Dr Anna Feigenbaum
Anna Feigenbaum has spent the past ten years living between New York, Montreal and London. In 2008-2009she worked as an LSE Fellow in the Media and Communications Department at the London School of Economics. She completed a PhD at McGill University in Montreal. Her top-ranked dissertation project was funded internationally by a Mellon Pre-dissertation Fellowship from the Institute for Historical Research at the University of London and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. While at McGill, Dr. Feigenbaum served as co-coordinator of the Graduate Group for Feminist Scholarship.
Before beginning her doctoral studies Dr. Feigenbaum received an MA with distinction in Culture and Communication from the University of East Anglia in 2003 and an Honours BA in Philosophy, Politics and Law from Binghamton University (SUNY) in 2002. Both her BA thesis and a version of her Masters thesis have been published.
Combining research and action, Dr. Feigenbaum participates in campaigns around gender, sexuality, climate change, fair labour and migrant rights. She is also a published creative writer and retired slam poet.
Research Interests
Dr. Feigenbaum’s primary areas of interest are New Media, the Politics of Representation, Gender and Communications, Alternative Media and Protest Cultures. Her research takes a transdisciplinary approach to communications combining sociological and cultural studies methods around the notion of collective actions as communicative phenomenon. Her work also engages technology studies to investigate new media development and expand upon traditional notions of what count as communication technologies—from shoe boxes to snipped bits of wire
Currently, Dr. Feigenbaum is co-authoring a Protest Camps a monograph on the history and contemporary significance of protest camps as an organisational form of politics. Her previous research includes studies of web-based communities, subcultural music production and alternative print cultures.
Dr. Feigenbaum is also part of the Creative Resistance Research Network partnered to Kingston University in London and NYU/Eyebeam in New York.
Teaching
At Richmond Dr. Feigenbaum teaches on undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in the Department of Social Sciences, Humanities & Communications:
- COM 100 Intro to Mass Media and Communication
- SCL 203 Beginning Social Research
- COM 231 Intro to Visual Culture
- COM 304 Research and Writing Methods
- COM 316 Mass Communication & Society
- SCL 321 Cultural Theory
- COM 462 New Media
- COM 491 Senior Seminar in Communication
- AVC 604 Visual Cultures
As part of her commitment to teacher development, Dr. Feigenbaum is co-investigator with Dr. Mehita Iqani on a project developing Teaching Exchange Workshops for best practice pedagogies in media and communication studies. This project was funding by HEA-ADM in 2010-2011. Dr. Feigenbaum also participates in safe space and group facilitation training and convenes skill-sharing workshops for teachers.
Selected Publications, Papers and Activities
Works in Progress
Protest Camps w/ Fabian Frenzel & Patrick McCurdy (manuscript)
“We-Thinking the Classroom: Using Open Source Principles in HE Course Design,” Media Education Research Journal
Peer Reviewed Journals
“Written in the Mud: Autonomous Media at the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp,” Feminist Media Studies, forthcoming March 2013.
“Concrete Needs No Metaphor: Globalised Fences as Sites of Political Struggle,” epehmera, 10:2 (2010) available at http://www.ephemeraweb.org/journal/10-2/10-2feigenbaum.pdf
“‘Now I’m a Happy Dyke!’: Creating Collective Identity and Queer Community in Greenham Women’s Songs,” Journal of Popular Music, 22:4, (2010), pp. 367-388.
“The Teachable Moment: Feminist Pedagogy and the Neoliberal Classroom.” The Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies, 29/4, (2007), pp. 337 – 349.
“‘Some Guy Designed This Room I’m Standing In’: Marking Gender in Press Coverage of Ani DiFranco”. Popular Music, 24/1, (2005), pp. 37-56.
Book Chapters
“Re-mapping the Resonances of Riot Grrrl: Feminisms, Postfeminisms and ‘Processes’ of Punk”. Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture, eds. Diane Negra & Yvonne Tasker, (Durham: Duke University Press), 2007.
“Deliberative Democracy and the Importance of Fostering Dialogical Relationships” in Justice for All: Essays in Political Philosophy, ed. Steven Scalet, (Binghamton: Global Publications), 2002.
Book Reviews
A Review of Jo Reger (ed.) Different Wavelengths: Studies of the Contemporary Women’s Movement (Routledge 2005) in Journal of International Women’s Studies, 9/3, (2008), pp. 326-329. (book review)
“Death of a Dichotomy: Tactical Diversity and the Politics of Post-Violence. A Review of Ward Churchill (AK Press 2007) Pacifism as Pathology and Peter Gelderloos (South End Press 2007) How Nonviolence Protects the State” in Upping the Anti, 1/5 (2007).
Encyclopedia Entries & Magazine Articles
“Women-led Protests” in The Multimedia Encyclopedia of Women in Today's World. Sage Reference, forthcoming 2012.
“Suicide Girls” in Girl Culture: An Encyclopaedia, edited by Claudia Mitchell and Jacqueline Reid-Walsh. (Westport: Greenwood Publication Group), 2008.
Directory in Riot Grrrl: Revolution Girl Style Now! (London: Blackdog Publishing), 2007.
“Ani DiFranco” & “Alternative Culture” in Third Wave Encyclopaedia, ed. Leslie Heywood. (Westport: Greenwood Publication Group), 2005.
“Metal Goddesses for Earthly Survival: Remembering the Myths and Symbols of Greenham Common” Locus Suspectus, 1/4, (2007), pp. 48-51.
“The Art of Technology (and the technology of art): an interview with Upgrade Montreal!,” Fuse, 30/1 (2007), pp. 14-20.
Selected Presentations
“Security for Sale: The Marketing of Counter-terrorism Technologies,” Mediated Security, De Montfort University, May 19, 2011.
“Best-practice pedagogy in media and communications: the quality assurance potential of teaching exchange workshops,” HEA-ADM Annual Forum 2011, RIBA, May 18 2011.
w/ Patrick McCurdy and Fabian Frenzel. “Protest Camps: Towards an Interdisciplinary Research Agenda,” British Sociological Association, LSE, April 6, 2011.
“We-thinking the Classroom: Using Open Source Principles in Course Design,” Media Education Summit, Centre for Excellence in Media Practice (CEMP), Birmingham City University, September 8, 2010.
w/ Patrick McCurdy, “From Greenham to Gleneagles: Analyzing the media strategies of pre and post-Internet social movements,” MeCCSA, LSE. January 6-8, 2010.
w/Terese Jonsson, “Transnational feminism in the making: the case of Outwrite women’s newspaper,” Transnational Feminisms Manchester University, December 4-6 2009.
“Concrete Needs no Metaphor: Studying ‘Globalised Fences’ as Artefacts of Globalisation,” The State of Things: Towards a Political Economy of Artifice and Artefacts, Centre for Philosophy and Political Economy, University of Leicester, England, April 30, 2009.
‘Women at the Wire: Protest and Fences from Greenham to Gaza’ Gender Futures: Law, Critique and the Struggle for Something More, Westminster University, London, England, April 3, 2009.
“If Adorno Could Hear Us Now: (Re)writing the Romance/ Porn Divide in ‘Boy Band’ Slash Fiction,” Console-ing Passions, University of California at Santa Barbara, California, April 25, 2008.
Chair & Organizer, “From Praxis to Poetics_The Street as a Site of Radical Potential”, Aesthetics and Radical Politics, Manchester University, England, February 2, 2007
“Nakkid Revolutions? Alienated labour and Alternapornography,” Rethinking Marxism, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Massachusetts, October 26, 2006
Panelist, “Sexuality Studies and/in Communication Studies,” Canadian Communication Association, York University, Toronto, Ontario, June 2, 2006
“Maxbell and Me: On Constructing an ‘Affective’ Methodology,” Trajectories of Commitment and Complicity, Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis, Amsterdam, Netherlands, March 31, 2006
Academic Event Organising
Series Coordinator, The Polis Media Leadership Dialogues, London School of Economics and Political Science, October 14 – December 2, 2008.
Symposium Organizer, [ctrl]: Technology, Art and Society symposium, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, May 17, 2007
Symposium Organizer, Mapping Feminist Scholarship, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, May 9, 2006
Conference Organizer, [ctrl]: Controlling Bodies/Controlling Spaces, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, October 22-23, 2004
Workshops & Seminars
Invited Speaker, The Promiscuous Infrastructures of Protest Camps, Artivisitic at SKOL, Montreal, June 29, 2011.
Leader, Queer Feminist Art Activisms, Free School, Chat's Palace, London, September 5, 2010.
Coordinator, Creative Resistance Research Network Launch, This is Not a Gateway festival, Hanbury Hall, October 25, 2009.
Coordinator, “’Own Your Media – Before it Owns You!’ A Discussion with The Dominion Newspaper Co-operative,” Media@McGill, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, April 8, 2008
Leader, “Affective Knowledge and Alternative Media,” Knowledgelab, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, England, February 11, 2007
Coordinator, “Democracy, Art & Media,” Technology, Art and Society Symposium, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, May 17, 2007
Coordinator, “Teaching in a Time of War,” RadGrad: A Politicized Introduction to Graduate Student Life at McGill University, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, September 20, 2006
Coordinator, “Teaching Against Gender Oppression: Tools for T.A.s,” RadGrad: A Politicized Introduction to Graduate Student Life at McGill University, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, September 8, 2005
Leader, “Transdisciplinarity and/as Methodology of the Oppressed,” Cultural Analysis Summer Academy, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands, June 17, 2005
Community Arts Projects
Project Coordinator, Outwrite Outrospective: Women’s Internationalist Newspaper, Creative Resistance Research Cluster & Feminist Activist Forum, August 2008-present
Co-organizer, “Creative Resistance & Climate Change,” Climate Camp-the exhibition, The Foundry, London, England, October 31, 2007
Co-organizer, Our Place, Community Art Project, Harmondsworth, England, August 11-12, 2007
Organizer, Cat Call: Word Edition, Women’s Performance Night, Café Esperanza, Montreal, Quebec, October 5, 2006
Organizer, If I Can’t Dance…, Benefit Cabaret, Club Lambi, Montreal, Quebec, May 19, 2006
