Julie Wosk

A native of Evanston, Illinois, Wosk received a B.A.degree from Washington University in St. Louis, graduating magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa,{{cite web |title=WEDDINGS; Julie Wosk, Averill Williams |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2000/02/13/style/weddings-julie-wosk-averill-williams.html |work=New York Times}} a M.A. from Harvard, and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in Madison.{{cite web |title=Julie Wosk |url=https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/wosk-julie |website=Encyclopedia |publisher=Encyclopedia.com}}{{cite web |title=Berkshire Museum presents My Fair Ladies: Female Robots and Androids in Movies, Television, Photography and Art |url=https://berkshiremuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Berkshire-Museum-presents-My-Fair-Ladies-Female-Robots-and-Androids-in-Movies-Television-Photography-and-Art1.pdf|date= October 17, 2015 }}

Earlier in her career, Wosk was a civil rights worker for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s organization SCLC organization Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in Alabama and a public relations and advertising writer at Playboy.{{cite news |last1=Wosk |first1=Julie |title=Hearing A Call to Action in a Hymn |url=https://www.newsday.com/opinion/hearing-a-call-to-action-in-a-hymn-1.586003 |work=New York Newsday |date=January 16, 2007}}{{cite book |last1=Wosk |first1=Julie |title=Playboy, Mad Men, and Me – And Other Stories |date=July 15, 2020 |publisher=Independently published KDP Ebook and paperback}}

Wosk is also a painter and photographer whose work has appeared in American museums and galleries. As a museum curator, she is best known for two exhibits on subjects new to the American museum world, one of which was "Picturing Female Robots and Androids" at the New York Hall of Science in Queens, April 22 – October 22, 2017.

Her exhibit "Imaging Women in the Space Age" at the New York Hall of Science in Queens, July 13, 2019 – March 2020, celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing, and included images of America's female astronauts and space women in films, television, fashion, and art.{{cite news |last1=Zunic |first1=Victoria |title=The Atmosphere is No Glass Ceiling |url=https://www.qchron.com/qboro/stories/the-atmosphere-is-no-glass-ceiling/article_04fccb7f-b617-5241-90aa-43c02e1604fc.html |work=Queens Chronicle |date=October 17, 2019}}

Wosk's books include Women and the Machine: Representations from the Spinning wheel to the Electronic Age (Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2001) and My Fair Ladies: Female Robots, Androids, and Other Artificial Eves (Rutgers Univ. Press, 2015).

Women and the Machine was the first book to present a detailed history of how image-makers illustrated the stereotypes and dramatically changing social attitudes about women and their technical abilities. The book "shows that the gender gap in today’s technology workplace has very deep roots."{{cite news|last1=Coates|first1=James|date=April 29, 2002|title="Riveting Roles: Tracing the Roots of Tech Stereotypes"|work=The Chicago Tribune|url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2002-04-29-0204290122-story.html}} By riding bicycles, driving cars, piloting planes, working as “Rosie the Riveters" in wartime, women were able to refute the stereotypes and prove their expertise. The book "Reveals deep cultural tensions over the role of women in a technologically complex society" and "reads as a prelude to the computer age".{{cite journal|date=September 2002|title=Review of Women and the Machine|journal=Technology and Learning|pages=72}}

My Fair Ladies: Female Robots, Androids, and Other Artificial Eves presented the history of simulated females in films, vintage television, art, and robotics. She casts “an analytical eye over female depictions, both physical and fictitious, to explore the history and the future of Woman 2.0."{{cite web|last1=Davis|first1=Nicola|date=July 13, 2015|title=Living Dolls: Sci-Fi's Fascination with Artificial Women|url=https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/13/living-dolls-artificial-women-robots|newspaper=The Guardian}}{{cite web |title=Picturing Female Robots and Androids |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wc0nILqo7Ug |publisher=Stylish Ev Productions LLC |location=YouTube |date=June 6, 2017}}

Artificial Women: Sex Dolls, Robot Caregivers, and More Facsimile Females highlighted the impact  of artificial intelligence on contermpoary simulated females in both the real world and in films, television, literature and art. She argues that "today's simulated females are becoming ever more lifelike as the virtual vies with the real. They have already had a dramatic impact on personal relationships, on our views of women, and our ideas about what it means to be human."{{Cite web |title=Artificial Women |url=https://iupress.org/9780253069252/artificial-women/ |access-date=2024-06-20 |website=Indiana University Press |language=en-US}}

Wosk, as a writer for HuffPost and other media, has also written about new developments in female companion robots and the pitfalls of creating artificial versions of "The Perfect Woman."{{cite news|last1=Wosk|first1=Julie|date=December 21, 2017|title=Love and Sex With Robots Conference Provokes Controversy|work=HuffPost|url=https://www.huffpost.com/entry/love-and-sex-with-robots-conference-provokes-controversy_b_5a3b9aefe4b06cd2bd03d841}}{{cite web|last1=Wosk|first1=Julie|date=July 14, 2016|title=The Obsession with Creating 'Perfect Female Robots': Should Women be Worried?|url=https://robohub.org/tag/julie-wosk/\\|work=Robohub}}{{Dead link|date=December 2024 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}

Prior to Wosk's books on gender and technology, she wrote Breaking Frame: Technology and the Visual Arts in the Nineteenth Century (Rutgers Univ. Press, 1992) which told how American and British artists captured the dramatic effects of the Industrial Revolution, including the impact of new railroads and steam engines, and feared that human beings themselves, both women and men, would become robot-like in the age of steam.{{cite journal|last1=Post|first1=Robert|date=April 1994|title=Review of Wosk, Breaking Frame: Technology and the Visual Arts in the Nineteenth Century|journal=American Historical Review|volume=99|issue=2|pages=526|doi=10.2307/2167306|jstor=2167306}}{{cite web |last1=Bennet |first1=Kelsey |title=Review of Julie Wosk's Breaking Frame: Technology, Art, and Design in the Nineteenth Century |url=https://victorianweb.org/victorian/art/design/seddon/wosk.html |website=The Victorian Web |access-date=October 20, 2021 |archive-date=September 16, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200916014033/http://www.victorianweb.org/victorian/art/design/seddon/wosk.html |url-status=dead }}

Highlighting the impact of technology on culture, some of her early works were about the escalator in art,{{cite journal |last1=Wosk |first1=Julie |title=Perspectives on the Escalator in Photography and Art. |journal=Catalogue Essay for the Exhibition "Up Down and Across: Elevators, Escalators, and Moving Sidewalks" |pages=140–171 |publisher=National Building Museum/Merrell Pub. Co., 2003 |location=Washington, D.C.}} the airplane in art,{{cite journal |last1=Wosk |first1=Julie |title=The Aeroplane in Art |journal=Art and Artists |date=December 1984 |location=London}} photography exhibits about 9/11,{{cite journal |last1=Wosk |first1=Julie |title=Photographing Devastation: Three Photography Exhibits of 11 September 2001 |journal=Technology and Culture |date=October 2002 |volume=43 |issue=4 |pages=771–76|doi=10.1353/tech.2002.0192 |s2cid=110790072 }} the impact of technology on the human image in art,{{cite journal |last1=Wosk |first1=Julie |title=The Impact of Technology on the Human Image in Art |journal=Leonardo |date=1986 |volume=19 |issue=2|pages=145–152 |doi=10.2307/1578279 |jstor=1578279 |s2cid=192973002 }} artists' images of technology,{{cite journal |last1=Wosk |first1=Julie |title=Artists on Technology |journal=Technology Review |date=January 1980 |publisher=MIT Press}} and contemporary design.{{cite journal |last1=Wosk |first1=Julie |title=Exhibit Review: Mutant Materials in Contemporary Design |journal=Design Issues |date=Spring 1996 |volume=12 |issue=1 |pages=63–69|doi=10.2307/1511746 |jstor=1511746 }}

Wosk is professor emerita at State University of New York, Maritime College.{{Cite web|title=Julie Wosk, Author at Ms. Magazine|url=https://msmagazine.com/author/jwosk/|access-date=April 5, 2021|website=msmagazine.com}} She is also an independent curator of museum exhibits,  including  "Imaging Women in the Space Age."{{Cite web |title=Imaging Women in the Space Age |url=https://nysci.org/press-releases/imaging-women-in-the-space-age |access-date=2024-06-20 |website=nysci |language=en}}  Her late husband was Mr. Averill M. Williams, Associate General Counsel, the Amerada Hess Corporation.

{{reflist}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wosk, Julie}}

Category:Year of birth missing (living people)

Category:Living people

Category:Washington University in St. Louis alumni

Category:Writers from Evanston, Illinois

Category:Harvard University alumni

Category:University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni