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Popular culture geeks, suffering, revenge and mathematics
Independent.ORCID iD: 0000-0003-4902-5519
Umeå University, Faculty of Science and Technology, Department of Science and Mathematics Education. (UmSER)ORCID iD: 0000-0003-3614-1692
Umeå University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Education.ORCID iD: 0000-0001-6413-6538
Göteborgs universitet.
2020 (English)Conference paper, Published paper (Refereed)
Abstract [en]

From The Big Bang Theory to Stranger Things, geek characters areincreasingly central to contemporary popular culture. They may beprimarily into technology or science but this is always grounded inextraordinary mathematical skills. As Tony Stark says in Iron Man “If mymath is right, and it always is...”. In this article, we map one aspect of howthe pop culture geek is represented: suffering-revenge narratives. We usethe Mark Zuckerberg biopic The Social Network as an archetypal exampleand argue that while suffering and revenge have always been part of geekrepresentations, they are increasingly taking on misogynistic forms. Thesenarratives legitimate the gendered policing of online geek spaces andwider sexism. As a contrast, we look at working-class Latina female geekBetty Aurora Rincón in the television series Betty en NY showing how sheresponds to suffering with forgiveness and empathy rather than revenge.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2020. Vol. 40
Series
Proceedings of the British Society for Research into Learning Mathematics
Keywords [en]
geeks; The Social Network; Betty La Fea; technology.
National Category
Didactics
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-183072OAI: oai:DiVA.org:umu-183072DiVA, id: diva2:1554579
Conference
BSRLM Autumn Conference 2020, Virtual, November 14, 2020
Part of project
The Geek as gatekeeper? Changing relations between gender, race and technology, Swedish Research Council
Funder
Swedish Research Council, 2018-03401Available from: 2021-05-16 Created: 2021-05-16 Last updated: 2021-06-03Bibliographically approved

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Berge, MariaSilfver, Eva

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CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf