Lexington Books / Fortress Academic
Pages: 176
•
Trim: 6⅜ x 9
978-1-9787-0795-5 • Hardback • June 2020 • $105.00 • (£81.00)
978-1-9787-0796-2 • eBook • July 2020 • $45.00 • (£35.00)
Juli Gittinger (PhD Religious Studies, McGill University) is a lecturer and program coordinator for religion at Georgia College.
Shayna Sheinfeld (PhD Religious Studies, McGill University) is honorary research scholar at the Sheffield Institute of Interdisciplinary Biblical Studies (SIIBS), University of Sheffield.
Chapter 1 Consuming Westworld: Facilitating the Robotics and AI Discussion through Science Fiction
Jaime Wright
Chapter 2 Techno-Transcendence and Artificial Rapture
Olivia Belton
Chapter 3 For the Rest of Time They Heard the Drum
Jacob Boss
Chapter 4 A Comparative Inquiry into the Real
Kristin Johnston Largen
Chapter 5 Will Robots Too Be in the Image of God? Artificial Consciousness and Imago Dei in Westworld
Marius Dorobantu
Chapter 6 On Idolatry and Empathy: An Orthodox Christian Response to the Victimization Fantasies of Westworld
David K. Goodin
Chapter 7 Rethinking the Maze: Africana Religions, Somatic Memory, and the Journey to Consciousness
Amanda Furiasse
Chapter 8 Exile, the Remnant, and a Promised Land without a God
Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr.
Chapter 9 “And behold, a black horse”: Heaven, Hell, and Biblical Eschatology in Westworld
Tony Degouveia
As the editors of this fascinating book note, we are living in a golden age of “television.” Based on their work and the work of their contributors, I would add that we are also living in a golden age of scholarship examining the relationship between religion and popular culture. This book addresses a myriad of issues raised by that relationship in Westworld, including apocalypticism, AI, embodiness, ethics, rape, scripture, technology, theology, trauma, violence, and more in an illuminating exploration of one of the most thought-provoking series in recent memory.
— Dan W. Clanton Jr., Doane University
Theology and Westworld tackles the big questions raised by the ideas of artificial intelligence, artificial life, and creation given dramatic life by the television series. Accessible to both people of faith and to those of none, this book is a valuable addition to the scholarly conversation. The volume considers how we imagine ourselves as the creators of artificial progeny, as well as how our own humanity might be disturbed by such a creation and our debt to it. An array of excellent scholars have brought their diverse perspectives to the philosophical, ethical, and social implications of our dreams of other worlds that are filled with other beings in servitude to our ‘violent delights’.
— Beth Singler, Cambridge University