Date of Award
Spring 5-2020
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.A.
Degree Program
English
Department
English
Major Professor
Daniel Doll
Second Advisor
Reggie Poché
Third Advisor
Elizabeth Steeby
Abstract
Though Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein over two hundred years ago, many of the main themes of alienation and revenge featured in Shelley’s novel reappear in HBO’s Westworld in 2016. This thesis establishes a genealogy for the stories of artificial people and analyzes the relationship between human beings and artificial life, as it is portrayed in speculative fiction and popular media. The popularity of robots and cyborgs is associated with people’s fear of technology, but their stories are often used as an allegory to explain aspects of the human experience that are unknown or difficult to understand. As artificial intelligence becomes seamlessly integrated into human life, the relationship between humans and machines merges into a posthuman conception of life.
Recommended Citation
Amalfitano, Taylor P., "More Human Than Human: Artificial People in Literature and Media" (2020). University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations. 2717.
https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/2717
Included in
Literature in English, British Isles Commons, Literature in English, North America Commons
Rights
The University of New Orleans and its agents retain the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible this dissertation or thesis in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. The author retains all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis or dissertation.