Monsters

[[*Indicates new selection]]

Introduction for Students

Chapter 1: Why Do We Create Monsters?  

Stephen King, Why We Crave Horror Movies

Mary Shelley, from Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus 

Susan Tyler Hitchcock, Conception 

Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan, Why Vampires Never Die  

Chuck Klosterman, My Zombie, Myself: Why Modern Life Feels Rather Undead 

Peter H. Brothers, Japan’s Nuclear Nightmare: How the Bomb Became a Beast Called Godzilla 

*Scott O. Moore, The Momo Challenge and the Intersection of Contemporary Legend and Moral Panic 

Stephen T. Asma, Monsters and the Moral Imagination 

Chapter 2: How Do Monsters Reflect Their Times? 

Ted Genoways, Here Be Monsters 

Daniel Cohen, The Birth of Monsters 

*Anonymous, from Beowulf [[*new excerpt]] 

*Edward T. C. Werner, Myths of the Waters
*Basil Johnston, Weendigo

Matt Kaplan, Cursed by a Bite 

W. Scott Poole, Monstrous Beginnings 

*Iikura Kimie, Japanese Urban Legends from “The Slit-Mouthed Woman” to “Kisaragi Station”

*Bruce Sterling, AI is the Scariest Beast Ever Created

Chapter 3: How Does Gender Affect the Monster? 

Amy Fuller, The Evolving Legend of La Llorona 

Bram Stoker, from Dracula 

*Sarah Stang, Shrieking, Biting, and Licking: The Monstrous-Feminine in Video Games

Sophia Kingshill, Reclaiming the Mermaid

*Jalondra A. Davis, Magic, Mermaids, and the Middle Passage: On Natasha Bowen’s Skin of the Sea

*Gary Morris, Sexual Subversion: The Bride of Frankenstein

Carol J. Clover, Final Girl 

Jack Halberstam, Bodies that Splatter: Queers and Chainsaws 

Chapter 4: What is the Power of the Monster? 

Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Fear of the Monster Is Really a Kind of Desire 

*Daniel Loxton, The Howling Horror of Werewolves!

*Kiley Fox, Noppera Bo and the Fear of Nothingness

Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 

*Rodrigo Silva Guedes, Jeykll and Hyde: The Monster as a Metaphor

*Adam Chitwood, A Quiet Place Monsters Explained by John Krasinski

Christian Jarrett, The Lure of Horror 

Chapter 5: Is the Monster within Us? 

Adolf Hitler, Nation and Race 

Patrick McCormick, Why Modern Monsters Have Become Alien to Us 

*Fay Onyx, Ridding Your Monsters of Ableism

Anne E. Schwartz, Inside a Murdering Mind 

William Andrew Myers, Ethical Aliens: The Challenge of Extreme Perpetrators to Humanism 

*Mary Retta, The Unexpected Power of Seeing Yourself as the Villain

*Judith Clemens-Smucker, Stranger Teens: Eleven Transforms the Monstrous Symbolism of Adolescence through a Contemporary Narrative Arc

Kevin Berger, Why We Still Need Monsters

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