Against the backdrop of profound transformations in the technologies, economies, and politics of creative labor, enterprising young women are flocking to social media with aspirations of capitalizing on their passion projects. To these digitally networked content creators, fashion blogs, YouTube, and Instagram represent prospective paths to successful and rewarding careers.  But to what extent do their creative investments pay off?  Presenting research from her new book (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love: Gender, Social Media, and Aspirational Work (Yale UP, 2017), Duffy reveals how these female digital-content producers engage in “aspirational labor,” a mode of (mostly) uncompensated, independent work that shifts workers’ focus from the present to an imagined future.  She connects the activities of these women to larger shifts in unpaid and gendered labor, offering a lens through which to understand, anticipate, and critique broader transformations in the creative economy.

Coffee and pastries provided