Signe Cohen on Ancient Indian Robots, Siri, & Apocryphal Texts
Signe Cohen gave a lecture on android tales from ancient India at Ohio University in October before heading to a conference at Complutense University in Madrid where she gave a paper on contemporary legends and the uncanny ability of virtual assistants like Siri to predict the future and communicate with the dead. While in Spain, she also had the opportunity to see some great religious art, such as the ancient Proto-Iberian Lady of Eiche and the lovely Virgin of Montserrat (below). She gave a paper, “Fanfiction, Apocrypha, and the Bakhtinian Carnivalesque,” at the November American Academy of Religion conference in Denver.