Home is Not Where the Robot Should Be

By: Lauren Anatol ’25

Advising Faculty: Denis Ferhatovic

Major: Media and Identity Development

Project/Mission Statement
I have researched how language does and doesn’t evolve in futuristic stories, how that represents a lack of racial diversity, and how machines are both racialized in sci-fi media and display what we consider “formal language.” My project instead imagines a potential future that utilizes Afrodiasporic language features to imagine what different Englishes could sound like and change how we view modern day Englishes. I experimented with worldbuilding as I created an alphabet that combines existing and constructed alphabets, as well as building an Afrofuturist LEGO android. For my final project, I have written six short stories that follow a girl named Naomi and her newly invented android, CASA, as they travel to Naomi’s different communities in order to see if CASA can switch between dialects as Naomi struggles with the ethics of her project.

Related Fields: Ammerman Center