Theresa M. Senft (Books)

Theresa M. Senft Books

Theresa M. Senft employs feminist, critical race, and postcolonial critique to explore how social media has reshaped the production, consumption, and circulation of self-performances globally. Trained in performance studies, her work often focuses on media with a 'liveness' component, using critical theory, ethnography, and memoir to dissect the politics embedded in practices often dismissed as apolitical or merely recreational. A proponent of public, networked scholarship, she founded initiatives exploring the intersections of girl culture, urban culture, and media culture worldwide. Her insights frequently engage with both the advertising industry and mainstream media.

Camgirls

150 pages
6 hours of reading

3.6(41)Add rating

This book is a critical and ethnographic study of camgirls: women who broadcast themselves over the web for the general public while trying to cultivate a measure of celebrity in the process. The book's over-arching question is, «What does it mean for feminists to speak about the personal as political in a networked society that encourages women to 'represent' through confession, celebrity, and sexual display, but punishes too much visibility with conservative censure and backlash?» The narrative follows that of the camgirl phenomenon, beginning with the earliest experiments in personal homecamming and ending with the newest forms of identity and community being articulated through social networking sites like Live Journal, YouTube, MySpace, and Facebook. It is grounded in interviews, performance analysis of events transpiring between camgirls and their viewers, and the author's own experiences as an ersatz camgirl while conducting the research.