As SLP mentioned, we are going to be utilizing this space as part of our presentation at the 35th Annual University of Wisconsin System – Wisconsin Women’s Studies Conference and 6th Annual Wisconsin LGBTQ Spring Conference. Check out the conference schedule here – we present bright and early at 8:30am on Saturday! I know I am getting really excited to present our work together, as this will be the first time we will have been able to both present on the work that we do as feminist bloggers and teachers! Plus, we haven’t seen each other in person since I (and my partner ALN) moved away from the cities in September of last year. This is so exciting!

So, in the format that SLP posted her examples I’ve included a couple of my own here that I have utilized in thinking about how we can use blog space differently. I know that SLP and I constantly discuss the many possibilities of utilizing this space in our teaching and writing as transformative and liberating, but some concrete examples are always important!

media and diverse identities, spring 2011: Most recently  I asked my students to work in pairs on a Diablogical Assignment – where they had to engage with a diablog based on themes that are related to our course but that we hadn’t had much time to discuss in class. Each group had to post their own ideas on the topic after doing some research and then spend some time reflecting and making thoughtful comments to push their pair’s thoughts. You can view the whole assignment here.

• Topics: The role of the FCC, net neutrality, media justice/democracy, the role of media for social justice movements/campaigns, censorship, anonymous sources/journalistic ethical dilemmas, the role of social media in our lives, the digital divide, and global issues in the media.
• 20 students
• upper level undergraduate course
• Here are one (media democracy), two (global issues), and three (digital divide) examples of a few of my students’ diablogs.

Chicana gender and sexuality studies, fall 2010: While I didn’t discuss this as a diablogical assignment per say, I did find a lot of value in having my students work together on this blog assignment. I wrote about how excited I was by the collaborative nature of group work in this context and the responses that my students got on their work on our blog. And upon further reflection I found that this assignment on Chicana/Latina Reproductive Concerns might not be a diablog in the strictest sense, but it plays off of moving from a blog where there are only individual authors commenting on topics separately, to one in which several people get to engage with the topic in a more collaborative way. Group work on a blog then, pushes toward the diablogical concept, and reinterprets how blogging is usually conceived.

• Topic: Contemporary Reproductive Concerns for Chicana/Latinas
• 5 students
• upper-level undergraduate course
• Here is the link to all of their posts related to this assignment.