Gender Studies 333YB - Advanced Seminar: 'The Yellow Robot: Race, Fembots, and Sexuality'

Saudi Arabia recently became the first nation to grant citizenship to a female cyborg, prompting criticism that the robot now has more rights than women in the country. This class will explore issues at the intersections of race, power, gender, sexuality, and technology. We will read theorists such as Wendy Chun and Lisa Nakamura on race and technology, as well as Anne Cheng's work on race, aesthetics, and the nonhuman. We will also consider films such as Ex Machina and The Ghost in the Shell against Koreeda's Air Doll, and Kwak Jae-Yong's Cyborg, She. How are intelligence and humanity proscribed by race? What do gender, sexuality, and race have to do with mechanized labor?

Prereq: 8 credits in English, gender studies, or critical social thought.