Automatons, Puppets, and Cyborgs

Technological visions of the human from Romanticism through the present. How has human function been reconceptualized over the past 200 years? Nineteenth-century machinic figures as frightening but offering new social possibilities; the new human type of the early twentieth century; and contemporary explorations of the posthuman. Topics include work by Hoffmann, Kleist, Brecht, Lang, Junger, Kraftwerk, and Chaos Computer Club. In English.