Algorithms Of Oppression Book Club and Study Group
May–october 2020
An online study group & noncommittal book club co-hosted by Feminist AI and the Women’s Center for Creative Work, in alliance with The Free Black Women’s Library– LA
Thank you!
We’d like to extend our thanks to our amazing community who made the Algorithms of Oppression book club a success! All previous sessions of the book club, as well as summary videos of each chapter, can be found below.
Thank you to our co-presenters of this program, Women’s Center for Creative Work, and to our allies, The Free Black Women’s Library– LA.
About
Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism (2018) is a best-selling book by Safiya Umoja Noble on racist and sexist algorithmic bias in commercial search engines that has been widely-reviewed in journals and periodicals. Dr. Safiya Umoja Noble challenges the idea that search engines like Google offer an equal playing field for all forms of ideas, identities, and activities.
Download the book intro, and Dr. Noble’s “Missed Connections: What Search Engines Say About Women” article from Bitch Magazine.
Watch Dr. Noble's talk on Algorithms of Oppression at re:publica 2018
Check out the introductory videos by host Mandy Harris Williams, Chapter 1 community videos by Esther Mwema, Joyce S. Lee and Sara Sithi-Amuai, and more on the Algorithms Of Oppression Book Club Youtube Playlist.
Book Club Community
Women's Center for Creative Work is a Los Angeles-based intersectional feminist arts organization that produces and platforms the work of historically marginalized women and nonbinary artists & creatives.
About The Free Black Women’s Library – Los Angeles: The original The Free Black Women’s Library was created by OlaRonke Akinmowo in Brooklyn, New York during the summer of 2015, providing a unique and creative space for communities to gather in the name of Black women’s stories.The traveling Library operates as a pop-up book swap event where visitors can engage and trade books written by Black women.The Free Black Women’s Library – Los Angeles is a new sister-site founded in January of 2019 by Asha Grant. Our vision is to unite and build safe anti-racist, anti-sexist communities across Los Angeles who are committed to love, liberation, and literacy for all.
Book Club Schedule
We’ve been completely blown away by the interactions and conversations throughout this book club so far. As we continue to navigate our current climate for the fight for Black Lives and a pandemic, we are committed to remain adaptive, responsive and led by YOU—our participants—in relevant topics.
Based on your responses, we will turn them into themes for each session and relate them to the current chapter’s text. We will also continue to invite academic, tech, and cultural experts in these areas to come share their knowledge with us in future sessions.
Haven’t read Algorithms of Oppression or need a refresher? Leading up to every session, we’ll be posting summary videos to explore the complex and exciting ideas from each chapter. Keep an eye on the Feminist AI Instagram for more!
Sessions
Session 1: Introduction
Watch the Introduction Preview Videos with Mandy Harris Williams: Part I and Part II.
For the first session of the book club on Tuesday, May 19th 2020, Mandy Harris Williams and Sage Adams discussed the Introduction to Algorithms of Oppression and how the book’s themes intersect with their own work. Watch the replay of the book club here.
Mandy Harris Williams is a theorist, multimedia conceptual artist, writer, educator, radio host and internet/community academic. She is from New York City and currently lives in Los Angeles. Mandy’s work seeks to get everybody the love that they deserve. She focuses on desirability privilege as a real and mythological market and political force. She graduated from Harvard, having studied the History of the African Diaspora, as well as the mass incarceration crisis, and other contemporary black issues. She received her MA in Urban Education and worked as a classroom teacher for 7 years in low income communities. She integrates a holistic and didactic style into her current creative practice. Her creative work has been presented at Paula Cooper Gallery, Institute of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, Art + Practice, Navel, Knockdown Center and Women’s Center for Creative Work to name a few. She has a monthly radio show, the #BrownUpYourFeed Radio Hour, on NTS. She has contributed writing work to Dazed Magazine, MEL Magazine, ForHarriet, and The Grio and is a frequent radio and podcast guest.
Session 2: Chapter 1
Watch the Chapter 1 Summary Videos by Esther Mwema, Joyce S. Lee, and Sara Sithu-Amnuai.
This session was held on Sunday, June 20th 2020 and was led by linguist and music journalist, Jade Newton, and journalist and radio host, Rashanah Baldwin. Watch the replay of the book club here.
Jade Newton is a Chicago native and linguist working as a sales consultant in the technology sector, with a focus on artificial intelligence (AI) and localization. Her career spans several industries, including mental health, non-profit, education, hospitality and now global technology. Jade sits on the board of directors for two organizations and also spends time as a music journalist for the digital publication, Quip Magazine.
Rashanah Baldwin is a noted TV and radio journalist from Chicago, who has worked to change the perception and negative news coverage of her neighborhood through her “Good in Englewood” campaign. She created her own weekly talk radio segment entitled, "What's Good in Englewood" and her journalism work has been featured in numerous documentaries, publications, and news and media outlets. Rashanah serves on the board of directors for two organizations and "is leading the charge by changing the way communities of color are covered in national and local news.”
Session 3: Chapter 2
Watch the Chapter 2 Summary Videos by Enongo Lumumba-Kasongo aka Sammus and Amelian Kashiro Hamilton from Sisters With Invoices.
In this session on Sunday, July 26th, 2020, Ariel Stevenson and Mashinka Firunts Hakopian discussed bias and how it relates to Chapter 2, “Searching for Black Girls.” Watch the replay of the book club here.
Ariel Stevenson, M.A. is a Ph.D. candidate in Cinema and Media Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is currently writing her dissertation, “N*ggas on the Internet: Scenes of a Black Social Life,” where, through an analysis of Vine, TikTok, The Shade Room, and the music videos of Solange, she argues that Black people have fundamentally changed the visual language of the Internet. She also studies Black feminist film genealogies and horror films. Born and raised in DeSoto, Texas, she received her Bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago in Art History.
Mashinka Firunts Hakopian is a Senior Researcher in the Transformations of the Human program at the Berggruen Institute. She received her PhD in the History of Art from the University of Pennsylvania, and held a teaching appointment at the University of California, Los Angeles in the Department of English from 2017-2019. Her book on algorithmic bias is forthcoming from X Artists Books.
Session 4: Chapters 3 & 4
Watch the Chapters 3-4 Summary videos by Megan Olinger and Hiba Ali.
In this session on Sunday, August 23th, 2020, Esther Mwema, Lauren Williams and Geneviéve Jones-Wright discussed neoliberalism, surveillance, data privacy, and race in relation to their own work. Watch the replay of the book club here.
Esther Mwema (She/Her/Hers) is an artist whose goal is to build tools to assure dignity in the processes of girls safety (through her organization Safety First for Girls) and through increasing digital citizenship in local communities (through her organization Digital Grassroots). She is an Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity at the London School of Economics, and works toward internet freedom and an open internet.
Lauren Williams (She/Her) is a designer, organizer, researcher, and educator. She works with visual and interactive media to understand, critique, and reimagine the ways social and economic systems distribute and exercise power.
Geneviéve L. Jones-Wright (She/Her/Ella), Esq. was raised by her single mother in a low-income home in San Diego, California where devotion to family and self-respect was cultivated. In the fourth grade, Geneviéve decided to follow in the steps of Justice Thurgood Marshall and become a “social engineer.” Since that day, she has been determined to “carry the bags” of Justice Marshall as he had done for Mr. Charles Hamilton Houston. Geneviéve earned a B.A. in mass media communications from the University of San Francisco. She then obtained a J.D. from Howard Law and an LL.M. in Trial Advocacy specializing in federal criminal defense from California Western School of Law. She proudly served San Diego County as a public defender from 2006-2019, and now serves as the founding Executive Director of Community Advocates for Just and Moral Governance (MoGo) — an impact litigation organization in San Diego County. Geneviéve is the founder of Motivation.In.Action. Geneviéve serves on the Board of Directors for the David’s Harp Foundation, is Vice President of the Earl B. Gilliam Bar Association, and is a volunteer attorney for the California Innocence Project. Geneviéve is also an adjunct professor at Point Loma Nazarene University and serves on the advisory board of Secure Justice.
Session 5: Chapters 5-6
Watch the Chapters 3-4 Summary videos by Ariana Faye Allensworth and Danielle Brantley.
In this session on Sunday, September 13th, 2020, Neema Githere, Amina Ross, Chinelo Nkechi Ikem, and Gabrielle Felder presented on data healing, creative projects, corporate monopoly of information and more. Watch the replay of the book club here.
Neema Githere is a guerrilla theorist and curator hailing from Nairobi, Kenya whose work explores indigenous cybernetics. Their curatorial work around data healing endeavors to illuminate the links between technology, nature and spirituality. Other projects of theirs include Afropresentism - a term they coined in 2017 to articulate digital diasporic cultural production in the here and now - and Radical Love Consciousness, a collective that focuses on re-indigenization through grassroots learning networks.
An undisciplined creator, Amina Ross creates boundary-crossing works that embrace embodiment, technology, intimacy, and collectivity in physical and digital spaces. Amina's work examines systems of power and modes of world-building employed by those who hold identities of difference. Amina is currently an MFA candidate at Yale School of Art within the Sculpture department.
chinelo nkechi ikem is a proud Black Nigerian-American woman interested in critical race feminist theory and Black women's depictions in media, television, and literature. At UC Santa Barbara, she double-majored in Political Science and Philosophy and is now a third-year law student at USC Gould School of Law. She is a book blogger (also known as bookstagrammer) on Instagram @interestedinblackbooks and has penned words for Huffington Post.
Gabrielle Felder (she/her) is an educator, freelance graphic designer, social media artist, and culture critic. Originally from Orange County, California, Gabrielle graduated from the University of California , Santa Barbara in 2018, receiving two degrees: Ecology and Evolution, B.S. and Biological Anthropology, B.A. In June 2020, Gabrielle graduated from University of Washington School of Public Health with a Master’s in Environmental and Occupational Health. Currently, Gabrielle works as a Prevention Education Specialist, at Raphael House, a domestic violence shelter dedicated to providing the community with educational content on healthy relationships, exploitation, and abuse.
Session 6: Conclusion
Watch the summary video by Nina Shahriaree.
In this very special conclusion to our book club on Sunday, September 24th, 2020, we welcomed the book’s author, Dr. Safiya Umoja Noble to discuss the book club so far. Mandy Harris Williams performed an iteration of her #BrownUpYourFeed lecture, and Ivana Coleman introduced information about future Feminist.AI programming. Watch the replay of the book club here.
Dr. Safiya Umoja Noble is the author of Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. She is an Associate Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in the Department of Information Studies where she serves as the Co-Founder and Co-Director of the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry (C2i2). She also holds appointments in African American Studies and Gender Studies. She is a Research Associate at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford and has been appointed as a Commissioner on the Oxford Commission on AI & Good Governance (OxCAIGG). She is a board member of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, serving those vulnerable to online harassment.
Dr. Noble is the recipient of a Hellman Fellowship and the UCLA Early Career Award. Her academic research focuses on the design of digital media platforms on the internet and their impact on society. Her work is both sociological and interdisciplinary, marking the ways that digital media impacts and intersects with issues of race, gender, culture, and technology.
Mandy Harris Williams is a multidisciplinary vocal artist. Her work utilizes multimedia gestures to analyze and re-imagine desirability privilege as a real and mythological market and political force, Blackness, and its micro and macro structures.
Ivana Coleman is an Austin based immersive content producer and one of the first core members of Feminist AI. She has worked with several major brands and organizations including Warner Bros during the Ready Player One VR activation at SXSW, and the New York Museum of Modern Art for a virtual reality art companion piece. She currently works as a creative consultant for an artificial intelligence company.