A talk examining Andromeda Romano-Lax's novel, Plum Rains
14:00 - 16:00
Hybrid event: on campus (room CTC.3.05) / on Zoom (see event information for link)
Dr Margaret Stetz, Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women's Studies and Professor of Humanities at the University of Delaware, US
Lectures, talks and seminars
Meeting of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Literary Studies
Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies, Department of
Professor Katharine Cockin k.m.cockin@essex.ac.uk
This talk will examine Andromeda Romano-Lax's novel, Plum Rains (2018). With a mixture of dystopian critique and surprisingly hopeful attitudes, the novel considers how a new generation of robots might offer us a much-needed lesson in how to be both human and humane.
As unlikely as it sounds, Andromeda Romano-Lax's 2018 sci-fi novel, Plum Rains, brings together an AI-enabled robot with a survivor of World War II-era Japanese military sexual slavery to explore the issue of empathy.
What happens when societies of the near future cease to make caring for one another a priority and instead outsource care to machines? Will robots, rather than people, be the ones to address with understanding and a concern for justice such ongoing issues as the problem of the Asian "comfort women" who were exploited by the Japanese Imperial Army?
Speaker Dr Margaret Stetz is the Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women's Studies and Professor of Humanities at the University of Delaware, US.
At the University of Delaware, Dr Stetz also has appointments in English and affiliations with Material Culture Studies and with the Centre for the Study and Prevention of Gender-Based Violence.
This hybrid event is a Meeting of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Literary Studies. Participants can attend online via Zoom or in-person in room CTC.3.05.