This past weekend, I had a splendid time visiting the campus of Neumann University (near Philadelphia, PA), where I was kindly invited to give a talk on the Popular Uncanny. I was ushered around for all sorts of events by Dr. William Hamilton (the gentleman in the brown coat in many of the photos below), who made for a fantastic host. Though it was a whirlwind of activity, as often as I could, I took photos of the event, along with anything along the way that had a whiff of uncanniness about it. The lecture was a blast, and the audience was very interactive. The second day involved a trip to the Mutter Museum with the most daring of students, and it was the most uncanny space I think I’ve ever occupied (but the Mutter is very strict about not taking photos, so I have very few here). If you ever go to the Mutter, be sure to take the time to watch the documentary film by the Bros. Quay on display right now. It’s uncanny to the core, and allows access to parts of the museum which are not available to the public.
I suspect there will be video or other coverage of the actual lecture available in the near future (update: the lecture is now on youtube), so I’ll just let the photos speak for themselves for now, and will post more details about the talk later, including references to the powerpoint sources for those in attendance who wanted to learn more. I live-tweeted the experience using the hashtag #popuncanny whenever I could, and you can read those posts on my archive here on The Nest if they are no longer available on twitter.
I am grateful to Neumann U for sponsoring my trip and treating me like royalty. The students at this college are all wonderful people and they made for a lot of deep conversations and laughter.
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