Dirty Computer: Race, Queerness, and Science Fiction

What do representations of robots and cyborgs in popular film, sci-fi literature, and music tell us about gender, sexuality, race, and what it means to be “human?” Using queer of color critique, feminist theory, disability studies, and science and technology studies (STS), we will investigate the ways that science fiction’s disruption of race, gender, and sexuality as stable categories offers radical models for our present and possible futures. Our case examples explore the politics of the body through narratives of artificial intelligence, sex work, urbanism and segregation, biotech research, prosthetics and athleticism, new reproductive technologies, and more. We will engage with poetry, film, visual art, and speculative fiction to explore how bodies are dreamed, crafted, and represented as these works re-imagine bodily and social estrangement in the present through the creation of counter-futures.