Select Publications (Google Scholar link)
Kat Brewster (2024) “Network breakdown: The queer anarchist politics at the heart of the ‘net from FidoNet to HOMOCORE.” Internet Histories. Link.
Kat Brewster (2024) “‘The Flames Are 50/50 Right Now’: Content Moderation Practices at the Onset of the HIV/AIDS Epidemic in the United States (1982–1990).” Internet Histories 8 (4): 277–93. Link. Winner: 2024 Early Career Researcher Award in Internet Histories. Link.
Oliver L Haimson, Aloe Deguia, Rana Saber, and Kat Brewster. (2024) “Extended Reality Trans Technologies: Bridging Digital and Physical Worlds to Support Transgender People,” Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 8, no. CSCW2. Link.
Kat Brewster (2022). “Imagining a Better Internet.” Issues in Science & Technology, Fall 2022. Link.
Ryan Rose Aceae, Kathryn Brewster, Amanda L. L. Cullen, William Dunkel, Ian R. Larson, and Rainforest Scully-Blaker (2022). “Game Studies, Futurity, and Necessity (or The Game Studies Regarded as Still to Come),” Critical Studies in Media Communication. Link.
Kathryn Brewster & Bonnie Ruberg (2020). SURVIVORS: Archiving the history of bulletin board systems and the AIDS crisis. First Monday, 25(10). Link.
Bonnie Ruberg, Amanda L. L. Cullen & Kathryn Brewster (2019) Nothing but a “titty streamer”: legitimacy, labor, and the debate over women’s breasts in video game live streaming, Critical Studies in Media Communication, 36(5), 466-481. Link.
Book project (manuscript slated for completion in August 2025)
Surviving Online: The Queer Digital Archive
The history of computing often champions the garage tinkerers, the hobbyists, and the technophiles who got a modem for Christmas as vanguards of networked computing. For people affected by the onset of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, however, this domestic shift in computing proved especially vital for organizing, exchanging lifesaving information, and fostering emotional connections with others. As the epidemic progressed, the demands of computer maintenance, nascent digital archiving, and significant loss of life compounded to render many of these critical contributions to the history of computing lost or fragmented. A foray into LGBTQ+ digital life from 1977-1996, Surviving Online tells two stories: the networked/computing efforts of those affected by HIV/AIDS and the multimodal archives have come to maintain their records.
Recent and Upcoming Conference Presentations, Talks
Kat Brewster and Oliver Haimson, (Association of Internet Researchers, Sheffield, U.K., October 2024.) “Hostile digital archives: digital memory work for queer and trans life.”
Kat Brewster, (American Studies Association, Baltimore, MD, November 2024.) “From the backroom to the bulletin board: computer networking and gay culture following bathhouse closures (1982-1990).” [Panel Chair: Bo Ruberg.]
Kat Brewster, Mel Monier, Aloe de Guia, Samuel Mayworm, Ria Khan, Denny Starks, Oliver Haimson. (International Trans Studies Conference, Chicago, IL, September 2024.) “Facing the Filters: Designing AR technologies for identity exploration, gender affirmation, and radical possibility for trans users.”
Kat Brewster, “Hardware, software, liveware.” (Association of Historians, Queer History Conference, Fullerton, CA, June 2024.) [Panel Chair: Alex Ketchum.]
Kathryn Brewster and Elizabeth Petrick (American Studies Association, October 2023) “Even when my eyes are gone for good: disability and visibility in computer mediated communication.” [Panel: Solidarity Online. Chair: Marika Cifor.]
Kathryn Brewster (National Communications Association, November 2022) “Anticipatory mourning in the internet of the anthropocene: remembering the online self in times of crisis” [Panel: Digital PLACE in Web3. Chair: Robert Gehl]
Kathryn Brewster (Society for the History of Technology, November 2022) “SURVIVORS: Material AIDS Histories in Bulletin Board Systems and Personal Computing (1987-1990)” [Panel: New Histories of American Personal Computing. Chair: Laine Nooney.]
Kathryn Brewster (Society for Cinema and Media Studies, March 2022) “Storytelling Campfirefest”: Bulletin Board Systems Amidst the AIDS Epidemic.” [Panel: New Computer Histories. Chair: Laine Nooney.]
Kathryn Brewster (American Studies Association, October 2021) “Archiving the History of Bulletin Board Systems and the AIDS Crisis.” [Panel: Reclaiming HIV/AIDS in Digital Media Studies. Chair: Cait McKinney and Marika Cifor.]
Kathryn Brewster (Association of Internet Researchers, October 2021) “Queer perspectives on digital archives of bulletin board systems.” [Doctoral Colloquium. PI: T.L. Cowan.]
Kathryn Brewster (Queerness and Games Conference, December 2020) “The Sims and LGBTQ+ Design Practices.” [Invited Talk.]
Kathryn Brewster (Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts, November 2019) “Shadows, bloodlines, heritage: Queer futurity in the age of evolving games.” [Game Studies Stream: Queering/Worlds, Panel Chair.]
Kathryn Brewster (Queerness and Games Conference, October 2018) “Canaries and Camwhores in the Coal Mine: affect, labour, and on-demand work on privately owned digital platforms.” [Panel: Affective Labor and Livestreaming. Panel Chair.]
Dissertation work (PhD awarded summer of 2023)
“Surviving Online: Digitally-mediated communities and the AIDS epidemic (1987-1990)”
Committee: Aaron Trammell (Chair), Bo Ruberg, Paul Dourish, Lucas HIlderbrand.
Keywords: web archivy, bulletin board systems (BBS), information infrastructures, internet histories, queer theory
Research context
This dissertation project broadly focused on the development of community information networks and historical Internet use by LGBTQ+ people, gender minorities, and the chronically ill. The cornerstone of that project was the paper printout of a bulletin board system (BBS) operated by and for people with AIDS from 1987-1990. These materials, which currently only exist on paper, raise questions about the role of marginalised people in Internet histories, how their history is archived or remembered, and the interplay between the materiality and mechanics of memory work in queer spaces online. Delving into corners of Usenet and the fragmented records of BBS history, this project demonstrated not only how the personal computer shaped HIV/AIDS activism, but how their archival records are at risk of fading away without a concerted effort to preserve and use them.