Digital Humanities Working Group: Kimberly Soriano
*Note: The venue for the DH Working Group has changed for Spring 2026. We will now be meeting in the DUC, Room 233, for all sessions until further notice.
The second April session of the Digital Humanities Working Group of Spring 2026 will feature a talk by Dr Kimberly Soriano, Postdoctoral Fellow in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.
Title: The Spectacle of Figueroa: Layered Surveillance and Illicit Eroticism in Los Angeles
Abstract: As Los Angeles prepares to host upcoming mega-events such as the FIFA World Cup Summer 2026 and the Summer Olympics in 2028, efforts to sanitize the city have been expedited through a variety of spatial policing tactics. This presentation will focus on social media representations of Figueroa Corridor, specifically YouTube Vlogs, TikToks, and Instagram accounts that focus on recording street-based sexual labor. As prostitution is illegal in California, I argue that these recordings operate as part of the surveillance webs of the area and particularly against Black and Latinx sex workers, producing what I term layered surveillance. Locally, this layered surveillance has operated in the service of the ongoing collapsing of prostitution as sex trafficking, narratives that inflate police budgets, increasing criminalization, and incarceration. Arguments that were first used in the service of expanding Automatic License Plate Readers, which have since been weaponized against migrants in a city with a significant undocumented population. Simultaneously, I argue that some sex workers seize the civilian gaze and perform illicit eroticism, effectively reclaiming their image and demanding their cut of the profit (Miller-Young, 2014).
The session will take place on Friday April 17th from 11-12.30, in the DUC, Room 233. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A. Lunch will be provided.
If you plan to attend this session, please RSVP and provide your lunch order here.
The Digital Humanities Working Group working is a space for faculty and advanced graduate students to present works-in-progress for feedback before submitting their work to an external conference, journal or grant body. We also aim to create a regular community gathering space for researchers in the digital humanities across disciplines in Arts and Sciences. Scholars interested in any of the subfields of the digital humanities, including but not limited to humanities data analytics, cultural analytics, media studies, critical digital studies, critical data studies, and history of science and technology, are welcome to attend. The group consists of monthly meetings in which one or two faculty or grad students will present a current project. The working group is a cross-disciplinary intitative sponsored by the Transdisciplinary Institute in Applied Data Sciences and the Humanities Digital Workshop, with the support of Olin Library Data Services.
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If you have any questions, or if you are interested in presenting to the group, please email Claudia Carroll (claudiac@wustl.edu).