Skype: Bodies, Screens, Space

Robyn Longhurst is Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Academic and Professor of Geography at University of Waikato. She has served as Editor-in-Chief of Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography and Chair of the International Geographical Union Commission on Gender and Geography. Robyn has published on issues relating to digital media, pregnancy, mothering, sexuality, ‘visceral geographies’, masculinities, and body size and shape.

List of illustrations

Preface

Acknowledgements

1 Why Skype, why now?

Feeling my way

Milestones for Skype

Where to from here?

2 Queer phenomenology: from writing tables to digital screens

Getting orientated

Spinning outwards

Bodies

Screens

Space

3 Interviewing: face-to-face and on Skype

The participants

Feeling the interviews

Shifting senses

Internet sources or ‘vulgar geographies’

4 Selves, others, objects and space

The self in the box

The difference gender makes

‘Theatres of composition’

5 Families, friends and loved ones

Across the generations

Special occasions

‘Sinking’ into the spaces of Skype

6 Skype for work: ‘A bit weird’

Job interviews

Meetings and collegial communications

‘Disorientations’

7 Skype sex: ‘Queer effects’?

Katie’s story

Real sex and contrived sex

Generational difference?

8 Reorientating bodies and spaces

Lines of sight/site

Back to writing tables and digital screens

Bibliography

Index