tech Approaches to Language, Gender, and Global Capitalism

  • Podcast Series: Feminist Tech Activist Space 

Student Bio

Cedar Brown's research identifies gender-affirming language practices and their construal in a system of global capitalism. Their work is interdisciplinary, drawing on Linguistic Anthropology, Computational Linguistics, Science and Technology Studies, Queer and Trans Studies, and Global Studies. As a transgender scholar, they combine qualitative and computational approaches to investigate social questions regarding trans linguistic practices. They investigate online spaces as a place for trans community development and for rainbow-capitalist corporate co-option. They are interested in examining connections between those who face gendered oppression across nation state borders through the internet—both through the proliferation of resources, activism and community spaces, and through the gendered labor implicated in online platforms.

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Contact

T: 805-893-6087
F: 805-893-6089

Address

​Orfalea Center for Global & International Studies

2320 Girvetz Hall,

University of California,

Santa BarbaraSanta Barbara,

CA 93106-2150

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