Blocks world world: Gender, labor, chatbots
The poetry collection Blocks World is a language art component of a multigenre and interdisciplinary project. In addition to the poetry of Blocks World, Blocks World World contains scholarship, performative scripts, reimagined pedagogies, and nonfiction. More information about Blocks World in the world is available below.
Labor Organinzing
While working as a chatbot operator between 2018 and 2022, I joined my fellow operators to advocate for our rights as workers. Here is an initial report on our organization efforts. Here is an update (we won! A historic victory for remote, digital workers).
#NOTABOT: Self-published updates on unionization efforts by chatbot operators affiliated with AppFolio
Further resources for workplace organizing are available here: Emergency Workplace Organizing
Stack more people power!
“Someone Has to Drive the Car” - Photo by Chris Drangle
Collaborative performances
“Someone Has to Drive the Car,” collaborative writing project co-conceived with Starship Delivery Robots at the University of Idaho, Moscow, ID 2023
“Personal Girl”, an original one-act play about origins of gendered chatbots and working while woman. Performed with LeAnne Howe, Sam Regal, Nate Dixon, David Cowan, Jake Hunsbusher, Brooke McCarthy, and Tracey Lynn Mikeska. Hendershots, Athens, GA 2018
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS and invited talks
“Hey Siri, What Are the Rhetorical Implications of Feminized A.I.?” paper presented at the Carolina Rhetoric Conference, Online, 2021 ABSTRACT
“Natural Language: An AI-Powered Approach to Creative Writing,” paper and poetry reading presented at University of North Carolina Charlotte English Graduate Student Association conference, Online, 2021 ABSTRACT
“A Life of Its Own: Gender, AI, and Hospitality,” paper to be presented at bi-annual Rhetoric Society of America meeting, Portland, OR 2020 (cancelled due to COVID-19) ABSTRACT
“Natural Language: AI and Creative Writing,” ENGL 3800 Honors: Digital Storytelling, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, 2020
“Initial Reference: Automating Administrative Assistants in the age of ARPANET,” paper presented at Society for the History of Technology meeting, Special Interest Group for Computing in Society, Saint Louis, MO 2018 ABSTRACT
Emma (far left) presenting her work recovering feminist histories in early automation at the Society for the History of Technology conference in 2018 —photo by Jason Gallo
Awards and Grants
Shelter Project Award, Willson Center for the Humanities and Art, 2021
Willson Center Graduate Research Award, Willson Center for the Humanities and Art, 2019
Computer History Travel Award, MIT Press, 2018
Summer Research Travel Grant, University of Georgia Graduate School, 2018
Reviews, interviews, and events featuring Blocks World
Emma will read from Blocks World at the
Orcas Island Literary Festival
September 14, 2024, 6:00pm at Doe Bay Wine Co, Eastsound, WA
Blocks world at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
“Blocks World: The Lobster,” one of the poems in the title sequence of Blocks World, will be up for discussion on January 23, 2024 during MIT’s annual Pleasures of Poetry. This month-long intersession event brings MIT community together to explore and celebrate poetry through transhistoric, transdisciplinary, and translinguistic lenses.
Thank You Books, A woman-owned indie bookstore in Birmingham, Alabama
the online launch of Blocks World
Emma Catherine Perry in conversation with Elisa Gabbert
September 21, 2023 - 7:00pm Central
RSVP for the Zoom link by clicking here