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Friday, October 17<\/strong><\/p>\n 12:00 – 2:00 PM<\/strong><\/p>\n Central Library 211<\/strong><\/p>\n a lecture by Soraya Murray<\/em><\/p>\n Soraya Murray contemplates the pivotal figure of the Black technologist, also known as \u2018Black tech,\u2019 in technothriller films. This work is part of Murray\u2019s forthcoming Technothriller: Film and the American Imagination<\/em> (MIT, 2026), the first examination of popular movies classified as \u201cthrillers\u201d that channel societal anxiety or dread about advanced technologies like supercomputers, robotics, AI, biotech, military weaponry, and digital surveillance. Technothriller<\/em> traces the changing imagination of technology within an American context and its role in engineering some of the most profound ideologies of modern life. Murray considers beloved but often underrated films from the 1970s to the present, like “The Andromeda Train” (1971), “Westworld” (1973), “Rollerball” (1975), “Demon Seed” (1977), “WarGames” (1983), “The Hunt for Red October” (1990), “Jurassic Park” (1993), “Clear and Present Danger” (1994), “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” (1991), the “Mission: Impossible” franchise (1996- ), “Ex Machina” (2014), “Tenet” (2020), “M3GAN” (2022), and “The Creator” (2023) in order to think through deeply embedded popular beliefs about technology, innovation, and their imaginaries\u2014in other words, the mechanics of power within our technological lives and the troubled, sometimes catastrophic relationships between humans and their innovations.<\/p>\n This event is made possible through the Robert & Lillian Drake Lecture Series<\/a> endowment.<\/p>\n Soraya Murray<\/a> studies contemporary visual culture, especially film and video games. Her researches explores visual culture including digital media, film, video, and electronic games; theories of technology and globalization; and media representations of technological and scientific advancement. Her essays are anthologized nationally and internationally, including most recently, EcoGames: Playful Perspectives on the Climate Crisis\u00a0<\/em>(Holland 2024), Reset<\/em> (Italy 2023),\u00a0Red Dead Redemption: History, Myth and Violence in the Video Game West\u00a0<\/em>(USA 2023) and\u00a0Video Games and Spatiality in American Studies<\/em>\u00a0(Germany 2022). Murray joined the\u00a0Journal of Cinema and Media Studies<\/em>\u00a0editorial board in 2023, and is a member of the critical\/historical game studies journal\u00a0ROMchip<\/em>\u2019s editorial group. Murray\u2019s first book, On Video Games: The Visual Politics of Race, Gender and\u00a0<\/em>Space<\/a> considers video games from a visual culture perspective and how they both mirror and are constitutive of larger societal fears, dreams, hopes, and even complex struggles for recognition. Murray is currently co-editing an anthology on antiracist futures in games and play with TreaAndrea Russworm. She is Professor of the Film + Digital Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She holds a PhD from Cornell and an MFA from UC Irvine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Friday, October 17 12:00 – 2:00 PM Central Library 211 Technothriller: Film and the American Imagination a lecture by Soraya Murray Soraya Murray contemplates the pivotal figure of the Black technologist, also known as \u2018Black tech,\u2019 in technothriller films. This work is part of Murray\u2019s forthcoming Technothriller: Film and the American Imagination (MIT, 2026),…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":6054,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[8,14,15],"tags":[5],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/cdn.vanderbilt.edu\/vu-cas\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2025\/10\/03170726\/Screenshot-2025-10-03-120713.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/as.vanderbilt.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6053"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/as.vanderbilt.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/as.vanderbilt.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/as.vanderbilt.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/as.vanderbilt.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6053"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/as.vanderbilt.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6053\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6056,"href":"https:\/\/as.vanderbilt.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6053\/revisions\/6056"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/as.vanderbilt.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/as.vanderbilt.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/as.vanderbilt.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/as.vanderbilt.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/h3>\n
Technothriller: Film and the American Imagination<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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