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Resisting and Reconciling a Virtual Age: Performing Identities and Negotiating Literacies in Shifting Mid-life Workspaces and Immersive Online Environments

McComas, Sue Ellen
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1276897944

Abstract Details

2010, Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, Communication Studies.
This dissertation highlights the intersections of age, gender, and technology at a time when the U.S. is expecting an increasingly aging labor force in the face of rapidly changing computer technologies. In an autoethnographic style, I explore how subjectivities attached to age and gender are produced and negotiated at the interface of online/offline spaces. More specifically, I consider how situated (il)literacies materialize as bodies are positioned in a culture that perpetuates the appropriation of labor roles and identity performances based on age and gender. Drawing from a variety of performance theories and constitutive theories of identity, I examine how particular literacies and nuanced identities influence and are influenced by narratives that reflect everyday practices and politics. Recording and analyzing my own personal performances in the immersive online environments of LinguaMOO and Second Life, I underscore how transitioning from a 'traditional' home space to a computer dependent work/school space matters for 'real' bodies in a 'virtual' age.
Radhika Gajjala, PhD (Advisor)
Catherine Cassara-Jemai, PhD (Committee Member)
Lara Martin Lengel, PhD (Committee Member)
Linda Mandlebaum, PhD (Committee Member)
189 p.
Communication; Womens Studies
autoethnography; identity performances; age; gender; subjectivities; technology; situated literacies; transitions; narratives; cyberfeminism

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • McComas, S. E. (2010). Resisting and Reconciling a Virtual Age: Performing Identities and Negotiating Literacies in Shifting Mid-life Workspaces and Immersive Online Environments [Doctoral dissertation, Bowling Green State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1276897944

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • McComas, Sue. Resisting and Reconciling a Virtual Age: Performing Identities and Negotiating Literacies in Shifting Mid-life Workspaces and Immersive Online Environments. 2010. Bowling Green State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1276897944.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • McComas, Sue. "Resisting and Reconciling a Virtual Age: Performing Identities and Negotiating Literacies in Shifting Mid-life Workspaces and Immersive Online Environments." Doctoral dissertation, Bowling Green State University, 2010. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1276897944

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

bgsu1276897944
1,124
© 2010, some rights reserved.Creative Commons License Resisting and Reconciling a Virtual Age: Performing Identities and Negotiating Literacies in Shifting Mid-life Workspaces and Immersive Online Environments by Sue Ellen McComas is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu.
This open access ETD is published by Bowling Green State University and OhioLINK.