MY FAIR LADIES: FEMALE ROBOTS, ANDROIDS, AND OTHER ARTIFICIAL EVES (Rutgers Univ. Press, 2015).
An engaging look at artificial women--robots, mannequins, dolls---in film, art, photography, television, and today's talking, electronic female robots that look so real they can easily fool the eye.
BOOK
Julie Wosk's WOMEN AND THE MACHINE tells the fascinating story of how women and machines have been portrayed over the past two centuries. From Alarming Woman Driver to Rosie the Riveter to women artists using electronic technologies today, this lavishly illustrated book captures dramatically changing social attitudes about women and their technical abilities
With over 150 photographs, art works, cartoons, and advertisements--many in color--WOMEN AND THE MACHINE highlights the important role women and machines have played in history. Its wide-ranging images present women successfully mastering new technologies: women driving automobiles, bicycling, flying and repairing airplanes, operating machines in World War I and II, using sewing machines,electric home appliances, typewriters, computers, and more.
Wosk details the gender stereotypes that have haunted women for centuries and the ways women have countered these stereotypes by mastering technology and demonstrating their technical skills. Chapters also include women as automatons, robots and cyborgs, women working in industry, Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs),women mechanics, women artists creating electronic images, nineteenth-century women dressed in wired bustles, corsets, and crinolines, and more.
"Engaging and entertaining"--PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Wosk (English, art history, and studio painting, SUNY Maritime College) offers a delightful book framed by captivating illustrations that support and enrich the text--CHOICE
"Combined with superb graphics, Wosk shows that the gender gap in today's technology workplace has very deep roots"--CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Julie Wosk’s exciting book introduces the world of artificial women who seem alive—a subject that has long fascinated filmmakers, artists, photographers, television writers, video game designers, and robotics engineers. These synthetic creatures have a surprising appeal-- and range from early automatons to Lara Croft and the Stepford Wives to today's Japanese female robots that look so real they can easily fool the eye.