This dissertation explores how dominant U.S. constructions of race, class, and gender are embedded into and inscribed onto artificially intelligent virtual assistants and the labors they perform. I examine virtual assistants like Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, and Microsoft’s Cortana, interrogating their complex relationship to humanness, the tasks they are programmed...
ABSTRACT On the Other Side of Babylon: Black Women and Epistemologies of Resistance in the Third World Women’s Alliance Assata Sankofa Kokayi This cultural and intellectual history analyzes the Third World Women’s Alliance (TWWA), its relationship with decolonization struggles in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and positionality as an anti-imperialist...
They Left Us Dead: Anti-Black Violence, Black Evidence, and The Insistence of Black Life examines the mercurial, though seemingly fixed, notion of evidence as it is brought into relation with anti-blackness, Black death and, ultimately, Black life. They Left Us Dead queries how and why certain forms of documentation and...