Despina Kakoudaki is an Associate Professor of Literature at American University, and director of the Humanities Lab, an interdisciplinary research center in Washington DC. She works on film and media studies, cultural studies, literature, and the history of technology. Her book, Anatomy of a Robot: Literature, Cinema, and the Cultural Work of Artificial People (Rutgers University Press, 2014), traces the structural cultural function of the mechanical or constructed person in both premodern and modern cultural contexts. She has written on robots and cyborgs, affective computing,  race and melodrama in science fiction and disaster films, and the political role of the pin-up during World War 2. She has also coedited All About Almodóvar: A Passion for Cinema with Brad Epps (University of Minnesota Press, 2009), which includes her work on melodrama and coincidence.