The Ethics of Empathy in Virtual Reality

So many have hailed VR as the ultimate ‘empathy machine’ capable of deepening empathy and recognition of another person’s humanity. But what really are we to make of this technology, the capacity for producing or enhancing empathy, and the ethics that attend it? Once we can put aside the all-too-familiar bid to techno-utopianism, what are the possibilities and limits? What are the questions we should be asking?

Thinking Aloud Event: The Handmaid’s Tale

Join us for a public conversation on The Handmaid’s Tale and its multiple cultural and political expressions featuring scholars from Film Studies, International Relations, Philosophy, and Russian as well as you, the audience. We will explore ways of approaching this phenomenon (and Atwood’s recently released sequel, The Testaments) so that we may investigate its significance and the issues it raises.