Golden M. Owens (she/her)

Assistant Professor
Photograph of Professor Golden M. Owens. She is a Black woman with long natural hair. She is looking at the camera and smiling. She is wearing a green top and blue pants. Her arms are folded, and there is a gold watch on her left wrist.

Contact Information

PDL B522
Office Hours
By appointment: book at https://calendly.com/gmowens/office-hours

Biography

Ph.D, Screen Cultures, Northwestern University, 2023
M.A., ScreenCultures, Northwestern University, 2018
B.A., English Literature, Bowdoin College, 2015

Golden M. Owens explores and teaches about representations of race and gender, artificial intelligence, haunting, popular culture, and racialized sounds and voices. Her current book project examines intelligent virtual assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, and OpenAI's ChatGPT, contending that these aides evoke and are haunted by Black women domestic servants--both enslaved and free--in the United States. The project analyzes popular 20th and 21st-century media depictions of Black female domestic workers, robotic and/or artificially intelligent servants/helpers, labor-saving products and devices, and contemporary virtual aides.

Dr. Owens' work appears in Sounding Out! and the Journal for Cinema and Media Studies. She has recently discussed her work on the Ways of Knowing podcast and on ASALH TV. Her research has been funded by the Ford Foundation, the Institute for Citizens and Scholars, the Social Science Research Council, the Mellon Foundation, Northwestern University's Office of Fellowships, The Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities, and The Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities. 

 

Autumn 2025

Winter 2025

Autumn 2024

Spring 2024

Winter 2024

Autumn 2023

Home Department
Professional Affiliations
Society for Cinema and Media Studies
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