Term: Fall 2022

Date: September 27th, 2022

Time: 12:30pm - 1:30pm

Location: Torgersen 3310

Instructor: Kory Trott

Presented By: Alliance for Social, Political, Ethical, and Cultural Thought (ASPECT), Scholarly Integrity and Research Compliance (SIRC)

Description:

Course Description: What do futuristic sex technologies reveal about our present-day realities? Focusing on the ethics of humanoid sex robots (“sexbots”) and the sociotechnical imaginaries from which they emerge, this presentation considers urgent issues of power and consent in human-sexbot relations. Utilizing my ongoing dissertation research, I explore the ethical quandaries of these emerging technologies and the humans who imagine, design, and interact with them. 

Speaker’s Bio: Sara Wenger is a PhD candidate in the Alliance for Social, Political, Ethical, and Cultural Thought (ASPECT) program at Virginia Tech. She earned her MA in Women’s Studies from the Department of Gender and Race Studies at The University of Alabama. Her dissertation is a feminist intervention into the controversial existence of humanoid sex robots, exploring the gendered and racialized sociotechnical imaginaries from which these robots emerge. Currently, Sara is a Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellow supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS).  - Part of the SIRC Investigator Series