WOMEN AND THE MACHINE

Catastrophe Chic.
The Aesthetics of Designing for Safety. “Catastrophe Chic: A Commentary,” DESIGN ISSUES 23:4 (Autumn 2007), 93-97.

Designing For Safety
Devices designed to protect against natural and technological dangers and disasters.
“Designing For Safety: Safe: Design Takes on Risk” (review essay, Museum of Modern Art, New
York), TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE 47:4, October, 2006, 791-798.

Alluring Androids, Robot Women, and Electronic Eves

SELECT PUBLICATIONS 1980-2010
BOOKS:

ALLURING ANDROIDS, ROBOT WOMEN,AND ELECTRONIC EVES (New Yofk: Fort Schuyler Press, 2008).

WOMEN AND THE MACHINE: Representations from the Spinning Wheel to the Electronic Age
(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001, paperback 2003).

BREAKING FRAME: Technology and the Visual Arts in the Nineteenth Century
(New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1992).

ARTICLES:
“Catastrophe Chic: A Commentary,” Design Issues 23:4 (Autumn 2007), 93-97.

“Designing For Safety: Safe: Design Takes on Risk” (review essay, Museum of Modern Art, New
York), Technology and Culture 47:4, October, 2006, 791-798.

“Perspectives on the Escalator in Photography and Art.” Catalogue essay for the exhibition Up
Down and Across: Elevators, Escalators, and Moving Sidewalks (Washington, D.C.: National
Building Museum/Merrell Pub. Co., 2003), 140-171.

“The Escalator in Art.” Blueprints, National Building Museum, Fall 2003.

“Photographing Devastation: Three Photography Exhibits of 11 September 2001,” Technology and
Culture, 43: 4, October 2002, 771-76.

"Mutant Materials in Contemporary Design." Design Issues, Spring 1996.

"Brunel Meets Brunelleschi" (ornamented machines in America). American Heritage of Invention
and Technology, Summer 1995.

"Manhole Covers and the Myths of America." Design Book Review (MIT Press), Winter\Spring
1995.

"The Electric Eve: Galvanizing Women in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century
Literature, Film, and Art." Research in Philosophy and Technology 13, 1993, 43-56.

"The P.U.L.S.E. Exhibit." Leonardo, June 1988

"The Impact of Technology on the Human Image in Art." Leonardo, 19, No. 2, 1986.

"Art and Technology: A College Course Design," in The State University of New York, The New
Liberal Arts--Curriculum in Transition. (Albany: State Univ. of New York, 1986), 67-71.

"The Distancing Effect of Technology in Twentieth-Century Poetry
and Painting." San Jose Studies, Spring, 1985. Awarded "Best Article
of the Year" by San Jose Studies editors.

"The Airplane in Art." Art and Artists, London, December 1984.

“The Brooklyn Bridge Anchorage: A Unique Exhibition Space." Technology and Culture, April
1984.

"The Explosive Emergence of Technology in Art." Art and Artists, London, December 1982.

"Picasso, Car Classics, and the Engineers." Art Education, July 1982
(journal of the National Art Education Association).

"Humanities and the Machine: Responses to Technology." Technology and Culture, July 1982.

"Lawrence Durrell: The Poet As Pygmalion." Deus Loci: The Lawrence Durrell Quarterly 5.SI 1
(1981): 158-75.

"The New American Classicism" (technology and American design).
Intellect, September 1980.

"Artists on Technology." Technology Review (MIT Press), January 1980.

Women and the Machine: Representations From the Spinning Wheel to the Electronic Age
Johns Hopkins University Press, December 2001.

"Engaging and entertaining...her work is complex, comprehensive, and highly readable."
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

Featuring over 150 illustrations, many in color, WOMEN AND THE MACHINE reveals the way women's lives have been transformed by new technologies over the past two centuries. Driving automobiles, riding bicycles, piloting planes, women experienced a new sense of freedom and mobility while also revealing their technical skills.

Through art works, photographs, cartoons, advertisements, and written works, WOMEN AND THE MACHINE looks at the stereotypes that have haunted women--stereotypes that picture them as sexy models in machine advertisements and as frail and timid creatures, flummoxed by flat tires and baffled by all things mechanical. But in other images, women working as Rosie the Riveters in wartime, using sewing machines, typewriters, computers, and other machines successfully challenge these skeptical views.

Breaking Frame: Technology and the Visual Arts in the Nineteenth Century


Rutgers University Press, 1992

"Abundantly illustrated and compellingly argued"
Robert C. Post, AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW


To obtain paperback copies for classroom or personal use, write readermail@juliewosk.com

Nineteenth-century artists and designers often brilliantly captured the dramatic (and traumatic) impact of the Industrial Revolution on European and American society---seen in images of factories spewing smoke, speeding trains, bursting steam bolers that sent people flying through the air, comic views of humans-turned-automatons after steam explosions.

Artitsts also celebrated the century's impressive feats of engineering ranging from London's Crystal Palace to the Brooklyn Bridge. These images often mirrored widespread feelings of both hope and bewilderment, feels of pride and fear that prefigured our responses to today's world still being transformed by rapid developments in science and technology.

BREAKING FRAME also includes chapters on decorative cast iron and electroplating that reveal the nineteenth century's fascination with the "imitative arts." Ornamented steam engines and sewing machines celebrate the new mechanical age.

"Perspectives on the Escalator in Photography and Art"
Essay in UP DOWN ACROSS: ELEVATORS, ESCALATORS, AND MOVING SIDEWALKS (Washington, DC: National Building Museum/London, New York: Merrell, 2003), pp. 140-171.

"Photographing Devastation: Three New York Photography Exhibits of 11 September 2001"
TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE, October 2002