Whitney Pow

Whitney Pow is an Assistant Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. They are a media historian whose research lies at the intersection of transgender media studies, trans of color critique, queer theory, electronic art, and video game and computer history. Their current book project examines how trans programmers and game designers have historically challenged the limitations of computational systems, using these interventions to critique broader institutional and bureaucratic structures. Their work centers the concept of mediation to analyze how the lives and bodies of trans people of color are governed and shaped through archives, bureaucratic documentation, and medical classification systems, and how these logics persist within contemporary computational technologies. By placing trans life at the center of software studies, computer history, and critical science and technology studies, their research reveals how processes of documentation, surveillance, and normalization are embedded in everyday interactions with computers, video games, artificial intelligence, and networked media.