Abigail De Kosnik is an Associate Professor in the Berkeley Center for New Media and the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, and an affiliated faculty member of Gender & Women’s Studies and Folklore. She researches popular media, particularly digital media, film and television, and fan studies. She is particularly interested in how issues of feminism, queerness, ethnicity, and transnationalism intersect with new media studies and performance studies.
De Kosnik’s book Rogue Archives: Digital Cultural Memory and Media Fandom was published by MIT Press in 2016. She is the co-editor (with Keith Feldman) of the essay collection #identity: Hashtagging Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Nation (University of Michigan Press, 2019), and the co-editor, with Sam Ford and C. Lee Harrington, of the edited essay collection “The Survival of Soap Opera: Transformations for a New Media Era” (University Press of Mississippi, 2011). She has published articles on media fandom, popular digital culture, and performance studies in Third Text, JCMS (Journal of Cinema and Media Studies), The International Journal of Communication, Modern Drama, Transformative Works and Cultures, Verge: Studies in Global Asias, Performance Research, and elsewhere. Her courses include History and Theory of New Media (a core required seminar for the Designated Emphasis in New Media) and Performance, Television, and Social Media.
De Kosnik is currently writing a book on media piracy in the U.S. by Black, brown, Asian, queer, and disabled users tentatively titled Minority Piracy. She is one of the faculty co-organizers of The Color of New Media, a working group that focuses on the overlap of critical race theory, gender and women’s studies, and transnational studies with new media studies (sponsored by the Center for Race and Gender with additional support from BCNM). De Kosnik is Filipina American.
Education: Ph.D. in Comparative Literary Studies: Radio/Television/Film, Northwestern University
Performance and Technology
New Media
