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Digital Black Feminism

CTL-E-6367 · Work · book · 2021–present

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-07553 · provenance: build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-6367.

Digital Black Feminism, by Catherine Knight Steele, was published by NYU Press in 2021. Steele argues that Black women's relationship to technology is a centuries-long gendered and racial project in the United States, long predating Twitter or Instagram. Using the virtual beauty shop as a metaphor, the book traces technical skill, communicative expertise, and entrepreneurial labor in Black women's lives on and offline, and positions Black women at the center of accounts of technology's past, present, and future. It connects early twentieth-century Black feminist writing to bloggers and social-media writers of the twenty-first century, linking historical and archival analysis with empirical internet studies. The book won the 2022 Nancy Baym Award from the Association of Internet Researchers and the 2022 Diamond Anniversary Book Award from the National Communication Association.

Answer summary · this record in brief, from its own record text

Digital Black Feminism, by Catherine Knight Steele, was published by NYU Press in 2021. Steele argues that Black women's relationship to technology is a centuries-long gendered and racial project in the United States, long predating Twitter or Instagram. Using the virtual beauty shop as a metaphor, the book traces technical skill, communicative expertise, and entrepreneurial labor in Black women's lives on and offline, and positions Black women at the center of accounts of technology's past, present, and future.

Notes

TITLE: no subtitle was found for Digital Black Feminism on any publisher or catalogue record fetched — none has been invented. GRADE BASIS: Verified — publisher description via the author's university plus the author's university profile plus the awarding body's own list. BLOCKED EDGE: authored_by → Catherine Knight Steele — the author is backlog candidate EB-07, not a live record and not in this packet; the edge lands when EB-07 merges. SERIES NOTE (not an edge): this book (2022) and EB-25 (2021) are consecutive Nancy Baym Award winners per the AoIR list — documented here, not staged as a relationship, as the schema has no award-series predicate. PHOTO: HELD (see media). CURATOR'S JUDGMENT (DRAFT): The anchor text for CTL's digital-Black-feminism line — it gives the graph a citable scholarly root for claims the Shorts make in passing. (Draft judgment, not fact.)

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Record CTL-E-6367 · Combined Graph record U-07553 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 3 sources · 1 mapped relationship.
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Researched and maintained by the CultureTechLens research program · CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. Corrections are public: the corrections log.

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Cite as: CultureTechLens, “Digital Black Feminism (CTL-E-6367),” CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. https://culturetechlens.com/graph/entities/ctl-e-6367/

Chicago: CultureTechLens. “Digital Black Feminism (CTL-E-6367).” CultureTechLens Combined Graph. Chicago, IL: CultureTechLens, 2026. https://culturetechlens.com/graph/entities/ctl-e-6367/
APA: CultureTechLens. (2026). Digital Black Feminism (CTL-E-6367) [Entity record]. CultureTechLens Combined Graph. https://culturetechlens.com/graph/entities/ctl-e-6367/
MLA: CultureTechLens. “Digital Black Feminism (CTL-E-6367).” CultureTechLens Combined Graph, 2026, https://culturetechlens.com/graph/entities/ctl-e-6367/

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From the Archive

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Children at a meal, Chicago, 1941 — CultureTechLens
Children at a meal, Chicago, 1941 — CultureTechLensPhoto: Russell Lee, FSA-OWI, Public Domain, via Library of Congress
Children playing in vacant lot in Negro section of Chicago, Illinois, Chicago, 1941 — CultureTechLens
Children playing in vacant lot in Negro section of Chicago, Illinois, Chicago, 1941 — CultureTechLensPhoto: Lee, Russell, 1903-1986, FSA-OWI, Public Domain, via Library of Congress
Hallway of a kitchenette apartment building, Chicago, 1941 — CultureTechLens
Hallway of a kitchenette apartment building, Chicago, 1941 — CultureTechLensPhoto: Russell Lee, FSA-OWI, Public Domain, via Library of Congress

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