ALGORITHMIC LOVE: SEX, TECHNOLOGY, POWER

In academic discourse, romance and sex are often discussed as historical constructs shaped by the social, economic, and political contexts of their time, marking a powerful association between the romantic discourse and capitalism. This course builds on this understanding while supplementing it with the critical but often-overlooked role of technological mediation. Starting from the premise that romantic love is profoundly influenced by the affordances of the technology of its time, a critical awareness of technological mediation in romance—especially of digital technologies, i.e., online dating, social media, or cybersex– will afford us an understanding of how social categories such as gender, race, class, ability, or sexuality are redefined by technologies and in turn govern popular cultural perceptions of dating and sex.

Whereas technology is usually framed as prosthetic or derivative of the human, this course challenges this view approaching technological developments as ‘co-produced’ by humans and technology, forcing us to grapple with both the inherently discriminatory power of socio-technical systems and the unimaginable capacities of these digital devices (Benjamin 2020). The course readings span sociology, media studies, feminist theory, critical race theory, queer theory, or disability studies, equipping students with a critical framework to understand and analyze power structures in love (and beyond) in the contemporary conditions of algorithmic governance.