The keynote address for the "Religious Body Reimagined" symposium will be given by S. Brent Plate and sponsored by the Elon Center for the Study of Religion, Culture and Society.
Thursday, Feb. 7
“Searching for the Soul in the Doll’s Body: Spiritual Technologies from Golem to Barbie and Sex Dolls to Artificial Intelligence”
Yeager Recital Hall, 5:30 p.m.
The machines are coming for us, threatening to take over our jobs, ideas, creative works and even our most intimate relations. But a look at a history of dolls–from automatons to action figures to robots–provides a historical and religious backdrop for thinking through our cyborgian futures by showing us how we have always merged the human body with our technology. This keynote address for the “The Religious Body Imagined” symposium highlights how dolls are vital technological tools that find their way into our rituals, personal devotional lives, workplaces and social spaces.
S. Brent Plate is a writer, public speaker, editor and part-time college professor whose books include “A History of Religion in 5 1/2 Objects” and “Blasphemy: Art that Offends.” His essays have been published in Newsweek, Slate, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Christian Century, The Islamic Monthly, Huffington Post and elsewhere.
Sponsored by the Elon Center for the Study of Religion, Culture and Society