[ecrea] CFP - Reading Westworld

*_Call for Papers_*

*/_Reading Westworld – _/_Edited Collection_*

Coined in the early twentieth century, the term ‘robot’ conjures up 
images of man-made machines, artificial bodies, A.I.s and more recently, 
cyborgs. From Philip K Dick’s /Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep/ 
(1968)//to Spike Jonze’s /Her / (2013)/, /every narrative of artificial 
life shares common themes – they are stories of identity, desire, 
rebellion and protest. Far from being confined to the realm of science 
fiction, advances in modern technology suggest machines which can think 
and act like us are an imminent reality. We are already in an era of 
companion robots, animated sex dolls, machines that feel pain, and AI 
that passes the Turing Test. Combined with a tumultuous twenty-first 
century, it seems timely to question our own humanity in the wake of an 
era which threatens to dehumanise, control and exert power over our 
individuality. The dynamics of HBO’s recent series /Westworld/ engage 
with multidisciplinary debates within humanities research, from American 
self-mythologies to the role of technology in academic pedagogy, and it 
thus offers a timely site for investigating contemporary questions that 
cross disciplinary divides. This collection seeks to investigate 
/Westworld/’s key themes such as those linked to history and 
environment, technology and the posthuman, and the influences and 
intertexts of the series. We are interested in papers from a range of 
disciplines which engage with aspects of these themes, and those which 
consider any of the following:

·Space and location – the role of scenery and landscapes

·Racial identity and slavery, transgressive and othered characters 
(Hispanic Americans, African Americans, Native Americans)

·theme parks and mazes

·cyborgs and AI

·bodies and somatechnics

·technology and consciousness

·memory and visual technologies

·American histories and the West

·Civil War and unrest

·hyperreal spaces and heterotopia

·/Westworld/ and theory (Lacan, Žižek, Haraway, Baudrillard, Jameson)

·gender, sexuality and queer identity

·Intertextuality: Shakespeare, Dick, Vonnegut, Borges, Dante, /The 
Matrix/, /Bladerunner, Westworld/ (1973), /The Truman Show/, etc.

·diegetic levels and narrative theory

·video gaming and programming

·hypertext and interactivity

·surveillance and power

·/Westworld /and pedagogy –teaching /Westworld/

·the role of music within the series – its function and influence

·authenticity and revolution – the quest for freedom

Researchers at all stages are welcomed. Abstracts of 300 words and a 
short biography should be submitted to

Antonia Mackay ((antoniamackay /at/ brookes.ac.uk)) 
<mailto:(antoniamackay /at/ brookes.ac.uk))>; Alex Goody ((agoody /at/ brookes.ac.uk)) 
<mailto:(agoody /at/ brookes.ac.uk))>

by January 26^th 2018.



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