Julie Wosk

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Julie Wosk

Julie Wosk is an American author who writes on the history of gender and technology.

Biography[edit]

A native of Evanston, Illinois, Wosk received a B.A.degree from Washington University in St. Louis, graduating magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa,[1] a M.A. from Harvard, and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in Madison.[2][3]

Earlier in her career, Wosk was a civil rights worker for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s organization SCLC organization Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in Alabama and a public relations and advertising writer at Playboy.[4][5]

Wosk is also a painter and photographer whose work has appeared in American museums and galleries. As a museum curator, she is best known for two exhibits on subjects new to the American museum world, one of which was "Picturing Female Robots and Androids" at the New York Hall of Science in Queens, April 22 – October 22, 2017. Her exhibit "Imaging Women in the Space Age" at the New York Hall of Science in Queens, July 13, 2019 – March 2020, celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing, and included images of America's female astronauts and space women in films, television, fashion, and art.[6]

Wosk's books include Women and the Machine: Representations from the Spinning wheel to the Electronic Age (Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2001) and My Fair Ladies: Female Robots, Androids, and Other Artificial Eves (Rutgers Univ. Press, 2015).

Women and the Machine was the first book to present a detailed history of how image-makers illustrated the stereotypes and dramatically changing social attitudes about women and their technical abilities. The book "shows that the gender gap in today’s technology workplace has very deep roots."[7] By riding bicycles, driving cars, piloting planes, working as “Rosie the Riveters" in wartime, women were able to refute the stereotypes and prove their expertise. The book "Reveals deep cultural tensions over the role of women in a technologically complex society" and "reads as a prelude to the computer age".[8]

My Fair Ladies: Female Robots, Androids, and Other Artificial Eves presented the history of simulated females in films, vintage television, art, and robotics. She casts “an analytical eye over female depictions, both physical and fictitious, to explore the history and the future of Woman 2.0."[9][10]

Wosk, as a writer for HuffPost and other media, has also written about new developments in female companion robots and the pitfalls of creating artificial versions of "The Perfect Woman."[11][12]

Prior to Wosk's books on gender and technology, she wrote Breaking Frame: Technology and the Visual Arts in the Nineteenth Century (Rutgers Univ. Press, 1992) which told how American and British artists captured the dramatic effects of the Industrial Revolution, including the impact of new railroads and steam engines, and feared that human beings themselves, both women and men, would become robot-like in the age of steam.[13][14]

Highlighting the impact of technology on culture, some of her early works were about the escalator in art,[15] the airplane in art,[16] photography exhibits about 9/11,[17] the impact of technology on the human image in art,[18] artists' images of technology,[19] and contemporary design.[20]

Wosk is professor emerita at State University of New York, Maritime College.[21]

References[edit]

  1. ^ "WEDDINGS; Julie Wosk, Averill Williams". New York Times.
  2. ^ "Julie Wosk". Encyclopedia. Encyclopedia.com.
  3. ^ "Berkshire Museum presents My Fair Ladies: Female Robots and Androids in Movies, Television, Photography and Art" (PDF). October 17, 2015.
  4. ^ Wosk, Julie (January 16, 2007). "Hearing A Call to Action in a Hymn". New York Newsday.
  5. ^ Wosk, Julie (July 15, 2020). Playboy, Mad Men, and Me – And Other Stories. Independently published KDP Ebook and paperback.
  6. ^ Zunic, Victoria (October 17, 2019). "The Atmosphere is No Glass Ceiling". Queens Chronicle.
  7. ^ Coates, James (April 29, 2002). ""Riveting Roles: Tracing the Roots of Tech Stereotypes"". The Chicago Tribune.
  8. ^ "Review of Women and the Machine". Technology and Learning: 72. September 2002.
  9. ^ Davis, Nicola (July 13, 2015). "Living Dolls: Sci-Fi's Fascination with Artificial Women". The Guardian.
  10. ^ "Picturing Female Robots and Androids". YouTube: Stylish Ev Productions LLC. June 6, 2017.
  11. ^ Wosk, Julie (December 21, 2017). "Love and Sex With Robots Conference Provokes Controversy". HuffPost.
  12. ^ Wosk, Julie (July 14, 2016). "The Obsession with Creating 'Perfect Female Robots': Should Women be Worried?". Robohub.
  13. ^ Post, Robert (April 1994). "Review of Wosk, Breaking Frame: Technology and the Visual Arts in the Nineteenth Century". American Historical Review. 99 (2): 526. doi:10.2307/2167306. JSTOR 2167306.
  14. ^ Bennet, Kelsey. "Review of Julie Wosk's Breaking Frame: Technology, Art, and Design in the Nineteenth Century". The Victorian Web.
  15. ^ Wosk, Julie. "Perspectives on the Escalator in Photography and Art". Catalogue Essay for the Exhibition "Up Down and Across: Elevators, Escalators, and Moving Sidewalks". Washington, D.C.: National Building Museum/Merrell Pub. Co., 2003: 140–171.
  16. ^ Wosk, Julie (December 1984). "The Aeroplane in Art". Art and Artists. London.
  17. ^ Wosk, Julie (October 2002). "Photographing Devastation: Three Photography Exhibits of 11 September 2001". Technology and Culture. 43 (4): 771–76. doi:10.1353/tech.2002.0192. S2CID 110790072.
  18. ^ Wosk, Julie (1986). "The Impact of Technology on the Human Image in Art". Leonardo. 19 (2). doi:10.2307/1578279. JSTOR 1578279. S2CID 192973002.
  19. ^ Wosk, Julie (January 1980). "Artists on Technology". Technology Review. MIT Press.
  20. ^ Wosk, Julie (Spring 1996). "Exhibit Review: Mutant Materials in Contemporary Design". Design Issues. 12 (1): 63–69. doi:10.2307/1511746. JSTOR 1511746.
  21. ^ "Julie Wosk, Author at Ms. Magazine". msmagazine.com. Retrieved April 5, 2021.
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