Why Childhood Ex Machina?

Kupferman, David W.; Gibbons, Andrew

doi:10.1007/978-981-13-6210-1_1

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…If they were geared toward adults, these picture books, which exclusively feature robots, would be considered science, or speculative fiction. Like children and droids, science fiction's attention to "technology-human relations ... challenges any distinct boundaries between the natural and the artificial, and reveals the analogical relationship between human and machine" (Kupferman & Gibbons, 2019). And, like science fiction, children and droids represent "alternative possible presents" (Jandric in Levinson & Jandric, 2019).…”

Section: Speculative Fiction and (Con)figurations Of Child(hood)mentioning

confidence: 99%

D032 N07 C0MpU73: Exploring (Post)Human Bodies and Worlds with/in Droidial(ity) and Narrative Contexts

Varga

Adams

2022

J Child. Stud.

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This article focuses on droidial bodies in children’s literature to explore how speculative literacies foster necessary spaces for thinking about (non)human and more-than-human connectivity. Specifically, we share what was produced when we applied a framework underpinned by posthumanist concepts to three children’s books centering robots. Using Jackson and Mazzei’s thinking with theory to plug into these books, this article raises (re)new(ed) questions about the intersections of literacy, humanism, and droids. It proposes that pairingposthumanist concepts with droidial texts can be generative in thinking about, critiquing, and predicting changes with the (ever-developing) relationship(s) between humans and machines.

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Section: Speculative Fiction and (Con)figurations Of Child(hood)mentioning

confidence: 99%

D032 N07 C0MpU73: Exploring (Post)Human Bodies and Worlds with/in Droidial(ity) and Narrative Contexts

Varga

Adams

2022

J Child. Stud.

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“…Science fiction’s uncanny ability to interrogate current realities and habits perceived as self-evident while imagining various technological, social, and biofuturistic possibilities provides a path to recapture the experimental sense of creativity (Butler, 2019 [1993]; Kupferman, 2020a; Kupferman and Gibbons, 2019; Shaviro, 2015a; Whitehead, 2020). Particularly, the vibrant fields of Afrofuturism, indigenous, and queer futures engage vital critiques of imperialism, racism, colonialism, sexism, and environmental destruction while reminding us how these oppressive systems percolate within science fiction’s own habits.…”

Section: Bounded Bodies and Educational Habitsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Cronenberg pedagogy draws upon the aesthetic sensibility and bodily capacity of Cronenberg’s science fiction body horror films in order to develop a loose conceptual framework. Aesthetic sensibility is key here, particularly in the context of science fiction precisely because science fiction offers a peculiar, yet productive aesthetic (Kupferman, 2020a; Kupferman and Gibbons, 2019; Shaviro, 2015a). Shaviro (2015a) identifies how science fiction presents different aspects of a literary experiment “that takes place (conceptually, if not grammatically) in the future tense” (2015a: 8).…”

Section: Two Science Fiction Vignettes Of Feeling and Bodiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cronenberg pedagogy and fleshy possibilities for educational futures

Sojot

2021

Policy Futures in Education

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Instead of seeking the slick aesthetics of consumer-friendly creative stories, this paper ventures to the sublime of the incomprehensible and invites us to look into the abyss of education’s possibilities. Drawing inspiration from Jeff Vandermeer’s 2017 novel, Borne, and filmmaker David Cronenberg’s aesthetic, this paper aims to tell a story that unfetters easily compartmentalized notions of creativity in education. Borne tells the story of a young female scavenger who finds and proceeds to care for a sentient—and quite vocally curious—experimental biotech remain, while Cronenberg’s films famously bridge science fiction and body horror. Popular culture, in identifying this aesthetic, developed the slang term “to Cronenberg,” meaning to affectively highlight exaggerated mutations. To this end, this paper explores specific questions for educational futures: what does creativity mean for a Cronenberg pedagogy and how does the ethics of creativity inform future educational policy directions?

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I, robot teacher

Kupferman

2020

Educational Philosophy and Theory

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'I know the future is scary at times, sweetheart. But there's just no escaping it'. Ernest Cline, Armada As I sit here on Planet Zoom during the global COVID-19 pandemic and try to figure out how to make my online educational foundations courses as interesting, compelling, and fun as their face to face versions, it has dawned on me that perhaps the most cogent analysis of our current moment, from a pedagogical perspective, was written in 1951 by Isaac Asimov (1951/1957). Titled 'The Fun They Had', this very short story (it fits on a one-page PDF) demonstrates precisely why I couldn't simply import my face-to-face courses as they looked and ran in the first two months of 2020 onto an online platform for the last two months of the semester and beyond. Asimov's story takes place in 2157, two centuries out from when Asimov wrote it. There, an 11-year old girl named Margie and her neighbor, a 13-year old boy named Tommy, have a conversation about a book that Tommy found the day before. Physical books are rare in the future, as everything has been digitized, including learning. What is even more compelling for Margie is that the book is about school. In Asimov's 2157, every student has an individualized 'mechanical' teacher, a robot that is engineered to ostensibly fit each child's learning abilities. 'School' takes place at home and has been atomized, so that children only interact outside of learning. When children are six, presumably at the start of their 'school' years, they learn how to take tests by learning how to fill out a punch card. On the day the story takes place, Margie's robot teacher is on the blink, and is being repaired by a mechanic. She is hopeful that the problem will necessitate the removal of the robot teacher for some time, as Tommy's was once when it lost its history content. Unfortunately for her, her robot teacher is repaired in short order, at which point she and Tommy part so that they can each go to 'school'. During the time when her 'teacher' is being overhauled, Margie and Tommy engage in a heated discussion about Tommy's book. A few details seem to startle Margie. First, there is the idea that teachers were people, not robots. This is confusing to Margie as she does not see how a person could know as much as her mechanical 'teacher', nor would she want a strange person to live with her family. Tommy explains that teachers didn't live with childreninstead they met in a designated building called a 'school'. On top of that, Tommy thinks a human could probably know almost as much as a robot teacher. The second feature of the book, the notion that children would gather together at a school to learn, fascinates Margie. She hates what she knows as 'school', and is wistful as her mother calls her into the house once her teacher is back up and running. The story ends with her daydreaming about 'the fun they had' in the school described in Tommy's book as her robot teacher CONTACT David W. Kupferman

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Why Childhood Ex Machina?

Cited by 3 publications

References 13 publications

D032 N07 C0MpU73: Exploring (Post)Human Bodies and Worlds with/in Droidial(ity) and Narrative Contexts

D032 N07 C0MpU73: Exploring (Post)Human Bodies and Worlds with/in Droidial(ity) and Narrative Contexts

Cronenberg pedagogy and fleshy possibilities for educational futures

I, robot teacher

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