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<div class=""><font face="Arial" class="">Please join us this coming Monday, 10/24 at 4pm in the Nexus at Hayden Library</font></div>
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<div class="" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: 1.38;"><span class="ContentPasted0" style="font-size: 13pt; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700;">Artificial Intimacies: Eldercare Robots and Animate Companionship</span></div>
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<div class="" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: 1.656;"><span class="ContentPasted5"><font size="2" class="">The demand for service robots has increased with the COVID-19 pandemic, and one of the primary sites for development of such
robots is in eldercare nursing. Eldercare robots seem to promise a continuation of care not otherwise possible under current medical infrastructures in the US. These robots purport to stave off loneliness, provide a watchful eye to alert family members and
emergency medical personnel, and enhance clients’ therapeutic care by engaging memory recall and language skills.</font></span></div>
<div class="" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: 1.656;"><span class="ContentPasted5"><font size="2" class="">This talk draws on preliminary fieldwork into the design and use of “animate companion” commercial robots in caregiving settings
in the U.S. and Netherlands. Recent work in STS has rightly critiqued the use of robots as stopgaps or “surrogates'' within the labor system of racial capitalism (cf. Atanasoski and Vora 2019). However, following Puig de la Bellacasa’s (2017) call to center
care in science and technology studies, and Casteñeda and Suchman’s (2014) imagination of other forms of kinmaking through animal-child-robot objects, I consider here how animate companionship with carebots might generate new relational configurations marked
by co-produced pleasure and humor rather than merely extractive forms of care. Commercial carebots often take other-than-human form, as pet animals or caricatured children. How does the material form of robots matter in supporting the production of a caring,
companionate relationship? Approaching caregiving as motivated by curiosity rather than curative ideologies, I suggest that animate companionship provided by robotic pets and children opens up opportunities for human-nonhuman intimacies that rely on artificiality,
intimacies that are strategically possible only because of their performative and contrived material forms.</font></span></div>
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<span class="ContentPasted2 ContentPasted0" style="font-size: 13pt; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700;">Bio: <br class="">
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<div class="" style="margin: 0px; font-size: 12pt;"><font face="Arial" class=""><span class="ContentPasted3"><span data-markjs="true" class="markqxf1sfs7g ContentPasted3" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: normal;">Mitali</span></span><span class="ContentPasted3" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: normal;"> Thakor
is an Assistant Professor in the </span><span class="ContentPasted3"><a href="https://www.wesleyan.edu/academics/faculty/mthakor/profile.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-auth="NotApplicable" data-safelink="true" data-linkindex="0" class="ContentPasted3"><span class="" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: normal;">Science
in Society Program</span></a></span><span class="ContentPasted3" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: normal;"> at Wesleyan University with affiliations in Anthropology and Feminist, Gender, & Sexuality Studies. Her current book project, </span><span class="ContentPasted3"><em class=""><span class="ContentPasted3" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: normal;">Facing
the Child </span></em></span><span class="ContentPasted4 ContentPasted3" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: normal;">(MIT Press) is an ethnographic study of the global policing of child pornography. Her second project is a multidisciplinary study of robotic
and animate companions in eldercare, childcare, and other spaces of intimate companionship. At Wesleyan, </span><span class="ContentPasted3"><span data-markjs="true" class="markqxf1sfs7g ContentPasted3" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: normal;">Mitali</span></span><span class="ContentPasted3" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: normal;"> teaches
courses on the history and theory of computing, feminist studies of A.I. and robotics, and cultural studies of science and technology. She earned her Ph.D. in 2016 from MIT's Program in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, & Society and holds a
B.A. in Anthropology and Feminist Studies from Stanford University. You can learn more about her work at </span><span class="ContentPasted3"><a href="http://www.mitalithakor.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-auth="NotApplicable" data-safelink="true" data-linkindex="1" class="ContentPasted3"><span class="" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: normal;">www.</span><span data-markjs="true" class="markqxf1sfs7g" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: normal;">mitali</span><span class="" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: normal;">thakor.com</span></a></span><span class="ContentPasted3" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: normal;">.</span></font></div>
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<div>Best, <br class="">
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Kate Gormley (she, her, hers) <br class="">
Administrative Assistant II<br class="">
MIT Anthropology | 77 Massachusetts Avenue | E53-335L<br class="">
Cambridge, MA 02139<br class="">
617-324-0700<br class="">
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