Seminar Series
Work in Progress in the Social Studies (WIPSS): 2018/9
22nd Year
Tuesday 7 May
'So Very Hideous an Idea': The Girl, the Doll and the Cyborg
Speaker: Maria Theuma
Posthumanism's notional fantasy of engineering worlds and, by extension, beings that are not determined by human limitation opens up the possibility of a post-gender future that transcends normative conceptions of sexuality, identity and, ultimately, embodied life itself. Arguably, this vision has been, to date, most radically articulated by Donna Haraway in 'A Cyborg Manifesto' (1985, online, 32 pages) – a text that, in the twenty-first century, still provides the conditions for significant engagement with the relationship between women and technology writ large. This seminar addresses the problem of maintaining a productive discussion surrounding the politics and aesthetics of gender, by looking at how the 'girl' strategically figures and operates within techno-culture and, more broadly, posthumanism. It aims to explore the prospect of a technofeminism within which bodies, desires and bio-textual intimacies need not necessarily be erased – and, potentially, might even thrive.
Maria Theuma is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of English, where she is researching the relation between posthumanist aesthetics and beauty. Her other areas of academic and personal interest are feminist literary theory, girlhood studies, and millennial-focused content surrounding both pop and digital culture. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in The Rumpus and Isles of the Left and her visual work has been exhibited at St James Cavalier in Valletta.
Tuesday 7 May, 18:00-19:00, followed by discussion. In Gateway Building Hall D2, on the third floor of Gateway Building, on the left as you face the University Gate. Students are encouraged to attend. The public is cordially welcome.
Convenors: Prof. Paul Clough (Anthropology), Prof. Peter Mayo (Education), Dr Michael Briguglio (Sociology)