Kim Knight

Always uncomfortable with writing bios, Kim asked her students to do it for her. Responses included "Kim Knight was born on Rad Person Mountain, eventually climbing down to share her knowledge with plebes" (@chels_upton) and "can it be a fantastic story about being raised by unicorns till you found your calling of spreading knowledge to kiddies?" (@alex_lazaris). While these seemed likely to persuade students to take her classes, they did little to address her research and service activities. Hence, a more traditional bio follows:

Kim Knight is an Assistant Professor of Emerging Media and Communication at the University of Texas at Dallas. Her research broadly centers on technology and social media in relation to art, identity, politics, and education. More specifically, her current work on viral media addresses the role of digital media as it circulates outside of broadcast paradigms and empowers or oppresses subjects in network society. She also has multiple research projects in progress on the topic of gendered identity and digital media. One of the fundamental strategies of her research methodology is to bring together the vectors of theory and practice. As such, her work uniquely blends traditional modes of scholarship with the production of theoretically-informed media objects.

Kim teaches classes in digital media theory, the shift from analog to digital textuality, viral media, wearable media, and race, class, gender, and sexuality in digital environments. Her classes center on the same hybrid approach of theorizing and making that underlies her research.

Kim writes and is editor-in-chief for the blog The Spiral Dance (http://thespiraldance.wordpress.com). The title is taken from the closing line of Donna Haraway's influential essay "Manifesto for Cyborgs" and the blog critically addresses the intersections of media, technology, and gendered identity. In addition, she is the project leader, site administrator, and editor of Fashioning Circuits (http://fashioningcircuits.com), a research blog on wearable media produced in collaboration with EMAC students.

Kim is active in university and public service and is regularly invited to give talks on women and technology, social and wearable media, and Digital Humanities.