Dr. T L Cowan

Biography

T.L. Cowan is an Associate Professor in Media Studies focusing on Digital Media Cultures at the University of Toronto. Their research emphasizes the cultural and intellectual economies of networks within marginalized digital media performance practices. Previously, T.L. held the position of Presidential Visiting Professor in Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies at Yale University and served as Chair of Experimental Pedagogies in the School of Media Studies at The New School. Their work critically engages with transnational studies of queer, feminist, and transgender decolonizing networked cultural practices as well as emergent communication technologies. T.L.'s research is particularly centered on the historical and contemporary contexts of grassroots cabaret and experimental media, exploring how transgender, feminist, and queer artists and activists invigorate their histories and communities through online networks and political collectives. Their scholarly inquiries traverse late 19th to early 20th-century European cabaret and its tradition in Mexico, as well as the Harlem Renaissance and post-war transsexual cabaret cultures in Montreal. They theorize cabaret as a collaborative technology and a pedagogical tool that sustains counter-cultural media and aesthetics, arguing for the significance of DIY approaches in projects like FemTechNet.

Research Interests