Announcement from The Platform Lab at Concordia University for event, featuring our own Assistant Professor Alexander Cho:

Please join us for an exciting roundtable discussion with the co-editors of a tumblr book: platform and cultures! Hosted by The Platform Lab and moderated by Jake Pitre (Concordia), this discussion will focus on the context of the book, the editorial process, and the fascinating platform that is Tumblr.

a tumblr book takes an extensive look at the many different types of users and cultures that comprise the popular social media platform Tumblr. Though it does not receive nearly as much attention as other social media such as Twitter or Facebook, Tumblr and its users have been hugely influential in creating and shifting popular culture, especially progressive youth culture, with the New York Times referring to 2014 as the dawning of the “age of Tumblr activism.”

Perfect for those unfamiliar with the platform as well as those who grew up on it, this volume contains essays and artwork that span many different topics: fandom; platform structure and design; race, gender and sexuality, including queer and trans identities; aesthetics; disability and mental health; and social media privacy and ethics. An entire generation of young people that is now beginning to influence mass culture and politics came of age on Tumblr, and this volume is an indispensable guide to the many ways this platform works.

Allison McCracken is Associate Professor and Director of American Studies at DePaul University. She is author of the award-winning book Real Men Don't Sing: Crooning in American Culture (Duke UP, 2015) and co-editor of a tumblr book: platform and cultures (Michigan UP, 2020). She specializes in American cultural history and writes frequently about issues of gender and sexuality in popular culture and social media.

Alexander Cho is Assistant Professor in the Department of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is co-author of The Digital Edge: How Black and Latino Youth Navigate Digital Inequality (NYU Press, 2018) and an affiliate at the Center for Critical Race and Digital Studies at NYU. He researches digital media at the intersection of race, gender, sexuality, and human-centered design.

Louisa Stein is Associate Professor in the Film and Media Culture Department at Middlebury College. She is the author of Millennial Fandom (University of Iowa Press, 2015), and co-editor of Sherlock and Transmedia Fandom (McFarland, 2012). Her research focuses on fandom, audience authorship, and remix culture.

Indira Neill Hoch is Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies and Theater Arts at Concordia College, Moorhead Minnesota. She is the co-editor of a tumblr book: platform and cultures (University of Michigan Press, 2020). Her work has appeared in Transformative Works and Cultures and Social Media + Society. Research areas include online boundary maintenance and social construction of technology in new media contexts.