Abstract
This study introduces I Am Matriarch as a feminist AI and learning tool that reimagines curation as pedagogy and metadata as curriculum. Designed to confront structural erasures in cultural education, the platform enables students and educators to collaboratively design, critique, and curate algorithmically-driven storytelling systems. At the heart of I Am Matriarch is a curriculum of digital literacy rooted in justice—where learners are not passive consumers of content, but active co-creators of knowledge systems. Participants engage in critical data practices: identifying representation gaps, generating inclusive metadata, and mapping cultural narratives to community-defined epistemologies. This paper examines classroom-based case studies and professional learning labs where educators used the platform to explore algorithmic bias, ethical storytelling, and equity in AI. Pedagogical outcomes highlight how digital fluency emerges not from software proficiency alone but from a deep understanding of systems, story, and power. Framed by the 2026 special focus Digital Literacy for Future Readiness, this paper positions feminist AI not as a novelty, but as a necessary infrastructure for meaningful, inclusive learning. We ask: What does it mean to teach algorithms that can also teach us back? How can metadata become a method of care? The study concludes with a call to reframe digital literacy education—not simply as tool use, but as the co-design of just technologies through participatory pedagogies and public memory.
Presenters
Andrea FernandezVisiting Assistant Professor / Project Director, I Am Matriarch, History of Art and Design, The Pratt Institute, New York, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Digital Literacy, Feminist AI, Curriculum Design, Algorithmic Justice, Metadata, Inclusive
