The Asian/American Studies Collective is excited to announce the next speaker in their Winter Speaker Series, Assistant Professor Alexander Cho. Professor Cho's talk, Social Media and the Shape of 'Man,' is inspired by his ethnographic work with queer of color users of the platform Tumblr. Using the Tumblr presence of Filipinx transfeminine visual and performance artist Mark Aguhar as a recurring touchstone, this work-in-progress talk’s provocation is that the assumptive ways in which a social media platform “should” be designed—singular identity, linear text exchanges, direct messaging, traversable connections, and more—in fact instantiate a model of “Man” that can be traced back to the epistemological violences of European colonialism.

Alexander Cho is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Asian American Studies. He is media scholar, digital design researcher, critical theorist, and pop culture geek. He teaches classes at UCSB on Asian Americans in media as well as on gender and sexuality.