Before his death, Michael Jackson arguably was one of the most famous living celebrities to walk the planet. Onstage, on air, and onscreen, he captivated the attention of millions of people around the world, whether because they loved him or loved to hate him. In an attempt to explain his popularity and cultural influence, I analyze certain theoretical and methodological approaches found in recent scholarship on western hagiographic and teratological texts, and apply these theories and methods to selected biographies written on Michael Jackson. By interpreting the biographies in this way, I suggest why saints, monsters, and celebrities have received considerable attention in their respective communities, and demonstrate how public responses to these figures are contextual, constructed, and often contradictory.

It was for the longest time that the mother in Freud troubled me. Unlike some feminist psychoanalysts such as Julia Kristeva who argue that the mother/maternity in Freud is finally to be thought of as a ‘massive nothing’ (Kristeva, 1987: 255), I knew that the mother was there/da, but it was how she was there that concerned me and forms the basis of this thesis. Freud shows us the mother in his work when he argues that the child’s first love object in its truest sense is the mother, ‘and all of his sexual instincts with their demand for satisfaction have been united upon this object’ (SE 18: 111). I highlight the ‘his’ because Freud’s focus on this first love object is primarily male. And although Freud does not differentiate between the little girl and little boy at this early stage, thereafter the girls relationship to the mother, argues Freud, ends in ‘hate’. She cannot be forgiven for not giving the little girl a penis. But the mother as a primordial ‘object’ not only becomes lost (and thereafter we are all involved in a search to ‘refind ‘it’/‘her’) but she seems also to be, uniformly Mater/matter to be overlooked. To use a rather explosive analogy, it is as if the mother and Freud are together yet separated in a double-barreled shotgun, with the misfiring of one barrel obscuring (obliterating) the other. Freud in fact used a similar analogy in an explanation for anxiety. Here the rifle is pointed at the ‘wild beast’ a description that Freud uses to describe the unruly forces of the libido in the unconscious. A fitting parallel then because the mother has a relation to anxiety and the unconscious that might best be described as central. Thus Freud writes and the mother is ‘shaded’. Again an apt analogy one that Freud himself uses to describe the Odyssean like shades that invade the unconscious as ghosts and taste blood. If the mother is indeed the dark-continent, a simile for the unconscious, or at least her sexuality, which after all is what is important in Freud’s Oedipal theory, then the question might be asked, ‘is the mother a ghost that haunts our living lives’? Of course a living mother is not a ghost, but then a literal explanation neglects the repression that accompanies the developing ego, an ego no less that is subject to childhood amnesia during the middle years of childhood. The Prologue introduces us to Freud the man. It seemed to me at the onset of this thesis that the mother is both universalised but also personalised. If Freud did not mourn his mother, why might this be so? And how is Freud himself mourned, remembered, outside his work? Chapter One is an introduction to Freud’s work, asking where the mother might be, and even why she may or may not be recognised in areas that seem peculiar to a space that mothers might occupy. Chapter Two looks at feminist psychoanalysts and asks how they engage with both Freud the man, and Freudian psychoanalysis and thereafter the later schools of psychoanalysis. Chapter Three engages with Freud and Freudian theory, offering an in-depth engagement with particular psychoanalytic concepts and places where the mother might be, or should be, but for some reason is not. Chapter Four explores the concept of anxiety, itself singled out as somehow having an integral relationship to the mother but again, Freud by a less than careful sleight of hand writes the mother out. And yet this is not a direct writing out, because Freud circulates around the point, the navel as it were, offering a kind of adverse reckoning, the mother is there but also, she is not. Chapter Five concludes this thesis by looking at several different theories, including Christopher Bollas’s ‘clowning mother’, and asks how might they offer alternative ways of understanding the mother, both within Freud and as an extension of Freud.

This paper considers how the tradition of self-portraiture and alternative process photography can be used in conjunction with one another to perform the uncanny. I discuss the "uncanny" through three theoretical lenses: Sigmund Freud, Hal Foster, and Rosalind Krauss. I then go on to discuss how the "uncanny" has been used in alternative processes of contemporary work by examining Robert Heinecken and Joyce Neimanas. Finally by looking at Francesca Woodman's self-portraiture, I address how self-portraiture can be a type of performance and how this influenced my own series during my 2015 Fall semester. As a whole this paper addresses how my senior thesis work functions within art theory and art history.

The eerie feeling attributed to human-looking robots and animated characters may be a key factor in our perceptual and cognitive discrimination between the human and the merely humanlike. This study applies factor analysis, correlation, the generalized linear model (GLM), multidimensional scaling (MDS), and kernel isometric mapping (ISOMAP) to analyze ratings of 27 emotions of 16 moving figures whose appearance varies along a human likeness continuum. The results indicate (1) Attributions of eerie and creepy better capture human visceral reaction to an uncanny robot than strange. (2) Eeriness and creepiness are mainly associated with fear but also shocked, disgusted, and nervous. Strange and humanlike are less strongly associated with emotion. (3) Thus, strange and humanlike may be more cognitive, while eerie and creepy are more perceptual and emotional. (4) Human and facial features increase ratings of human likeness. (5) Women are slightly more sensitive to eerie and creepy than men; and older people may be more willing to attribute human likeness to a robot despite its eeriness.

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I Don't Share Spirit Animals is presented in conjunction with a visual art exhibition that is made up of mixed material sculpture and painting. Primary ideas explored within the body of work are the uncanny, personal mythology and material transformation.

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Technological advancements have allowed the design of more realistic virtual characters, for example, in-game development; meanwhile, researchers argue that more realism is not always suitable. As an explorative pilot study, this thesis investigates the uncanny among human-like agents and intelligent systems with human-like attributes. The thesis focuses on the uncanny theories to understand whether Mori's Uncanny Valley (UV) or Tinwell's Uncanny wall (UW) is more suitable when designing with a user-centred approach. The study facilitated two remote focus group workshops consisting of seven participants to understand the participant's expectations, needs and desires of existing and future AI technology. The participants consisted of two target groups, gamers and non-gamers, in order to understand if exposure to AI leads to adoptability of the technology. The participants described their perspectives and needs of existing AI assistants, and their preferences of human-like cross modality such as voice and avatar for future assistants. The research activities resulted in insights and four themes: rejection of existing assistant technology, productivity and task management, expectations of future AI assistants and balancing human-likeness. Findings show that participants reject existing assistant technologies, as old tangible habits, social norms, and incompatibility prevent the adoption of existing assistant technology. While both gamers and non-gamers seek a balance between generic robotics and pure human likeness, none of the participants fully adopted the idea of human likeness as it generates uncanny feelings.

This paper deals with the novel Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro and explores the feeling of unease established by the author. The theoretical framework for this paper is based on questions of humanity and thus makes use of existentialism as established by Sartre and Kierkegaard. Initially the essay explores how the setting of the novel helps establish a familiar world with unfamiliar elements. After that questions of humanity are raised and how these questions relate to the clones by showing that the clones have human qualities yet are not treated as human. These questions are expanded in the following part about ethical issues and it is shown that the reader is tempted by the author to cross certain ethical boundaries leading to a feeling of unease. Special attention is given to freedom of choice in the third part of the analysis and it is shown how the choices of the clones are very limited, especially if they are considered human. The fourth part then discusses the narrative perspective and how the narrator Kathy H. is used by the author to establish a connection and a perception of the narrator as human.