Proposal Title: Designing with Ephemera: Queering Tangible Interaction Design in Archival Experiences

PhD Student: Alexandra Teixeira Riggs

Committee: Dr. Noura Howell, Dr. Anne Sullivan, Dr. Richmond Wong, and Dr. Heidi Biggs

Date and Time: Tuesday, October 8th, 10:00am – 12:00pm

Location: TSRB Room 209 and Microsoft Teams  

Abstract:

Amidst efforts to diminish queer identities from public society (e.g. book banning, anti-LGBTQIA+ legislation), access to LGBTQIA+ knowledge is vital. Understanding queer histories in particular challenges this erasure, calls for critical reflection on what “counts” as recorded information, and shapes how queer individuals and their allies build communities in the present. In queer archives, ephemera—or, material traces not traditionally collected in institutions, such as flyers, buttons and pins, T-shirts, or zines—can invite powerful, affective links to queer pasts and experiences. My research involves these ephemera in designing tangible interactive experiences that prompt embodied, critical reflections on archival knowledge. My work contributes to the growing field of Queer HCI (Human Computer Interaction), which concerns LGBTQIA+ communities and their interactions with technologies, as well as how HCI scholars might leverage queer theory in their work. While Queer HCI has primarily focused on LGBTQIA+ populations in current online contexts, my work deepens the field in under-explored areas of historicism, queer theory, and tangible interaction design. My dissertation proposes to invite reflections on the affective experiences that comprise archival records and the tensions inherent in queer archives scholarship by using queering tangible interaction design as a critical methodological strategy. These tensions include (1) the challenges of categorizing fluid identities and experiences; (2) the risks of violence or assimilation when making queer histories visible; and (3) the nuances in recognizing differences within queer communities. By creating tangible, material experiences with archival ephemera, I purposefully entangle and invite reflection on these tensions. Doing so, my work foregrounds embodied, collective record-keeping that challenges hegemonic archival information structures and evokes complex, queer connections between bodies, feelings, and histories.