Digital Genderscapes: Performing and Negotiating Gender in Visual Culture

The appropriation, reproduction, and transformation of gender roles are grounded in their performative enactment (Butler 1990). Gender is not a stable attribute but must be continuously performed, displayed, and rendered socially intelligible (Butler 1990, 1993, Goffman 1988, Garfinkel 1967). The persistence of gender roles rests on normative frameworks that prescribe and regulate legitimate forms of gender performance (Butler 1990, Foucault 1978). At the same time, it is precisely the necessity of repetition that creates the possibility for change. Even subtle shifts can parody, subvert, or transform established gender norms, thereby making alternative forms of gendered existence visible (Butler 1990, 1993).

Visual media play a crucial role in the production and circulation of these discursive representational practices. This includes the body itself as a medium of gendered self-fashioning and display. In interaction with digital media environments and virtual spaces, new forms of embodied and mediated gender performance emerge, expanding the ways in which gender is represented, negotiated, and contested.

This session invites contributions that examine contemporary representations of gender from empirical and/or theoretical perspectives. We particularly welcome studies that investigate contemporary gendered practices of embodiment in everyday life, visual culture, digital media, and online environments.