Through the diffractive examination of modern neuroscience, posthuman philosophy, and composition studies, this transdisciplinary research focuses on intrinsic motivation via homeostatic integration of self to initiate organic exploration of the powers involved in the creation of self and agency, and the ongoing making of meaning. Through this homeostatic integration, composition students connect their own goals and desires within the composition environment, and through a creative production model sustain curiosity in self-examination, achieving the following: increased motivation and positive affect, further integration of self in the classroom, improved cognition and long-term memory, and evaluation of human and nonhuman factors involved in ongoing self-formation. This further develops modern composition studies’ emphasis on equality, diversity, and social justice in the classroom, providing a framework through which students of all backgrounds and discourses can find emotional value in meaning-making that transfers to other classrooms, and to the world at large.

As embodiment riddles the body, this thesis interrogates embodiment as a riddle by foregrounding ethical, epistemological, and ontological questions of what embodiment(s) and bodies might be capable of creating and performing. Articulating local embodiments while also attempting to work through the puzzle of embodiment to playfully illustrate multiple responses to embodiment, this thesis incorporates images and discussion generated with a group of female PeeWee hockey players. Thinking with Deleuze and Guattari, Braidotti, Barad, Kirby, and Grosz, I experiment with articulating tentative, enfleshed, entangled, and emplaced local embodiment(s) through the hockey-bodies of female adolescent athletes. / Graduate

Ljud har en förmåga att påverka våra känslor. Begreppet ljudwebb är framtaget till denna undersökning och syftar på de ljudlagda applikationer som, i och med den tekniska utvecklingen, har börjat dyka upp inom webben. Ljudwebben har fått sitt namn från ljudfilmen, de filmer som började experimentera med ljud under filmindustrins tekniska revolution runt 1930-talet. Syftet med denna undersökning är att utforska vad ljudets känslopåverkande egenskaper kan bidra med inom webben. Genom att utgå från fysiker-filosofen Karen Barads tankar om det ständigt rekonstruerande fenomenet samt filosofen Sarah Ahmeds kritik mot den fenomenologiska orienteringen lyder undersökningens frågeställning. “Hur kan fenomenet ljudwebb gestalta tillstånden orientering och desorientering? De insikter som uppkom under undersökningens teoretiska fördjupning har resulterat i den webb-baserade ljudinstallationen Fenomenofonen. Utöver ljudatmosfärer gestaltar Fenomenofonen intra-aktion, orientering och desorientering. Undersökningen bevisar att ljud kan användas som verktyg inom webbproduktion för att påverka användarens känslor. I och med marknadens efterfrågan på sinnesupplevelser inom webben kommer ljudwebben med stor sannolikhet att fortsätta expandera. Det kommer att leda till ett ännu mer påfrestat ljudlandskap, men även en rikare kultur och många arbetsmöjligheter för ljud-designers, programmerare och kompositörer. / Sound has a strong potential to influence our feelings. The concept of sound-web is developed for this study and refers to the sound-designed applications which have started to appear at the web due to new technological possibilities. Its name is inspired by the concept of sound film, the category of movies that began experimenting with sound, due to their technical film revolution back around the 1930´s. The purpose of this study is to explore what sound, with its possiblility to affect human emotions, can contribute within the web. This investigations survey question was produced by applying theories from physicist-philosophist Karen Barad's thoughts about the constantly reconstructive phenomenon and from the philosopher Sarah Ahmed's criticism of the phenomenological orientation and is as follows: How can the phenomenon of sound-web produce orientation and disorientation?. The insights that arose during the theoretical investigation resulted in a web-based sound installation named the Phenomenophone. In addition to generate sound atmospheres, the Phenomenophone, produces intra-action, orientation and disorientation in a way that make these specific subjects more understandable in a psycological way. The survey proves that the sound can be used as a tool in web production to affect the users feelings. The sound-web will most probably expand even more in the future. It will lead to a more contaminated soundscape but a richer cultural environment and many job opportunities for sound-designers, programmers and composers.

We have to be specific. To take a stand. We have to tell a specific story. Therefore we need to come together. To be together. To spend timespacematter together. To build strength. To find the movements, words and materials that can hold and unfold this story. Make it live, to keep us alive. / Action: Point of Constant Departures (https://mariofjell.wordpress.com/point-of-constant-departures/)

Abstract How do we cope with technology today? We are surrounded by machines, computers and technological devices from mobile phones to automated check- outs. These types of machines are no longer exotic in Sweden where today the average person is usually fluent in their use. But do we really have an understanding of how these objects work, is understanding necessary and how do we cope when our knowledge is lacking? This thesis is intended as an introduction to an anthropological way of look- ing at strategies people develop for understanding, using and interacting with technological objects, specifically robots. Still an exotic object, robots are more widely known-about than experienced. Based on ethnographic data, primarily gathered in two distinct workplace environments as well as interviews and video documentation, my analysis aims to illustrate the implications of defining hu- mans and robots as equally significant agents within networks whilst disputing the traditional importance given to the dichotomy of technology (non-human) and human. Whilst robots are definitely less than we expect them to be, they are still so- cial artefacts, firmly situated within social networks and meaning which manifest through human–robot interactions. Perhaps little more than tools, an ambigu- ity exists in human–robot interactions which suggests that we form quasi-social relations that could, and have been exploited by designers and engineers to broaden the range of use for technological objects. Keywords: human-robot interaction, network theory, situated knowledges, agential realism, performativity, social contextualisation of technological objects

In 1987, statistics transformed rape from a rare and personal concern into an epidemic in popular consciousness. Mary Koss and colleagues conducted victimization surveys with thousands of college women, 1 in 4 of whom reported completed or attempted rape. This finding received tremendous attention in the 1980s, and continues to influence activists and state officials. Notwithstanding the importance of this and other scientific facts, scholars have rarely explored the role of scientists in shaping perceptions of and responses to sexual violence. This project addresses that gap in the literature, via the following questions: (1) how have scientists conceptualized sexual violence among adults; and (2) what social mechanisms enable, constrain, and otherwise influence scientific research on sexual violence? Drawing on insights from feminist science studies, I approach sexual violence as an intra-active phenomenon, and regard objects of study (sexual violence) as inseparable from agencies of observation (research instruments, researchers). Data came from three sources: content analysis of journal abstracts (N=1,313), in-depth assessment of texts in different subfields (N=84), and interviews with researchers (N=31). Ultimately, I argue that sexual violence research has been dominated by psychological inquiries, as well as gendered assumptions regarding who is most capable of perpetrating and experiencing rape. Scientists have produced a tremendous body of knowledge regarding the individual-level causes, individual-level outcomes, and prevalence of men’s sexual aggression toward women. Systemic forces and sexual violence that deviates from this particular gendered pattern remain underexamined. I further argue that scientific research on sexual violence is shaped by a range of social mechanisms that are particular to fields associated with questions of social morality and social movements including feminism(s). / Sociology

This dissertation examines how the human bodymind has been seen as malleable by science, technology, and policy practitioners from the Eugenic era in the United States in the first half of the 20th century, to the future imaginaries of Transhumanists and technology innovators. I critique the main goal of these practitioners – to perfect the human bodymind and through that perfection, perfecting human society – as utopic, impossible, and amoral. I argue instead, that we are intra-dependent – dependent on and through each other and our ecological contexts. I ground this argument both in the lived experience of those whose bodymind arrangements go against our normative expectations – folks like disabled people, queer and transgender people, body modders, and more – and in the philosophical metaphysics of Karen Barad's Agential Realism. I argue that we can only produce a future where bodymind alteration is acceptable if we first value different bodymind arrangements. I argue both that we cannot consider ourselves individuals, separate from the world or each other, and that multiplicity of bodyminds is a generative, heterotopic (neither utopic nor dystopic), force toward which we ought strive through engaging intentionally with each other in care relations. / Doctor of Philosophy / An interdisciplinary examination of how science and technology has made possible bodymind alteration from the eugenics in the early 20th century until today. Particular focus is given to how futures were imagined by different groups (eugenics educators, regenerative medicine scientists, and transhumanists in particular), the practices used to realize these futures, and the ethics around the practices and beliefs that are often taken for granted. I also describe several communities (disabled people, body modders, otherkin, and more) whose bodyminds are decidedly non-normative in order to reveal practices of community, kinship, and resistance to power that illuminate the lived realities of having a different morphology. I argue that these communities reveal ways to value and include morphological difference that might bring about a Morphological Freedom in which we might all thrive.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the processes through which mathematical and gendered subjectivity is constituted, reconstituted and maintained in different situations during Early Childhood Teacher Education (ECE). In three research articles it is investigated how student teachers’ subjectivity constitutions are expressed, formulated and reformulated in different discursive and material practices. With the support of feminist poststructural theories, student teachers’ subjectification processes are investigated in relation to the subject of mathematics, gender, different learning and teaching discourses, materials and environments. During the course of the work a theoretical transit is carried out: from Judith Butler’s theories (1990, 1993 and 1997) to Karen Barad’s (2007, 2008) theoretical territory. The empirical data was collected from three cohorts (2005-2007) of a ten-week long mathematics course included in a one-year ECE course called Investigative Pedagogy – Dialogue Reggio Emilia. Examples of the data include memory stories written by student teachers, pedagogical documentation from different mathematics projects, field notes from action research studies in ECE education, survey results and students’ reports. Methodologically, in relation to the first and second articles the thesis works with feminist discourse analysis, deconstructive and performative methodology and in relation to the third article with diffractive and intra-active methodology. The results show examples of how student teachers constitute mathematical subjectivity through complex networks of social relations, learning discourses, gender, material practices, time, space and place. Taking part in alternative, aesthetic interdisciplinary learning practices changes the understanding of student teachers’ mathematical subjectivity, although not always in predictable or uncomplicated ways. In the shift from a discursive and performative way of understanding mathematical subjectivity to an agentic realistic one, the understanding of mathematical subjectivity is widened to include things, materials and environments. This shift implies a decisive meaning for how pedagogical practices can be viewed and, in the long run, how mathematics didactics can be approached for student teachers and young children alike. / At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished  and had a status as follows: Paper 1: In press. Paper 3: Submitted.

This study, the first in its scope on transgender religiosity, is based on in-depth biographical interviews with 13 transgender participants with a Jewish Orthodox background (currently and formerly Orthodox). The primary aim of the study has been to elucidate the entanglements of gender and religion in three periods of the participants’ lives: pre-transition, transition and post-transition. One of the main topics investigated have been the ways participants negotiated gendered religious practices in those three periods. A secondary aim of this study has been to co-theorize, in dialogue with the participants, different possible paths for religious change; that is, the ways in which the larger Orthodox community might respond to the presence of openly transgender members in its midst. Concerning the findings, in the course of this study I have developed the themes of dislocations and reversal stories to explain how the participants negotiated the entanglements of gender and religion particularly in the transitional and post-transitional periods. The latter theme–reversal stories–has been of special relevance to explain how gendered religious practices, which were generally detrimental to the acceptance of the participants’ gender identities during the pre-transitional period, had the potential to become a powerful source for gender affirmation after transition. In this study I argue that this possibility and its related mode of agency are not contained within the binary resistance/subordination that feminist scholars have developed to account for the agency of women in traditionalist religions. In order to better conceptualize the notion of agency and explore the nature of the mutual entanglements of gender and religion, I deploy the body of theoretical work developed by Karen Barad known as agential realism. Lastly, I conclude by examining my initial commitments to social constructionism (in Peter Berger’s definition). In the final chapter, I describe how in the course of my study I have encountered three unexpected sites of resistance to social constructionism that have led me to reconsider my previous epistemological commitments and embrace posthumanism as a more satisfactory alternative. / The Impact of Religion - Challenges for Society, Law and Democracy

Med detta kandidatarbete vill jag synliggöra datorns roll i digitalt skapande. Detta genom att se till den kod som utgör digitala objekt som ett materia, och utifrån Karen Barads teorier om agentiell realism samt forskning i digital materialitet bjuda in denna digitala materia som en aktör i skapandeprocessen. Jag har strävat efter en inblick i hur digital materia framträder när den tillåts verka som en aktör, hur den tar ett uttryck och yttrar sig. Jag har engagerat mig i digital materia med diffraktion och remix som metod, vilket tillåtit mig en djupare inblick i det samt en inkluderande process där jag och materiat verkar tillsammans; i intra-aktion. I slutändan ser jag hur digital materia inte framträder ensamt, både jag och dator finns sammantrasslade i dess framträdande som ett resultat av den intra-aktion vi mötts i. Mitt ingripande i digital materia blir synligt i form av glitches, spår av digitalt förfall som ger det annars flyktiga digitala materiat mer materiella och konkreta egenskaper. Det blir även tydligt hur digital materia innebär en svårförstådd komplexitet, som framträder visuellt när det tillåts påverka denna skapandeprocess. Men jag även erhållit en medvetenhet om hur digital materia inte har ett absolut framträdande, och mitt arbete kan ses som en undersökning i hur digital materia kan framträda. / With this bachelor thesis I aim to bring to light the role of the computer in digital creative work. This is accomplished by treating the code that make up digital objects as a form of matter, and with Karen Barad’s agential realism and other research into digital materiality as a point of reference this matter is invited to the creative process as an actor. I’ve been striving for a glimpse of how digital matter comes to life when it’s allowed an active part in the creative process, to see how it expresses itself. By engaging with the digital matter through diffraction and remix as methods I’ve been given an insight into the core of it, and through the process I’ve been working alongside digital matter in intra action. Ultimately I can see how digital matter won’t appear alone, I myself and the computer are both entangled together with the digital matter as a result of the intra actions we’ve been engaging in. My intervention in digital matter becomes visible as glitches, traces of decay that give the digital matter, which can be so fleeting, more concrete and material characteristics. The unintelligible complexity of digital matter also comes to light when it’s allowed influence, as it appears visually. With this knowledge I’ve gained the awareness that digital matter does not have an absolute appearance, and this thesis can be seen as an investigation into how digital matter can appear.