Margaret Rhee

II have participated as a HASTAC scholar for the past two years, engaging in public forums such as Digital Storytelling, Race and Ethnicity, and the
one I co-hosted Queer and Feminist New Media Spaces. Previous to HASTAC, I was involved with an online collective/workshop focused on Asian
American poetry, hosted by poets/activists Ching-in Chen and Marlon Unas Esguerra. We ‘met’ online, posted poems, and every week gave each other feedback. It was a wonderful process and demonstrated to me the possibilites of ‘virtual’ spaces. However, HASTAC forums are on a very
different scale, and an exciting one. HASTAC forums really provide an ‘open’ ‘free’ and ‘accessible’ space for learning and engagement. I loved
that everyone who wanted to, could log on to HASTAC. That people such as prominent scholars in the field to undergraduates or community folks could engage with one another. I was just talking to my friend Sonny who works on transgender studies at the University of Massachusetts in Sociology, about the Queer and Feminist New Media Spaces forum we participated in. We mutually expressed how dynamic and engaging it was, how fast the responses were, but also so thoughtful, and how the learning really happened in an organic, engaged fashion, it was truly queer feminist studies at its best!

I am a doctoral student in ethnic studies, and new media studies at the university of california, berkeley, and also have a ma in ethnic studies from San Francisco State university. I have def experienced traditional learning spaces, like the classroom, but am truly jazzed and excited and transformed by the work and the teaching/learning being down via virtual spaces, that oftentimes, are dynamic, passionate and non-hierarchical in a way the traditional classroom/conference often is not…. read the whole response