Technologies have always mediated how we see and understand bodies. Moreover, technological systems have created body standards, and aided in the construction of gender and gendered relations. As technologies enter medical and healing spaces, they play a crucial role in how expertise is performed, hence contributing to shaping the accessibility, affordability, and quality of healthcare for individuals and communities.
Today, emerging technologies like robots, AI-assisted care, gig work, biomedicine etc, are not only changing how care is delivered, but also reshaping and reconfiguring labor relations of care. In the name of increasing access to high-tech solutions and reducing the labor burden for caregivers, new business ecosystems are altering and shifting social and economic relations. Who is accessing care, and who is benefiting from the ecosystem of healthcare technology design?
In the Critical Anatomies Lab we devise creative interventions at the intersection of design, medical anthropology, and Feminst Science and Technology Studies. We are interested in exploring what happens to our bodies (as we know them) when we swim in vast amounts of data and information, and how emerging technologies shape the cultural and political realities of care and well-being. See our projects.
For our discussion group, we will focus on reviewing images, movies, short clips, artworks, animations, body maps and other multimedia materials that deal with the body and tech, feminist technoscience, science-fiction and critical imagination. We prioritize works by women, BIPOC, and other underrepresented identities in the construction of academic knowledge.
Objectives:
We aim to build collective analysis and question dominant narratives in technology design. To this end, we center imaginations of the body, and explore how they lead to specific medical/healing technologies and practices. We recognize the power relations embedded in how technologies are produced, disseminated and consumed, and how technological systems often reinforce historical and systemic biases and injustices.
Through collective analysis, we also aim to generate collaborations across disciplines, geographies, and sectors of society, and shape design interventions that depart from a critical study of technological systems.
Who is organizing this space?: The reading group is a collaborative effort between two Latina scholars (Catalina Alzate and Angelica Martinez) who have been studying the impact of emerging technologies in wellbeing through academic writing and creative interventions.
We’ll be sharing our upcoming meeting dates soon. Thank you to everyone who joined us in Fall 2025 and early Spring 2026. Every meeting was truly inspiring.
Watch out for our emails!
FAQ
What happens if my cat eats the text and I can't read it for the session?: We will be more worried about the cat than about your ability to participate. You are welcome to join and listen to the conversation, and/or contribute with your ideas, opinions and questions, even if you didn't get the chance to read the text.