Artificial Women: Sex Dolls, Robot Caregivers, and More Facsimile Females

What distinguishes humanity from artificial beings? What do constructed creatures tell us about ourselves? From sex dolls to Siri, talking Barbies to robotic mothers, Artificial Women explores the ways in which today’s simulated females--both real and fictional--reflect and expose our own ideas about gender and female identity. Join Julie Wosk as she probes the realm of compliant sex workers, nurturing caretakers, genial servants, and rebellious creations in film, television, literature, art, photography, and current developments in robotics. These modern-day Galateas must embrace their own synthetic nature while also striving for authenticity and autonomy, all the while foregrounding gender stereotypes and changing perceptions of women and their roles. They embody the paradoxes and tensions that continue to arise in our increasingly simulated world, where the lines between the real and the virtual only continue to blur. As these ＂artificial women＂ become ever more lifelike, so too do the questions they raise become more provocative, and more illuminating of our own conceptions and conventions. Artificial Women pushes the boundaries of gender, sexuality, and culture studies to consider new digital technologies, artificial intelligences, and burgeoning simulations.

Julie Wosk is Professor Emerita of English, Art History, and Studio Art at the State University of New York Maritime College. She is author of several books, including My Fair Ladies: Female Robots, Androids, and Other Artificial Eves; Women and the Machine: Representations from the Spinning Wheel to the Electronic Age; and Breaking Frame: Technology and the Visual Arts in the Nineteenth Century. She lectures widely on technology, art, and design, and the lecture based on her book Alluring Androids, Robot Women, and Electronic Eves was featured as one of the ＂Best Lectures in New York＂ by PBS. She has also curated and written exhibits on robotics and gender at the New York Hall of Science and the Cooper Union Gallery in New York. In addition to her many articles that have appeared in the Huffington Post, the New York Times, and Technology Review, she also finds time to work as a painter and photographer.