Reem Hilu received her PhD in Screen Cultures from Northwestern University in 2017. Her work focuses on the history of digital media and the relationship between gender, domesticity, and technological change.
She is working on a book that explores the shifting norms and practices of intimacy and sociability that were catalyzed by the introduction of computers into domestic space and family life in the 1970s and 1980s. This project attempts to expand our understanding of computers in the home by not only considering desktop machines and video game consoles, but also researching everyday objects like toys and appliances that were embedded with computer chips during this period – helping computers to become entrenched into intimate relations between family members in daily life. Her article on voice, girlhood, and digital media entitled “Girl Talk and Girl Tech: Computer Talking Dolls and the Sounds of Girls’ Play,” is published in The Velvet Light Trap (Fall 2016). Professor Hilu has also taught at Northwestern University and McGill University. Her research interests include the history and theory of video games, digital media and computing, feminist media history, children’s media culture, educational technology, and interactive television.
