Teaching a Critical Digital Literacy of Wearables: A Feminist Surveillance as Care Pedagogy

Abstract

Abstract This article critically responds to the collection of data drawn from the body and the surveillance of everyday experiences via the use of wearable technologies. Bringing together feminist methodologies in rhetoric and writing with feminist conversations in surveillance studies, Hutchinson and Novotny argue that a feminist surveillance as care pedagogy teaches professional writing students a user-centered design practice that supports consent and user agency, and resists ubiquitous, non-consensual surveillance of user’s bodies. Their pedagogy centers on acquisition of critical digital literacies as necessary for teaching students to engage with emerging technological issues, specifically ones raised when considering the ethical implications with surveillance and privacy. The two courses outlined in this article approach wearable technologies through the lens of rhetorics of health and medicine, enabling the kind of critical digital literacies needed to interrogate privacy and surveillance concerns that impact students—a demographic most often targeted as users of these technologies.