Orfalea Center Graduate Students
Cedar Brown
Departments
Linguistic
Research Clusters
Global Genders and Sexualities
Affiliation Period
8/2023 - 6/2024
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.