She's Such a Geek Women Write About Science, Technology, and Other Nerdy Stuff

by Newitz, Annalee; Anders, Charlie

• ISBN13: 9781580051903
• ISBN10: 1580051901
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-11-13
• Publisher: Seal Press

Summary

She’s Such a Geek is a groundbreaking anthology that celebrates women who have flourished in the male-dominated realms of technical and cultural arcana. 

Editors Annalee Newitz and Charlie Anders bring together a diverse range of critical and personal essays about the meaning of female nerdhood by women who are in love with genomics, obsessed with blogging, learned about sex from Dungeons and Dragons, and aren't afraid to match wits with men or computers. 

More than anything, She's Such a Geek is a celebration and call to arms: it's a hopeful book which looks forward to a day when women will invent molecular motors, design the next ultra-tiny supercomputer, and run the government.

Author Biography

Annalee Newitz is a nationally known technology and science writer. She is a contributing editor at Wired magazine and also writes for New York magazine, Popular Science, Salon.com, New Scientist, The Believer, and the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Her syndicated column Techsploitation deals with all things geeky and runs in newspapers throughout the U.S. and Canada. In 2002, she won a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship that allowed her to spend a year at MIT researching biotech and computer networking. She is the author of Pretend We're Dead: Capitalist Monsters in American Pop Culture and the editor of two anthologies, The Bad Subjects Anthology and White Trash: Race and Class in America . She is also the co-founder of two indie magazines: other and Bad Subjects. Annalee has discussed her work on CNN, NPR, CBS, the Discovery Channel, BBC and the CBC, as well as in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. She holds a Ph.D. in English and American Studies from the University of California Berkeley.

Charlie Anders is the author of the transgender coming-of-age novel Choir Boy, which Richard Labonte’s “Book Marks” column named one of the top 10 fiction titles of 2005 and The Lazy Crossdresser, a feminist-style manifesto for transgender women struggling with body image and gender stereotypes. Her writing has appeared in Salon.com, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, the Wall Street Journal, ZYZZYVA, Tikkun, Fresh Yarn, Pindeldyboz.com, the San Francisco Chronicle, Publisher’s Weekly, Punk Planet, the New York Press, Kitchen Sink, Watchword, and many other magazines and newspapers. She’s also written for many anthologies, including Paraspheres: New Wave Fabulist Fiction and Pills, Chills, Thrills and Heartache. Charlie co-founded other magazine with Annalee Newitz and organizes the award-winning reading series Writers With Drinks. She also created the acclaimed satirical website www.godhatesfigs.com.

Table of Contents

introduction
Annalee Newitz & Charlie Anders	v
growing up nerd
really good for a girl
Kory Wells	2	(12)
dial-up desire
Jami Schoenewies	14	(10)
high school politics
Jessica Dickinson Goodman	24	(5)
the dress
Diana Husmann	29	(11)
high tech
professor in a circuit-board corset
Ellen Spertus	40	(10)
the overloaded activist
Wendy Seltzer	50	(4)
gimp geek
Thida Cornes	54	(11)
the hacker's guide to what's in her own panties
Violet Blue	65	(9)
in the lab
the making of a synchrotron geek
Carle Ralston	74	(8)
suzy the computer versus dr. sexy
Suzanne E. Franks	82	(14)
all our boys go to the IT industry in america
Roopa Ramamoorthi	96	(10)
sex and the single (woman) biologist Nina
Simone Dudnik	106	(8)
i am wonk, hear me analyze Charlie Anders	114	(8)
geek, interrupted
job security
Kristin Abkemeier	122	(13)
{women}intersection{mathematics}={me, at least}
Elisabeth Severson	135	(12)
geek, interrupted
Jenn Shreve	147	(5)
universe: the sequel
Aomawa Shields	152	(10)
games
fantasy to frog doll: the story of a gamer princess
Morgan Romine	162	(12)
fatality!
Paula Gaetos	174	(7)
dreaming in unison
Quinn Norton	181	(10)
why BMX XXX sucks
Mara Paulsen	191	(9)
superheroes
sidekicks
Devin Kalile Grayson	200	(9)
neville-mania
Michelle Villanueva	209	(5)
when diana prince takes off her glasses
Annalee Newitz	214