Article ID: CBB089679321

The Black Androids: A Chrestomathy (2024)

unapi

This article offers some key terms for thinking through the history of the Black Androids, a group of racialized automata, created between the mid–sixteenth century and the late twentieth-century, that form part of the intersecting histories of slavery, automation, rebellion, science fiction, and artificial intelligence. Using the technologies of their time—clockworks, steam, electricity—these machines portrayed Black people in pastoral, leisurely, and pre-industrial roles, ironically embodying the myth that technology is opposed to Blackness.1 As a small interdisciplinary research team assembled in May 2021, we undertook a project to better understand these objects and the histories they might uncover and make possible. The collection of entries that follows is meant to embody some of the results of that research and collaboration.

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Authors & Contributors
LaGrandeur, Kevin
Alac, Morana
Aytes, Ayhan
Bates, David W.
Bowman, Diana M.
Crosthwaite, Paul
Journals
Science-Fiction Studies
History and Technology
History of the Human Sciences
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine
Social Studies of Science
Technology and Culture
Publishers
Oxford University Press
Routledge
The MIT Press
Duke University
Carocci Editore
Duke University Press
Concepts
Automata; robotics; cyborgs
Artificial intelligence
Androids
Science fiction
Human-machine interaction
Technology and literature
People
Albertus Magnus
Barthes, Roland
Homer
Kempelen, Wolfgang von
Naudé, Gabriel
Schmitt, Carl
Time Periods
21st century
20th century
20th century, late
19th century
18th century
20th century, early
Places
Europe
Greece
United States
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