Identification and Evaluation of the Face System of a Child Android Robot Affetto for Surface Motion Design

Faces of android robots are one of the most important interfaces to communicate with humans quickly and effectively, as they need to match the expressive capabilities of the human face, it is no wonder that they are complex mechanical systems containing inevitable non-linear and hysteresis elements derived from their non-rigid components. Identifying the input-output response properties of this complex system is necessary to design surface deformations accurately and precisely. However, to date, android faces have been used without careful system identification and thus remain black boxes. In this study, the static responses of three-dimensional displacements were investigated for 116 facial surface points against a discrete trapezoidal input provided to each actuator in the face of a child-type android robot Affetto. The results show that the response curves can be modeled with hysteretical sigmoid functions, and that the response properties of the face actuators, including sensitivity, hysteresis, and dyssynchrony, were quite different. The paper further proposes a design methodology for surface motion patterns based on the obtained response models. Design results thus obtained indicate that the proposed response properties enable us to predict the design results, and that the proposed design methodology can cancel the differences among the response curves of the actuators. The proposed identification and quantitative evaluation method can be applied to advanced android face studies instead of conventional qualitative evaluation methodologies

Development of Empathy through Social Emotional Artificial Intelligence

It is expected that in the near future robots will be increasingly involved in social roles, however, understanding how students learn empathic skills, and how technology can support this process, is an important but under-researched area in artificial intelligence. This paper analyzes the factors that contribute to the development of empathy from early childhood and the variables of robotic empathy that could help promote this learning. It has been found that social emotional artificial intelligence (SEAI) has already successfully implemented some of the human mechanisms of empathy that are present during the first years of life. The current state of SEAI research is far from achieving full empathic capacity, but it can provide useful tools to promote empathic skills, the basis of social cooperation and ethical and prosocial behavior, from childhood.Se prevé que en un futuro próximo los robots estarán cada vez más involucrados en roles sociales, sin embargo, comprender cómo los estudiantes aprenden habilidades empáticas, y cómo la tecnología puede respaldar este proceso, es un área importante pero poco investigada. Este trabajo analiza los factores que contribuyen al desarrollo de la empatía desde la infancia temprana y las variables de la empatía robótica que podrían ayudar a favorecer este aprendizaje. Se ha encontrado que la inteligencia artificial socioemocional (IAS) ya ha logrado implementar con éxito algunos de los mecanismos humanos de la empatía que están presentes durante los primeros años de vida. El estado actual de la investigación en IAS está lejos de lograr una capacidad empática completa, pero puede aportar herramientas útiles para fomentar habilidades empáticas desde la infancia

Multi-modal Skill Memories for Online Learning of Interactive Robot Movement Generation

Queißer J. Multi-modal Skill Memories for Online Learning of Interactive Robot Movement Generation. Bielefeld: Universität Bielefeld; 2018.Modern robotic applications pose complex requirements with respect to the adaptation of actions regarding the variability in a given task. Reinforcement learning can optimize for changing conditions, but relearning from scratch is hardly feasible due to the high number of required rollouts. This work proposes a parameterized skill that generalizes to new actions for changing task parameters. The actions are encoded by a meta-learner that provides parameters for task-specific dynamic motion primitives. Experimental evaluation shows that the utilization of parameterized skills for initialization of the optimization process leads to a more effective incremental task learning. A proposed hybrid optimization method combines a fast coarse optimization on a manifold of policy parameters with a fine-grained parameter search in the unrestricted space of actions. It is shown that the developed algorithm reduces the number of required rollouts for adaptation to new task conditions. Further, this work presents a transfer learning approach for adaptation of learned skills to new situations. Application in illustrative toy scenarios, for a 10-DOF planar arm, a humanoid robot point reaching task and parameterized drumming on a pneumatic robot validate the approach. But parameterized skills that are applied on complex robotic systems pose further challenges: the dynamics of the robot and the interaction with the environment introduce model inaccuracies. In particular, high-level skill acquisition on highly compliant robotic systems such as pneumatically driven or soft actuators is hardly feasible. Since learning of the complete dynamics model is not feasible due to the high complexity, this thesis examines two alternative approaches: First, an improvement of the low-level control based on an equilibrium model of the robot. Utilization of an equilibrium model reduces the learning complexity and this thesis evaluates its applicability for control of pneumatic and industrial light-weight robots. Second, an extension of parameterized skills to generalize for forward signals of action primitives that result in an enhanced control quality of complex robotic systems. This thesis argues for a shift in the complexity of learning the full dynamics of the robot to a lower dimensional task-related learning problem. Due to the generalization in relation to the task variability, online learning for complex robots as well as complex scenarios becomes feasible. An experimental evaluation investigates the generalization capabilities of the proposed online learning system for robot motion generation. Evaluation is performed through simulation of a compliant 2-DOF arm and scalability to a complex robotic system is demonstrated for a pneumatically driven humanoid robot with 8-DOF

Analysis and Construction of Engaging Facial Forms and Expressions: Interdisciplinary Approaches from Art, Anatomy, Engineering, Cultural Studies, and Psychology

The topic of this dissertation is the anatomical, psychological, and cultural examination of a human face in order to effectively construct an anatomy-driven 3D virtual face customization and action model. In order to gain a broad perspective of all aspects of a face, theories and methodology from the fields of art, engineering, anatomy, psychology, and cultural studies have been analyzed and implemented. The computer generated facial customization and action model were designed based on the collected data. Using this customization system, culturally-specific attractive face in Korean popular culture, “kot-mi-nam (flower-like beautiful guy),” was modeled and analyzed as a case study. The “kot-mi-nam” phenomenon is overviewed in textual, visual, and contextual aspects, which reveals the gender- and sexuality-fluidity of its masculinity. The analysis and the actual development of the model organically co-construct each other requiring an interwoven process. Chapter 1 introduces anatomical studies of a human face, psychological theories of face recognition and an attractive face, and state-of-the-art face construction projects in the various fields. Chapter 2 and 3 present the Bezier curve-based 3D facial customization (BCFC) and Multi-layered Facial Action Model (MFAF) based on the analysis of human anatomy, to achieve a cost-effective yet realistic quality of facial animation without using 3D scanned data. In the experiments, results for the facial customization for gender, race, fat, and age showed that BCFC achieved enhanced performance of 25.20% compared to existing program Facegen , and 44.12% compared to Facial Studio. The experimental results also proved the realistic quality and effectiveness of MFAM compared with blend shape technique by enhancing 2.87% and 0.03% of facial area for happiness and anger expressions per second, respectively. In Chapter 4, according to the analysis based on BCFC, the 3D face of an average kot-mi-nam is close to gender neutral (male: 50.38%, female: 49.62%), and Caucasian (66.42-66.40%). Culturally-specific images can be misinterpreted in different cultures, due to their different languages, histories, and contexts. This research demonstrates that facial images can be affected by the cultural tastes of the makers and can also be interpreted differently by viewers in different cultures

A Cloud-Based Extensible Avatar For Human Robot Interaction

Adding an interactive avatar to a human-robot interface requires the development of tools that animate the avatar so as to simulate an intelligent conversation partner. Here we describe a toolkit that supports interactive avatar modeling for human-computer interaction. The toolkit utilizes cloud-based speech-to-text software that provides active listening, a cloud-based AI to generate appropriate textual responses to user queries, and a cloud-based text-to-speech generation engine to generate utterances for this text. This output is combined with a cloud-based 3D avatar animation synchronized to the spoken response. Generated text responses are embedded within an XML structure that allows for tuning the nature of the avatar animation to simulate different emotional states. An expression package controls the avatar's facial expressions. The introduced rendering latency is obscured through parallel processing and an idle loop process that animates the avatar between utterances. The efficiency of the approach is validated through a formal user study

Interactive Concept Acquisition for Embodied Artificial Agents

An important capacity that is still lacking in intelligent systems such as robots, is the ability to use concepts in a human-like manner. Indeed, the use of concepts has been recognised as being fundamental to a wide range of cognitive skills, including classification, reasoning and memory. Intricately intertwined with language, concepts are at the core of human cognition; but despite a large body or research, their functioning is as of yet not well understood. Nevertheless it remains clear that if intelligent systems are to achieve a level of cognition comparable to humans, they will have to posses the ability to deal with the fundamental role that concepts play in cognition. A promising manner in which conceptual knowledge can be acquired by an intelligent system is through ongoing, incremental development. In this view, a system is situated in the world and gradually acquires skills and knowledge through interaction with its social and physical environment. Important in this regard is the notion that cognition is embodied. As such, both the physical body and the environment shape the manner in which cognition, including the learning and use of concepts, operates. Through active partaking in the interaction, an intelligent system might influence its learning experience as to be more effective. This work presents experiments which illustrate how these notions of interaction and embodiment can influence the learning process of artificial systems. It shows how an artificial agent can benefit from interactive learning. Rather than passively absorbing knowledge, the system actively partakes in its learning experience, yielding improved learning. Next, the influence of embodiment on perception is further explored in a case study concerning colour perception, which results in an alternative explanation for the question of why human colour experience is very similar amongst individuals despite physiological differences. Finally experiments, in which an artificial agent is embodied in a novel robot that is tailored for human-robot interaction, illustrate how active strategies are also beneficial in an HRI setting in which the robot learns from a human teacher

Passages metrocorporei: il corpo come dispositivo tecnologico in una estetica della transizione.

The aim of my research is to re-categorize aesthetics in relation to trans-media and digital flows, analyzing artworks from a different perspective in a “post-digital” context and re-examining the relationship between science and art.\ud Artists have begun to tackle the concepts, the tools, and the contexts of scientific and technological research: the results of their works are provocative and intriguing. I have identified, and studied extensively, those artists who have been working combining both scientific and technological approach, and so I outlined new perspectives in the art fields, in order to explain the complexity of the world following a trans-disciplinary method. The starting point of my research is Walter Benjamin’s concept of “chef d'oeuvre”, that is to say his Parisian Passages. This unfinished work, that kept the German philosopher occupied for thirteen years, from 1927 until his death in 1940, is a patchwork of quotations, fragments and thoughts jotted down with a work-in-progress conception, which has been thought to build the physiognomic construction of a dialectic image of history “in an halting condition”. In the first phase of my research, I used Benjamin’s Passages as a metaphor to draw a body geography, tracing the imprint of the body placed in an image that “floats” in an undefined space. The image offered redefines body condition and the feelings it produces in relation to the world through the use of new technologies. I identify this new condition, undertaken by body, introducing a neologism: the ‘metro-body’. This expression allows me to reconfigure and hypothesize a different level and a different meaning of corporeality. When our body is connected to technological devices, i.e. to Web, the 'intentional arc' mentioned by Merleau Ponty expands; it remains (potentially) in tension, almost on the line break. When we enter in connection with Web, the shape and the image of our body perception are “embedded”, reacting to the presence of our body with a corporeal-feedback. The corporeal-feedback consists of a complex, distinct, decomposed and hybrid image. It is at this stage of re-configuration that the condition of the metro-body comes into existence. It works as a filter between our Leib (lived body), that interacts in connection with Web and our bodies, which are virtually embodied in multiple functional identities marked with distinctive passwords and nicknames (avatar). Art has long questioned its status in relation to modern technologies, taking to understand the importance of this new and varied corporeal dimensions: from Ballard’s sci-fi literature, to Cronenberg’s films; from Artaud’s Body without Organs (CSO), to all the various forms of Body Art; from Orlan’s aesthetic and bio-politic practices, to Sterlac’s contamination between flesh and technology, up to Jaron Lanier’s virtual reality. Artists have investigated the meaning of this new existential dimension, adopting plural and innovative means and elaborating meta-narratives of bodies and changing identities. Aesthetics, considered as the science of sensory knowledge, must take into account and analyze this new social and artistic reality. In order to do that successfully, aesthetics must also be contaminated with anthropology, psychology, semiotics and natural sciences, placing itself in a trans-disciplinarity context. Within this new conception, aesthetics is no longer considered as a delimited area, but moves through bodies floating in a the displaced territory made of humankind connections. Therefore, the aim of my research should be considered as twofold. On the one hand I started my investigation dealing with what might be considered the lower part of this issue, i.e. the ways in which the “re-shaping” / “re-covering” of the aesthetic field come off. Current aesthetics might be redefined as an aesthetic touch-screen. A thorough evaluation/consideration of this composed term has led philosophers to “touch” their discipline and its tools in relation to body, intended as a container of symbolic meanings that interact and mingle with and through mechanisms of connection and hybridization with digital devices and their applications. On the other hand, I try to analyze how this new, contaminated and floating, aesthetics, is capable to illuminate a new multi-identity. In this perspective the idea of metro-body acquires an actual meaning, i.e. it anticipates new corporeal re-configurations. First of all, in order to help their emersion, I take into account the results of the investigations made by some important philosophers, such as Husserl’s corporeal distinctions, Merleau Ponty's phenomenological revision of flesh, Deleuze’s rhizomatous approach towards body and his fascination with viande. As a second step of my research, I investigate the approaches undertaken by scholars and performance artists who have interpreted and reflected on the contemporary condition of body: from the performers operating in the field of digital art, to those operating in the field of new media art; from McLuhan’s Gutenberg Galaxy, to Derrick de Kerckhove’s Brainframes; from Gregory Bateson’s ecology of the mind, to David Le Breton’s anthropology of pain, up to the prosthetic applications recently used in the medical field (from “the fastest thing on no legs”, Oscar Pistorius, to Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System, the bionic eye realized by the University of Santa Cruz in California). In this final phase of my research I try to suggest some practical examples of the metro-body concept. In order to achieve my aim, I observe and implement an ethnographic research on digital arts as well as on performing actions, reflecting on the use of body in relation to technology. I take into account the various international festivals of contemporary art and, at the same time, I try to study and give some examples of prosthetic, or plant application, in medicine, where technology and medicine are combined in a new medical anthropology. Contemporary society is facing the challenge of complexity and in this panorama the metro-body concept functions as a filter of a new bodily condition, placed between the reality and the virtual space. At the same time, aesthetics is going to participate actively, in a trans-disciplinary way, to a new form of narrative (cross-media-narrative). Therefore, we could say that a new form of trans-aesthetics (aesthetics-of-transition) is possible; it floats through hybrid bodies in a digital world. Rethinking the body is the main aim of my project.\ud \ud \ud Passages metrocorporei. Il corpo come dispositivo tecnologico in una estetica della transizione\ud La mia ricerca si orienta nel tentativo di ricategorizzazione estetica in relazione ai flussi transmediali e digitali, ripensando l’opera d’arte da una diversa prospettiva. Come punto di partenza prenderò in considerazione il “chef d’oeuvre” di Walter Benjamin: I “Passages” di Parigi. Questo lavoro incompiuto che tenne il filosofo tedesco occupato per tredici anni, dal 1927 fino alla sua fuga verso la morte nel 1940, si presenta come un montaggio di citazioni, tracce e pensieri frammentari in divenire, alla ricerca di erigere nel tempo ritrovato, una costruzione fisiognomica di un’immagine dialettica della storia “in condizione di arresto”. Nella prima fase di ricerca, scomoderò Walter Benjamin, utilizzando l’opera I “Passages” di Parigi, come metafora per tracciare un’impronta che ricalchi una geografica del corpo collocato in un’immagine che “fluttua” in uno spazio non definito. L’immagine offerta ricalcolerà la condizione corporea e il sentire in relazione con il mondo, attraverso l’utilizzo delle nuove tecnologie. Questa nuova condizione che il corpo assume, proverò a chiamarla metrocorpo. Questo termine mi permetterà di riconfigurare e stabilire un diverso grado di corporeità e un differente significato. Nel momento in cui il nostro corpo si connette al dispositivo tecnologico o inserito in uno spazio virtuale, l’“arco intenzionale” di cui parla Merleau-Ponty si espande; esso rimane in tensione (in potenza), quasi sulla linea della rottura. Nel momento di immersione in un ambiente virtuale, la nostra percezione del corpo, lo schema corporeo e l’immagine corporea si “incorporano” restituendo così al nostro corpo un feedback (ritorno corporeo), che si compone di un’immagine complessa, diversa, scomposta e ibrida. Proprio in questa fase di riconfigurazione nasce la condizione del metrocorpo. Esso funziona come filtro-immagine tra il nostro corpo che inserito in uno spazio virtuale riconfigura la sua realtà corporea. L’arte ha da tempo rimesso in discussione il suo statuto in rapporto con la tecnologia e allo stesso tempo ha compreso la pregnanza di questa nuova e molteplice dimensione corporea. Dalla letteratura sci-fi di Ballard, al cinema di Cronenberg, dal Corpo senza Organi (CsO) di Artaud attualizzato da Deleuze, alla Body Art, dalle pratiche estetiche bio-politiche attuate da Orlan, alle contaminazioni tecnologiche della carne di Stelarc, fino alla realtà virtuale di Jaron Lanier; gli artisti hanno indagato, con mezzi plurali e inediti, il significato di questa nuova dimensione esistenziale, costruendo meta-narrazioni del corpo e identità mutanti. L’estetica, in quanto scienza della conoscenza sensibile, deve tener conto di questa nuova realtà sociale e artistica, e per analizzarla, deve anch’essa contaminarsi con l’utilizzo dell’antropologia, della psicologia, della semiotica e delle scienze naturali. La nuova estetica non possiede più uno spazio delimitato, ma si muove attraverso corpi che fluttuano nei piani de-territorializzati di un’umanità in connessione. Lo scopo del mio lavoro di ricerca è duplice. Da un lato indagherò a fondo le modalità con cui avviene questo “rimodellamento” della disciplina che veste un nuovo abito. L’attuale travestimento dell‘estetica potrebbe richiedere l’utilizzo del touch-screen. Quest’ultimo termine conduce il filosofo a “toccare” la disciplina e i suoi strumenti in relazione al corpo, in quanto contenitore di significati simbolici che interagiscono e si contaminano con e attraverso i meccanismi di connessione e ibridazione con la macchina digitale e le sue applicazioni. Dall’altro lato della ricerca, invece, tenterò di analizzare in che modo questa neo-estetica, contaminata e fluttuante, riesca ad illuminare una nuova multi-identità. L’immagine del metrocorpo, a questo punto, si è dotata di un possibile senso, prefigurando nuove riconfigurazioni corporee. Per far questo, mi servirò prima di tutto delle ricerche di alcuni filosofi, come delle distinzioni corporee di Husserl, fino alla revisione fenomenologica della carne di Merleau-Ponty, per poi attraversare l’impostazione rizomatica dell’organismo e la fascinazione della viande in Deleuze. Come seconda modalità d’indagine, impegnerò i teorici e gli artisti performativi che hanno riflettuto e interpretato la condizione del corpo contemporaneo, dai performer del digital art a quelli dei new media art. In questa ultima fase di ricerca proverò a fornire alcuni esempi concreti per finalizzare il concetto di metrocorpo. Per far questo, tenterò di osservare e applicare una ricerca etnografica sia sulle arti digitali che sulle azioni performative, che riflettano sull’uso del corpo in rapporto alla tecnologia. Analizzerò prima di tutto i diversi Festival d’arte contemporanea sia a livello nazionale che internazionale, allo stesso tempo, tenterò di studiare e fornire qualche esempio di applicazione protesica o impiantistica nel settore medico, dove la tecnologia e medicina si completano per una nuova antropologia medica. La contemporaneità a questo punto gioca la sfida della complessità, mentre il metrocorpo filtra una nuova condizione corporea tra lo spazio reale e quello virtuale e l’estetica si trova a partecipare attivamente e trans-disciplinarmente ad una nuova narrazione. Una nuova estetica della transizione (transestetica) verso il digitale è possibile, essa fluttua attraverso corpi ibridi in uno spazio digitale.\ud \u

EVALITA Evaluation of NLP and Speech Tools for Italian - December 17th, 2020

Welcome to EVALITA 2020! EVALITA is the evaluation campaign of Natural Language Processing and Speech Tools for Italian. EVALITA is an initiative of the Italian Association for Computational Linguistics (AILC, http://www.ai-lc.it) and it is endorsed by the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence (AIxIA, http://www.aixia.it) and the Italian Association for Speech Sciences (AISV, http://www.aisv.it)

Creating for the Stage and Other Spaces: Questioning Practices and Theories

Abstract (ENGLISH)-This volume brings together most of the interventions by artists and scholars of the Third EASTAP Conference (European Association for the Study of Theatre and Performance), which should have been held in Bologna from 27 February to 1 March 2020, scheduled among the events of the VIE Festival 2020 and the activities of the Department of the Arts / DAMSLab. When everything was ready, the Conference, the last part of the Festival and the DAMSLab programme were suddenly canceled due to the first restrictions related to the pandemic. Following those sudden and unexpected events, the need to leave memory of the project arose from many quarters. It was thus decided to propose a publication which, while significantly differentiating from the original structure designed for the Conference, explicitly and directly refers to it, remaining an exceptional and significant testimony of the state of studies on theatre and performance in the pre-Covid era. The Conference plan envisaged two macro-sectors which concerned, one, the practices and theories relating to the composition of the texts; the other, the practices and theories relating to the composition of performative events referable to the methods of scenic writing. The volume takes up this polarity by framing it in a different division of relations, which explains – thanks to the groupings and their titles both the relations between text and text and those between sector and sector. The most consistent chapters are dedicated to performance and post-dramatic textuality: Questioning performance: theories and practices (17 reports) and Creating text for the stage: theories and practices (21 reports). The other chapters then come to place themselves in the force field described by these main groupings. Perfomer's body: the dancer, the actor (6 reports) and Creating for other spaces: landscape, sound, multimedia (7 reports) are ideally framed in the polarity of the performace, where to highlight the centrality of the body and the relational dynamics activated by spaces, sounds, and new technologies. Collective creations and community plays (7 reports), on the other hand, focuses on performance and new textuality. __________ Abstract (ITALIANO)-Il presente volume riunisce la maggior parte degli interventi di artisti e studiosi del III Convegno EASTAP (European Association for the Study of Theatre and Performance), che avrebbe dovuto tenersi a Bologna dal 27 febbraio al 1 marzo 2020, calendarizzato tra gli eventi di VIE Festival 2020 e le attività del Dipartimento delle Arti/DAMSLab. Quando tutto era ormai pronto, il Convegno, l’ultima parte del Festival e il programma DAMSLab sono stati improvvisamente annullati a causa delle prime restrizioni legate alla pandemia. In seguito a quei repentini e inattesi eventi, è nata l’esigenza da più parti avvertita di lasciare memoria del progetto. Si è deciso così di proporre una pubblicazione che, pur differenziandosi sensibilmente dalla struttura originaria pensata per il Convegno, a esso si richiamasse esplicitamente e direttamente, restando eccezionale e significativa testimonianza dello stato degli studi sul teatro e la performance nell’era pre-Covid. Il piano del Convegno prevedeva due macrosettori che riguardavano, l’uno, le pratiche e le teorie relative alla composizione dei testi; l’altro, le pratiche e le teorie relative alla composizione di eventi performativi riferibili alle modalità della scrittura scenica. Il volume riprende questa polarità inquadrandola in una diversa ripartizione delle relazioni, che esplicita – grazie ai raggruppamenti e ai loro titoli – sia le relazioni fra testo e testo che quelle fra settore e settore. Alla performance e alla testualità postdrammatica sono dedicati i capitoli più consistenti: Questioning performance: theories and practices (17 relazioni) e Creating text for the stage: theories and practices (21 relazioni). Gli altri capitoli si vengono quindi a posizionare nel campo di forze descritto da questi raggruppamenti principali. Perfomer’s body: the dancer, the actor (6 relazioni) e Creating for other spaces: landscape, sound, multimedia (7 relazioni) si inquadrano idealmente nella polarità della performace, dove evidenziare la centralità del corpo e le dinamiche relazionali attivate dagli spazi, dai suoni e dalle nuove tecnologie. Collective creations and community plays (7 relazioni) si orienta invece fra performance e nuova testualità

The Legacy of Frankenstein’s Creature: Monstrosity and Female Grotesque in Mary Shelley, Angela Carter and Jeanette Winterson

This English Literature thesis (European PhD EDGES – Women’s and Gender Studies – 34th cycle) is an investigation into the representation of the monstrous body according to the British writers Mary Shelley, Angela Carter and Jeanette Winterson. The main objective is to observe how the representation of the categories of monstrous, abject and grotesque in Western cultural imagination have been influenced across time and literary genres. In the novels of Shelley, Carter and Winterson, the monstrous subject is configured as an alternative to the anthropocentric ideal embodied by the normative subject, of which Victor Frankenstein is the paradigmatic exponent. Plus, there are places considered anti-topoi within which the monster acquires a situatedness and claims a voice, generating an opposed counter-narrative to the imaginary conveyed by the normative subject. Monstrosity outlined by Shelley in the novels Frankenstein and The Last Man constitutes the starting point of my research, aiming to observe how the discourse of the normative body vs. the anti-normative body intersects with the discourse of the spaces of the centre vs. the spaces of the margin. In Carter's novels The Passion of New Eve and Nights at the Circus, the monstrous female constitutes the embodiment of wills, desires and claims challenging the heteronormative system. The space of otherness in which Carter's monster-woman is confined becomes a possibility of reshaping identity for the Subject, deconstructing the logic of power that moulded her within society. Finally, Winterson creates two monstrous women in Sexing the Cherry and The Passion who move through urban spaces, going from the centre to the margins and testifying to the arbitrariness of the system and its weaknesses. Similarly, in Frankissstein, Winterson recovers Shelley's original novel and transforms it into a parodic and intertextual speculation on the fluidity of identity and the limits of transhumanism.Tale tesi in Letteratura inglese (European PhD EDGES – Women’s and Gender Studies, XXXIV ciclo) costituisce un'indagine sulla rappresentazione del corpo mostruoso secondo le scrittrici inglesi Mary Shelley, Angela Carter e Jeanette Winterson. Obiettivo del lavoro è osservare attraverso quali modalità la rappresentazione delle categorie di mostruoso, abietto e grottesco nell'immaginario culturale occidentale sia stata influenzata nel tempo e attraverso i generi letterari. Nelle autrici prese in esame, il soggetto mostruoso si configura come alternativa all'ideale antropocentrico incarnato dal soggetto normativo, di cui Victor Frankenstein costituisce il massimo esponente. Allo stesso tempo, sarà possibile osservare come all'interno dei romanzi di Shelley, Carter e Winterson siano presenti luoghi considerati anti-topoi all'interno dei quali il mostro può acquisire un posizionamento e rivendicare una voce, finalizzata a generare una contronarrazione dell'immaginario veicolato dal soggetto normativo. La mostruosità delineata da Shelley in Frankenstein e The Last Man costituisce il punto di partenza dell'indagine, con lo scopo di osservare come il discorso del corpo normativo vs. il corpo antinormativo si intersechi con il discorso degli spazi del centro vs. gli spazi del margine. In The Passion of New Eve e Nights at the Circus di Carter, il mostruoso femminile incarna volontà, desideri e rivendicazioni che mettono in crisi il sistema eteronormativo. Lo spazio dell'alterità in cui la donna-mostro viene confinata diviene possibilità di rimodellamento dell'identità per il soggetto, decostruendo la logica del potere che l'ha plasmato all'interno della società. Winterson, infine, crea due donne mostruose in Sexing the Cherry e The Passion che si muovono negli spazi urbani oscillando tra centro e margine, e testimoniando l'arbitrarietà del sistema e i suoi punti deboli. Allo stesso modo, in Frankissstein Winterson recupera il romanzo di Shelley trasformandolo in una speculazione parodica e intertestuale sulla fluidità identitaria e sui limiti del transumanismo.Esta tesis doctoral en literatura inglesa (European PhD EDGES - Women's and Gender Studies, Cycle XXXIV) investiga la representación del cuerpo monstruoso según Mary Shelley, Angela Carter y Jeanette Winterson. El objetivo del trabajo es observar cómo haya influido la representación de las categorías de lo monstruoso, lo abyecto y lo grotesco en el imaginario cultural occidental a lo largo del tiempo y a través de los géneros literarios. En las autoras examinadas, el sujeto monstruoso se configura como una alternativa al ideal antropocéntrico encarnado por el sujeto normativo, del que Victor Frankenstein constituye el máximo exponente. Al mismo tiempo en las novelas de Shelley, Carter y Winterson hay lugares considerados anti-topoi dentro de los cuales el monstruo pueda adquirir una posición y reclamar una voz, generando una contranarrativa del imaginario del sujeto normativo. La monstruosidad esbozada por Shelley en Frankenstein y The Last Man constituye el punto de partida de la investigación, observando cómo el discurso del cuerpo normativo y antinormativo se cruza con el discurso sobre los espacios del centro y del margen. En The Passion of New Eve y Nights at the Circus de Carter, la mujer monstruosa encarna voluntades, deseos y reivindicaciones que desafían el sistema heteronormativo. El espacio de alteridad en el que está confinada se convierte en una posibilidad de reconfiguración de la identidad para el sujeto, deconstruyendo la lógica del poder que la ha moldeado dentro de la sociedad. Winterson, por último, crea en Sexing the Cherry y The Passion dos mujeres monstruosas que se mueven en espacios urbanos oscilando entre el centro y el margen, testimoniando la arbitrariedad del sistema y de sus debilidades. Asimismo, en Frankissstein Winterson recupera la novela de Shelley transformándola en una especulación paródica e intertextual sobre la fluidez de la identidad y los límites del transhumanismo