Counting down to 2023: The two-hundredth anniversary of the second edition of Frankenstein, the first to name Mary Shelley as the novel's author. Also notable adaptations of the novel celebrate milestones, including Richard Brinsley Peake's Presumption; or, the Fate of Frankenstein, the first dramatic adaptation of Shelley’s work. Moving closer to our time, a number popular adaptations from 1973 now mark their fiftieth anniversaries: on television appeared both Frankenstein by Dan Curtis and Frankenstein: The True Story by Jack Smight, the comics (after the softening of the Comics Code) launched both the serial “The Spawn of Frankenstein” from DC Comics and the series The Monster of Frankenstein from Marvel Comics, while theater-goers were introduced to The Rocky Horror Show (later adapted as The Rocky Horror Picture Show). Lastly, the fortieth anniversary of artist Bernie Wrightson’s illustrated version of Frankenstein from Marvel Comics.

Friday, March 1, 2024

Frankenstein Sessions at NeMLA 2024

They Live: Female Monsters and Their Impact on the Frankenstein Tradition and Elsewhere 

Sponsored by the Monsters & the Monstrous Area of the Northeast Popular Culture Association 

Organized by Michael A. Torregrossa


55th NeMLA Convention

Boston, MA

7-10 March 2024


Friday
Mar 8 Track 11
04:45-06:15

11.20 They Live: Female Monsters and Their Impact on the Frankenstein Tradition and Elsewhere (Part 1)
Chair: Michael Torregrossa, Bristol Community College
Location: Gardner B (Media Equipped)
British & Cultural Studies and Media Studies

"From Prometheus to Pygmalion to Pandora: The Feminist Threat of Frankenstein’s 'Dark Brides'" Kyle Bishop, Southern Utah University

"Hypertext, the Female Monster, and Other Boundary Creatures in Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl" Callie Ingram, University at Buffalo, SUNY

"'I am no one’s': Subverting the ‘Bride of Frankenstein’ in The Frankenstein Chronicles " Sophie-Constanze Bantle, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg


Saturday
Mar 9 Track 14
10:00-11:30

14.18 They Live: Female Monsters and Their Impact on the Frankenstein Tradition and Elsewhere (Part 2)
Chair: Michael Torregrossa, Bristol Community College
Location: Hampton B (Media Equipped)
British & Cultural Studies and Media Studies

"The Bride Who Survived: Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl (1995) and its Female Monster" Jonathan Rose, University of Passau

"'No more let Life divide...': Serial Brides in Penny Dreadful and The Frankenstein Chronicles " Federica Perazzini, Sapienza-Università di Roma

Sunday, October 1, 2023

CFP Romantic Boundaries (Special Issue of Romantic Textualities) (10/10/2023)


CFP–Romantic Boundaries (Special Issue of Romantic Textualities)
Tien, Yu-hung

Source: https://www.romtext.org.uk/romantic-boundaries/

Posted on 08 September 2023


This June, the BARS Early Career and Postgraduate Conference gathered researchers from around the globe to celebrate and to appreciate Romanticism and its legacies at the University of Edinburgh by exploring the theme of ‘boundaries’ within the context of Romantic-period literature and thought. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the term ‘boundary’ as: ‘That which serves to indicate the bounds or limits of anything whether material or immaterial; also the limit itself.’ Such a term seems at odds with the spirit of Romanticist thought, which has long been associated with mobility and boundlessness. Conference delegates aptly addressed the complexity of the concept through various representations of boundaries—both tangible and intangible—from a wide range of viewpoints. To continue such a diverse critical dialogue, in collaboration with Romantic Textualities: Literature and Print Culture, 1780–1840, they plan to produce a special ‘Romantic Boundaries’ edition of the journal. To widen the scope of our scholarly conversation, not only do they welcome all the conference delegates to consider expanding their conference papers for publications, but they also invite researchers and scholars in general for submissions.

Echoing our conference theme, topics of interest may include, but are not limited to:
  • Geographical and spatial boundaries; transnationalism
  • Borders, liminal spaces, and boundary crossing
  • Temporal boundaries
  • Dialogues between genres and disciplines
  • Translations and transgressions
  • Lived boundaries (including those pertaining to identity, such as gender, race, or sexuality)
  • Digital boundaries
  • Human and nonhuman boundaries
  • Boundaries and reception; public versus private writings
  • Past, present, and future limits of the field of Romantic studies and its canon

Successful abstracts will suggest articles that broaden our understanding of Romantic boundaries by illuminating the elasticity and multiplicity of their meanings. For those who are interested, please submit 500-word abstracts with 5 keywords. Abstracts are due by 10 October 2023. The result will be announced by mid-November.

Essays (5000–8000 words, including footnotes) that grow out of accepted abstracts will undergo peer review and are due by 31 January 2024.

Please email submissions to Yu-hung Tien (yuhung.tien@ed.ac.uk), with a subject line (Romantic Boundaries, ‘Paper Title’, Author Name).

Papers will be published in a special issue of Romantic Textualities (Summer 2024), guest edited by Professor Li-hsin Hsu, Professor Andrew Taylor, and Yu-hung Tien.

Please note that the essay submission date and publication schedule are tentative and subject to change, depending on the reviewing progress.

Sunday, September 3, 2023

CFP In Other Wor(l)ds: Romanticism at the Crossroads, a special issue of Romantic Textualities: Literature and Print Culture, 1780-1840 (9/15/2023)

In Other Wor(l)ds: Romanticism at the Crossroads, a special issue of Romantic Textualities: Literature and Print Culture, 1780-1840


deadline for submissions:
September 15, 2023

full name / name of organization:
Romantic Textualities

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2023/08/25/in-other-worlds-romanticism-at-the-crossroads-a-special-issue-of-romantic

contact email:
CStampone@SMU.edu



In Other Wor(l)ds: Romanticism at the Crossroads, a special issue of Romantic Textualities: Literature and Print Culture, 1780-1840­


Note: The deadline for submissions has been extended to 9/15/23.

Jhumpa Lahiri’s In Altre Parole / In Other Words (2015) describes switching from one language to another as crossing from one side of a body of water to its opposite shore. Inspired by this metaphor, this special issue invites essays that examine Romanticism’s movements across oceans and seas, as well as languages, genres, and genders. This special issue seeks to reevaluate popular conceptions of Romantic aesthetics, recover authors who continue or call into question Romanticism’s continued salience, detail the circulation of texts across oceans and borders, and strike connections between authors of different countries and cultures. Joselyn Almeida, Manu Chander, Bakary Diaby, Tim Fulford, Paul Giles, Evan Gottlieb, Samantha Harvey, Nikki Hessell, Kevin Hutchings, Peter Kitson, Deanna Koretsky, Tricia Matthew, Omar Miranda, César Soto, Helen Thomas, The Bigger 6 Collective, and others have reassessed traditional conceptions of Romanticism(s) and Romantic figures by challenging hitherto limited aesthetic, cultural, and geographical borders. Rather than view Romanticism primarily as an insulated phenomenon born out of a few European countries—as has generally been the case—this edition seeks to offer transatlantic, transpacific, and even transnational Romanticisms. Taken as a whole, this special issue will stretch the bounds and time period of Romanticism, better reflecting the development of Romantic aesthetics and their manifestations and subversions across the globe.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
  • Revisionary analyses that account for a global framework and decolonise texts, authors, and Romanticism as a field of study;
  • Romantic networks connecting authors and ideas across space and time;
  • Critical race theory and non-binary & genderqueer readings of underrepresented and canonical texts, art, music, performances, and oral traditions;
  • BIPOC and LGBTQIA2S+ authors and artists;
  • History of the book and transnational reception histories of underrepresented as well as canonical works of literature, specifically works that reached different parts of the globe by either book, newspaper, broadsides, handbills, and other print ephemera; and
  • Comparative analyses connecting authors using similar forms (e.g., ballad romance), genre (e.g., Gothic), or allusions (e.g., Paradise Lost) across nations and languages.

Successful proposals will suggest articles that enrich our understanding of Romanticism by expanding its literal and metaphorical borders. Abstracts are due by August 15, 2023 and should be no longer than 600 words in length. Essays that grow out of accepted abstracts will undergo peer review and are due by January 31, 2024. Please email submissions to Christopher Stampone (CStampone@SMU.edu). Papers will be published in a special issue of Romantic Textualities(Winter 2024), guest edited by Christopher Stampone and Joel Pace.



Note: The deadline for submissions has been extended to 9/15/23.



Last updated September 1, 2023

Saturday, September 2, 2023

Bain on ‘Frankenbitch[es]’: Adapting Frankenstein’s Female Monster in Literature and Film


Sorry to have missed this earlier. New scholarship on female Frankenstein monsters:



Bain, Gracie. “ ‘Frankenbitch[es]’: Adapting Frankenstein’s Female Monster in Literature and Film.” Literature/Film Quarterly, vol. 50, no. 4, Fall 2022, https://lfq.salisbury.edu/_issues/50_4/frankenbitches_adapting_frankensteins_female_monster_in_literature_and_film.html.

Sunday, August 27, 2023

Out Now - New Edition of The Frankenstein Legend


First published in 1973, The Frankenstein Legend: A Tribute to Mary Shelley and Boris Karloff, written by Donald F. Glut, has recently been re-issued in a second edition (published by Strange Particle Press in 2022). The work covers Shelley's novel and its adaptation on stage and screen (both film and television), for radio, in fiction, and as comics. 

Comprising over 400 pages, much of the content is repeated from the original edition, but Glur has included new and/or updated images to accompany the text. In addition, Glut adds a new illustrated afterword that provides updates to various sections of the text. 


I couldn't find a direct link for Strange Particle Press, but the book can be purchased from various online booksellers as print-on-demand and electronic versions. 


Friday, August 18, 2023

CFP Critical Insights on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: Or, The Modern Prometheus (8/9/2023)

Sorry to have missed this earlier. It should serve as a great companion to the publisher's volumes on Mary Shelley and Stoker's Dracula.



Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: Or, The Modern Prometheus UNDER CONTRACT


deadline for submissions:
August 9, 2023

full name / name of organization:
Critical Insights Series: Salem Press

contact email:
lauranicosia@gmail.com



DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS: Monday, August 7, 2023



We seek submissions for a Critical Insights volume, under contract with Salem Press, on Mary (Wollenstonecraft) Shelley’s, Frankenstein: Or, The Modern Prometheus. Amidst rapid technological advancements, moral dilemmas, and ethical questions surrounding scientific progress, Shelley’s iconic 1818 novel, Frankenstein, still resonates in contemporary society. The novel continues to captivate readers with its timeless themes and cautionary lessons about scientific ambition and the consequences of playing God. The frame-tale novel, often overshadowed by subsequent film versions, is groundbreaking by giving a voice to the monster via its epistolary embedded-narrative form.



In today's world, where advancements like gene editing and human augmentation are becoming a reality, Shelley's novel urges us to reflect on the ethical boundaries humanity should set for itself and the potential consequences of crossing them. The novel also has compelled readers for over two centuries for its insight into the consideration of alienation and Otherness. Victor’s monster, as an outsider, brings to light the question of what is a human as he grapples with his own isolation, a concept humans increasingly identify with in the twenty-first century. The novel also remains pertinent for its environmental concerns, as ecological critics remind readers of the responsibility humans have toward the environment.



Submissions should be representative of current critical discourse about the novel and conceptually within reach of current students at the secondary and undergraduate levels. Essays that attempt to articulate the novel’s major themes and successes especially will be appreciated, as well as those that compare her work to other compelling writers.



Submissions should be tailored to one of the following categories:
  • A COMPREHENSIVE BIOGRAPHICAL essay (this essay is limited to 2500 words);
  • A CRITICAL RECEPTION essay that traces the reception of Shelley’s novel from publication to today (~5000 words);
  • CRITICAL LENS essays that offer a close reading of the novel from a particular critical standpoint (~5000 words);
  • COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS essays that analyze the work or author in the light of another work or author(~5000 words);
  • CRITICAL READING essays that focus on contemporary readings of a Shelley’s novel, with emphasis on ways readers (i.e. students in secondary and university settings) might be able to appreciate or problematize the text(s) with new eyes and current literary theories (~5000 words).



By August 7, please submit a 250-350-word abstract, a 75-word biographical statement (including your affiliation), and contact information to the acquiring editor, Dr. Laura Nicosia: lauranicosia@gmail.com.



Submissions of approximately 5000 words (inclusive of Works Cited) will need to be completed by November 13, 2023.



Honoraria will be awarded by the publisher to contributors after publication.



Last updated June 27, 2023
This CFP has been viewed 1,333 times.

Wednesday, August 9, 2023

CFP The Shelley Conference 2024: 'Posthumous Poems', Posthumous Collaborations (1/29/2024; London 6/28-29/2024)

The Shelley Conference 2024: 'Posthumous Poems', Posthumous Collaborations


deadline for submissions:
January 29, 2024

full name / name of organization:
The Shelley Conference

contact email:
shelleyconference@gmail.com



The Shelley Conference 2024


Posthumous Poems, Posthumous Collaborations

Keats House Museum, London, 28-29 June 2024



Two years after the death of Percy Bysshe Shelley in the summer of 1822, Mary Shelley, after a painstaking editorial process, published Posthumous Poems (1824). The volume contained much of Shelley’s major poetry, including the hitherto unpublished ‘Julian and Maddalo’, together with translations of Goethe and Calderón, and unfinished compositions such as ‘The Triumph of Life’ and ‘Charles the First’.



The Shelley Conference 2024 celebrates the first collected volume of Shelley’s poetry. Posthumous Poems is the product of collaborations. The most significant of these is between Mary Shelley as editor and Shelley as poet, but they also occur between Shelley and the guarantors of the volume, including Bryan Waller Procter (‘Barry Cornwall’) and Thomas Lovell Beddoes. The conference also addresses ideas of posterity and reception more generally in Shelley scholarship, the range of literary forms collected in a single volume, and the complex collaborative literary relationships that shaped Shelley’s life and endured after his death.



The conference will be held at Keats House Museum in Hampstead, London. Proposals should be in the form of 200-word abstracts for 15-minute papers. Please include a 100-word biography with your proposal.



Papers are invited on themes including, but not limited to:



● Posthumous Poems, its texts and history

● New readings of key poems and of Posthumous Poems as a collection

● Mary Shelley as editor

● Posterity and futurity as themes in Shelley’s work

● Texts in dialogue with Shelley’s work, particularly by those in his circle who survived him

● Shelley’s engagement with Europe and European literature

● The nature and limits of the collaborative process

● Shelley’s reception outside of Britain or in languages other than English

● Shelley and Byron

● Shelley and piracy



Deadline: Please email proposals in Word to shelleyconference@gmail.com by Monday 29 January 2024.



Bursaries: Several bursaries will be available for postgraduate and early-career researchers presenting papers. Please visit the conference website for details. To apply, please add ‘Bursary’ to your email subject.



Keynote Speaker: Dr Ross Wilson (Cambridge)

Plenary Speakers: Professor Nora Crook (Anglia Ruskin); Dr Bysshe Inigo Coffey (Oxford);

Dr Madeleine Callaghan (Sheffield)

Pre-Conference Lecture (27 June): Professor Mark Sandy (Durham)



Conference Website: theshelleyconference.com / facebook.com/shelleyconference / Twitter: @shelleyconf





Conference Organisers: Dr Amanda Blake Davis (Derby); Dr Andrew Lacey (Lancaster); Dr Merrilees Roberts (QMUL);

Dr Paul Stephens (Oxford). Postgraduate Helpers: Lydia Shaw (Durham); Keerthi Vasishta (Durham).



Advisory Board: Dr Will Bowers (QMUL), Dr Bysshe Inigo Coffey (Oxford); Dr Anna Mercer (Cardiff);

Dr Mathelinda Nabugodi (UCL); Professor Michael Rossington (Newcastle).




Last updated August 8, 2023

Tuesday, August 8, 2023

CFP They Live: Female Monsters and Their Impact on the Frankenstein Tradition (9/30/2023; NeMLA Boston 3/7-10/2024)

They Live: Female Monsters and Their Impact on the Frankenstein Tradition



Sponsored by the Monsters & the Monstrous Area of the Northeast Popular Culture Association

Organized by Michael A. Torregrossa


Call for Papers - Please Submit Proposals by 30 September 2023

55th Annual Convention of Northeast Modern Language Association

Sheraton Boston Hotel (Boston, MA)

On-site event: 7-10 March 2024


See the shared Google Doc for the full call with a list of bibliographic resources on the topic: https://tinyurl.com/They-Live-NeMLA-2024.


Session Information


In this session, we seek to engage with and to build upon the work of Erin Hawley in “The Bride and Her Afterlife: Female Frankenstein Monsters on Page and Screen” in order to develop a more complete picture of the roles of the Bride of Frankenstein and her analogues within the Frankenstein tradition.


In 2025, James Whale’s film Bride of Frankenstein will celebrate its 90th anniversary. This is an important milestone, but it has a larger impact beyond the world of film. In both Frankenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein, Whale and make-up artist Jack Pierce gave life to two iconic figures of modern popular culture: the Monster (played by Boris Karloff) and the Bride (played by Elsa Lanchester).


The creation of the Bride was especially significant since in the source, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the mate of the creature is destroyed while still in progress. There is no meeting of Victor Frankenstein’s creations. In the film, however, the Bride is completed, brought to life, and briefly interacts with her intended. Unfortunately, the pair fail to connect, and, by the film’s end, the Bride is destroyed again.


Despite this, once having encountered her in the flesh through Lanchester’s portrayal, it was impossible for creative artists to let the Bride stay dead. For at least six of her almost nine decades, the Bride of Frankenstein has been revived time and again in a diverse variety of media, including artwork, cartoons, children’s books, comics, films, games, prose fiction, and television programs. Each new text offers an innovative contribution to the ongoing Frankenstein tradition through the ways the Bride and her analogues forge new narratives as they act with and react to other characters within the base story.


Submissions might explore


  • The ways the Bride of Frankenstein and her analogues transform the story through their roles as wives and mothers as they bring to fulfillment many of the hopes expressed by the creature in Shelley’s novel
  • The ways versions of female Frankensteins that take a darker turn bring about the bleaker visions Victor Frankenstein has for his creation(s)
  • How the existence of female Frankensteins (even when absent) reshapes many of their male counterparts by moving them from menaces to husbands and fathers


See the shared Google Doc for the full call with a list of bibliographic resources on the topic: https://tinyurl.com/They-Live-NeMLA-2024. Further resources about the Frankenstein tradition can be found at our website Frankenstein and the Fantastic at https://frankensteinandthefantastic.blogspot.com/. Do connect with any ideas for additional references and/or resources.


Thank you for your interest in our session. Please address questions and/or concerns to the organizers at popular.preternaturaliana@gmail.com.


For more information on the Monsters & the Monstrous Area of the Northeast Popular Culture Association, please visit our website at https://popularpreternaturaliana.blogspot.com/.



Submission Information


All proposals must be submitted into the CFPList system at https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/20362 by 30 September 2023. You will be prompted to create an account with NeMLA (if you do not already have one) and, then, to complete sections on Title, Abstract, and Media Needs.


Notification on the fate of your submission will be made prior to 16 October 2023. If favorable, please confirm your participation with chairs by accepting their invitations and by registering for the event. The deadline for Registration/Membership is 9 December 2023.


Be advised of the following policies of the Convention: All participants must be members of NeMLA for the year of the conference. Participants may present on up to two sessions of different types (panels/seminars are considered of the same type). Submitters to the CFP site cannot upload the same abstract twice.(See the NeMLA Presenter Policies page, at https://www.buffalo.edu/nemla/convention/policies.html, for further details,)


Thank you for your interest in our session. Please address questions and/or concerns to the organizers at popular.preternaturaliana@gmail.com.


Sunday, April 30, 2023

CFP British Romanticism in 1823 (5/31/2023; PAMLA Portland 10/26-29/2023)


British Romanticism in 1823


deadline for submissions:
May 31, 2023

full name / name of organization:
L. Adam Mekler/PAMLA

contact email:
adam.mekler@morgan.edu

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2023/03/03/british-romanticism-in-1823



PAMLA 2023: October 26-29, 2023
Portland, Oregon

This panel invites paper that explore the decades of the 1820s, focusing especially on the year 1823, with regards to the shifting perspectives both on and of the writers of the Romantic period. The greatest works of William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge, and all of the novels of Jane Austen, had been published years, if not decades earlier, while John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, and William Blake would all die by the end of the decade. Nevertheless, 1823 saw the publication of several notable works, including the second edition of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; Shelley’ second novel, Valperga; William Hazlitt’s important essay “My First Acquaintance with Poets;” Charles Lamb’s Essays of Elia; and Cantos VI-XIV of Lord Byron’s masterpiece, Don Juan. While the more canonical writers of the period offer substantial material to consider, discussions of lesser-known writers or texts of the period are also certainly encouraged.

Please submit your 250-word abstract by May 31 through the PAMLA portal: https://pamla.ballastacademic.com/




Last updated March 7, 2023

Wednesday, July 13, 2022

Out Now: Frankenstein and Its Legacy in the Comics

Good news to share.

I just received my contributor's copy of the International Journal of Comic Art, vol. 23, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 2021), which includes my bibliography of scholarship on Frankenstein in the comics. The listing was created as a resource distributed at a presentation on the novel's bicentennial in 2018 and delivered at Bristol Community College in Fall River, Massachusetts, where I'm working as an adjunct.


The full citation is listed below if anyone needs to track down a copy. Copies of the volume can be purchased from IJoCA's website; there was talk recently of digital copies of the journal, but that information does not seem listed yet.

Here's the full citation: 

Torregrossa, Michael A.“Frankenstein and Its Legacy in the Comics.” International Journal of Comic Art, vol. 23, no. 2, Fall/Winter 2021, pp. 432-40.






Sunday, June 19, 2022

Frankenstein in Comics New Scholarship

Apologies for tooting my own horn, but I recently had three items published based on my ongoing work on adaptations of Frankenstein the comics.

The citations are as follows:


Torregrossa, Michael A. “Building a Better Bride: Female Frankenstein Monsters in the Comics.” Proceedings of the 2020 Science Fictions Popular Cultures Academic Conference, edited by Timothy F. Slater, Carrie J. Cole, and Greg Littman, Pono Publishing, 2020, pp. 165-73. ISBN 979-8689344874 (paperback); eBook ASIN B08NT97MFD. 

Torregrossa, Michael A. “Frankenstein and Its Legacy in the Comics.” International Journal of Comic Art, vol. 23, no. 2, Fall/Winter 2021, pp. 432-40.

Torregrossa, Michael. “She Lives: Bringing the Bride of Frankenstein to Life in the Comics.” Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Far West Popular Culture Association Conference, edited by David G. Schwartz, Digital Scholarship@UNLV, 2021, digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/fwpca/33rdannual/fourtwo/3/.








Monday, November 29, 2021

Out Now: Frankenstein and Its Environments, Then and Now edited by Jerrold E. Hogle

Another new collection of essays on Frankenstein. Details copied from H-Albion at https://networks.h-net.org/node/16749/discussions/7631521/toc-huntington-library-quarterly
 
The issue can be accessed from Project MUSE at https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/44365 and/or via the links provided (if you have institutional access) or purchased direct from the publisher, University of Pennsylvania Press, for $20 at https://hlq.pennpress.org/home/.


 

Huntington Library Quarterly Volume 83.4  Winter 2020

Special Issue: Frankenstein and Its Environments, Then and Now 

Edited by Jerrold E. Hogle

 
 
ARTICLES
 
 
This prolegomenon to a collection of eleven essays provides a setting for them all by explaining the ongoing significance of Mary Shelley’s original Frankenstein two hundred years after it was first published; the theme of multiple “environments” that imbues Frankenstein and its offshoots and that is common to all these essays; the novel’s emergence from a generic environment of fiction (the Gothic) that established itself in the 1760s and continues to this day; the history of interpretations of Frankenstein generated by the various theoretical environments in which it has been analyzed; and how all of the following essays, including the particular environments of Frankenstein they treat, both advance that history and fit into the overall scheme of this special issue.
 
 
Of Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus—as the or (appositive or alternative?) may suggest—origins are in such oversupply, such over-determination, as to make a question of origin itself. Its complex multiples extend to a report from the decade in which Frankenstein is cast, the 1790s: J. M. Itard’s De l’éducation d’un homme sauvage (1801), about a feral boy of mysterious origin. Susan Wolfson investigates the several origin-stories for, in, from, and around Mary Shelley’s durably dynamic novel, including the question of “monstrous” assignments and the riddle for Enlightenment thought about whether primitive existence is ideal innocence, or savagery.

 
The volcanic period of 1816–18 is the most recent and vivid case study we have for worldwide climate catastrophe, evident from archival and geological records of sustained extreme weather, including drought, floods, storms, and crop-killing temperature decline. The signature literary expression of this historic climate crisis occurred in Switzerland, where teenage Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in the midst of the disastrous “Year without a Summer,” 1816, a season of floods and food riots caused by the eruption of Mount Tambora thousands of miles away. This essay, combining climate science with historical and literary sources, reexamines the literary legend of that direful, stormy summer, which Mary Shelley spent on the shores of Lake Geneva with the poets Percy Shelley and Lord Byron, with a new and original emphasis on its climatic context. The writers huddled indoors and wrote ghost stories, while the cataclysmic weather and humanitarian emergency unfolding around them weaved its way into Mary Shelley’s imagining of a tragic monster brought to life.

 
The goal of this essay is to read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as a “bioethical” novel that draws upon several Romantic-era discourses that powerfully combined medical environmentalism, ecology, and political reform to criticize the “biotechnology” of her era. In her novel, Mary Shelley engages in a critique of the selective breeding that farmers of her era used to create new biological beings, as Victor Frankenstein does, by building on the role that new breeds of livestock played in the industrialization of late eighteenth-century British agriculture and the greater consumption of animal food in England. At the same time, Frankenstein also points up the problematic links between such breeding schemes and two other factors of the same period: the greater mobility of peoples and animals made viable by wide-ranging, seagoing trade, and the multiplicity of different-colored races made more apparent by how this mobility enabled the possibility of more human, as well as animal, crossbreeding.
 
 
A white, wealthy, educated male, Victor Frankenstein spends a good portion of Mary Shelley’s novel complaining about being a slave to his Creature. Victor’s laments draw attention to Frankenstein’s engagement with debates about race, slavery, and abolition. The novel seems to ask what a slave is and thereby challenges notions about racial difference and the ideals of cultural/intellectual superiority that support enslaving populations. Foundational studies by H. L. Malchow and others on race in Frankenstein have defined the views of Shelley’s father, William Godwin, as well as the pervasive ideas of the era, to clarify the ways in which the Creature is racially coded to align with stereotypes about Blacks in particular. Using these studies as a starting point, Maisha Wester specifically examines the ways in which Shelley’s text engages the anxieties born out of slave insurrections and Britain’s abolition of the slave trade. To this end, she explores Shelley’s depiction of the turbulence in British society arising from these issues, showing how the Creature’s attacks metaphorize the insurrections that disturbed the era’s notions of racial difference. Ultimately, her essay explains how Victor is, indeed, a “slave”—as are many others like him.
 
 
This essay argues that Romantic-era concepts of regulation help us to understand both how and why Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein provided a critical commentary on the sciences and political theories of its time and why the novel has continued to serve as a cultural touchpoint for understanding the implications of new technologies (for example, genetic engineering). Concepts of regulation appear at key points in Frankenstein, including in Robert Walton’s hopes that his trip to the North Pole will result in a scientific discovery about magnetism that can “regulate a thousand celestial observations” and in his and Victor Frankenstein’s reflections on the relationship between their education and their identities. Concepts of regulation were also central for many eighteenth-century and Romantic-era natural scientists, philosophers, political economists, and political theorists (including Antoine Lavoisier, Immanuel Kant, Mary Wollstonecraft, and William Godwin), and they were paramount to the development of “liberal” economic theory, which aimed to use the science of political economy to limit the power of the state. Robert Mitchell argues that Frankenstein takes up these concepts of regulation in order to critique this linkage of liberalism and the sciences, with the end of encouraging its readers to reimagine the components of liberalism in more equitable forms.
 
 
Only recently, with the rise of critical animal studies, have readings of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein begun to do full justice to the hybrid nature of Frankenstein’s Creature, constructed (as Victor tells us) from materials found in the “slaughter-house” as well as the “dissecting room.” Yet even animal-studies scholars view the Creature’s brain as “human,” in the absence of any supporting evidence from Shelley’s text. Here, Alan Richardson traces the Creature’s horrific effect to dual anxieties that came to ferment during the early nineteenth century, both of them amply documented in the brain science of Shelley’s era and in published reactions to it. First, the line between human and animal was becoming notably porous, in natural history, in comparative anatomy and physiology, and even in such areas as the controversy over vaccination. Second, a new discourse of instinctive and innate mental tendencies had come to compete with both creationist and tabula rasa accounts of the human mind—a development that further eroded the border between human and animal. Frankenstein’s Creature, a literally monstrous hybrid, both embodies these anxieties and exaggerates them, as a fully material and yet rational humanoid entity with body parts, and perhaps neural organs and instincts, traceable to animals.
 
 
This segment consists primarily of a transcript of the question-and-answer exchange conducted at the Huntington on May 12, 2018, between Nick Dear, the author of the 2011 adaptation of Frankenstein first presented by the National Theatre of Great Britain, and Dr. Anne K. Mellor, Distinguished Research Professor of English at UCLA. The interview was then and is here preceded by general remarks from Mr. Dear, for which he provides the following abstract: “I first remind our readers that I am a playwright, not a scholar, and that I identified a ‘gap in the market.’ Whilst there are many movie versions of the novel in existence, there has not been, to my knowledge, a stage version that was a good play. I wanted to do justice to Mary Shelley’s ‘handbook of radical philosophy’; at the same time, I stress that it’s a fairy tale, not a work of science. I then focus on the decision made with the director, Danny Boyle, to reframe the narrative from the Creature’s point of view. I go on to discuss some of the issues that this raised and the dramaturgical decisions that were subsequently made (for example, losing the framing narrative in the novel of Robert Walton on the ship). Finally, I talk about the difficulties of ending the story onstage—and my solution—given the ambivalent ending of Shelley’s novel.”
 
 
Frankenstein presents us today with two different stories and two different lessons. The book, especially in the 1818 first edition, tells the story of Victor Frankenstein’s neglect of his parental duties and the harms that followed. The more lasting myth that succeeded the novel, however, became popular as early as the 1823 production of the first theatrical piece based on the book, Presumption; or, The Fate of Frankenstein. This play’s different lesson is that Frankenstein dared too much, presumed to divine powers, and thus instigated the harms that followed. Modern bioscience affords us many unprecedented and disconcerting possibilities through, among other tools, genetics, neuroscience, stem-cell biology, and assisted reproduction. Which lessons should we apply to those possibilities, and from which of the two Frankenstein stories? Henry T. Greely argues that we should mainly fulfill the novel’s views of our duties of care. We should indeed, in Bruno Latour’s words, “Love our Monsters,” though we also need to heed the allure to the public of the myth of presumption.
 
 
Looking back over the essays in this collection, as well as the two-hundred-plus years since Frankenstein was conceived and published, this postscript asks us to recall that Mary Shelley’s own life experiences, especially childbirth, were sources for her story, even as it incorporated many other ingredients from her milieu. And today, the possibilities for creating artificial life that Frankenstein reflects on and prefigures so vividly are echoed directly in much bioscience. Shelley’s tale haunts our minds when we learn of the development of the Non-Invasive Prenatal Diagnosis, which can genetically scan a pregnant woman’s blood to make detailed predictions about her fetus, and especially CRISPR technology, which could be used to edit the genes of a human embryo. More than Victor Frankenstein did with his creation, we must take responsibility for both the intended and the unintended consequences of human germline engineering.
 
 
 
Submitted by Paul Chase, Penn Press Journals
 
 
 

Saturday, October 12, 2019

Recent Book: Transmedia Creatures: Frankenstein’s Afterlives

I believe this was the last collection of essays that came out in print for the 200th-anniversary of Frankenstein. My apologies for the delay in posting the details.


Transmedia Creatures: Frankenstein’s Afterlives
Edited by Francesca Saggini, Anna Enrichetta Soccio.
https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/transmedia-creatures/9781684480616


Contributions by Lidia De Michelis, Eleanor Beal, Gino Roncaglia, Claire Nally, Claudia Gualtieri, Federico Meschini, Enrico Reggiani, Diego Saglia, Daniele Pio Buenza, Ruth Heholt, Andrew McInnes, Janet Larson

296 pages, 6, 6 x 9

Paperback,October 19, 2018,$29.95
978-1-6844-8060-9
[other formats also available]


About This Book
On the 200th anniversary of the first edition of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Transmedia Creatures presents studies of Frankenstein by international scholars from converging disciplines such as humanities, musicology, film studies, television studies, English and digital humanities. These innovative contributions investigate the afterlives of a novel taught in a disparate array of courses - Frankenstein disturbs and transcends boundaries, be they political, ethical, theological, aesthetic, and not least of media, ensuring its vibrant presence in contemporary popular culture. Transmedia Creatures highlights how cultural content is redistributed through multiple media, forms and modes of production (including user-generated ones from “below”) that often appear synchronously and dismantle and renew established readings of the text, while at the same time incorporating and revitalizing aspects that have always been central to it. The authors engage with concepts, value systems and aesthetic-moral categories—among them the family, horror, monstrosity, diversity, education, risk, technology, the body—from a variety of contemporary approaches and highly original perspectives, which yields new connections. Ultimately, Frankenstein, as evidenced by this collection, is paradoxically enriched by the heteroglossia of preconceptions, misreadings, and overreadings that attend it, and that reveal the complex interweaving of perceptions and responses it generates.

Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.



Table of Contents

Abbreviations ix

Introduction: Frankenstein: Presence, Process, Progress
Francesca Saggini

PA R T I
Labs, Bots, and Punks: Transmediating Technology and Science
1 Frankenstein and Science Fiction
Gino Roncaglia
2 Monstrous Algorithms and the Web of Fear: Risk, Crisis, and Spectral Finance in Robert Harris’s The Fear Index
Lidia De Michelis
3 Frankensteinian Gods, Fembots, and the New Technological Frontier in Alex Garland’s Ex_Machina
Eleanor Beal

PA R T I I
Becoming Monsters: The Limits of the Human
4 Staging Steampunk Aesthetics in Frankenstein Adaptations: Mechanization, Disability, and the Body
Claire Nally
5 Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus in the Postcolony
Claudia Gualtieri
6 Four- Color Myth: Frankenstein in the Comics
Federico Meschini

PA RT I I I
The Evolution Games of Sight and Sound
7 “Uncouth and inarticulate sounds”: Musico- Literary Traces in Frankenstein, and Frankenstein in Art Music
Enrico Reggiani
8 Enter Monsieur le Monstre: Cultural Border- Crossing and Frankenstein in London and Paris in 1826
Diego Saglia
9 The Theme of the Doppelgänger in James Searle Dawley’s Frankenstein
Daniele Pio Buenza
10 Perverting the Family: Re- Working Victor Frankenstein’s Gothic Blood- Ties in Penny Dreadful
Ruth Heholt

PA R T I V
Monster Reflections
11 The Masked Performer and “the Mane Electric”: The Lives and Multimedia Afterlives of Margaret Atwood’s Doctor Frankenstein
Janet Larson
12 Young Adult Frankenstein
Andrew McInnes
13 Revivifying Frankenstein’s Myth: Historical Encounters and Dialogism in Back from the Dead:
The True Sequel to Frankenstein
Anna Enrichetta Soccio

Acknowledgments

Bibliography

Index

About the Contributors



About the Author/Editor
FRANCESCA SAGGINI is a professor of English literature at the Università della Tuscia in Viterbo, Italy. She is the author of many books, including The Gothic Novel and the Stage: Romantic Appropriations.

ANNA E. SOCCIO is a professor of English literature at the Università G. d’Annunzio in Chieti, Italy. She is the author of several books, including Come leggere “Hard Times”.


CFP Frankenstein’s Lives: Shelley’s Novel as Cultural Phenomenon (expired)

Profuse apologies for having missed this as well.


Frankenstein’s Lives: Shelley’s Novel as Cultural Phenomenon
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2019/02/21/frankenstein%E2%80%99s-lives-shelley%E2%80%99s-novel-as-cultural-phenomenon

deadline for submissions: May 20, 2019

full name / name of organization:
Robert I. Lublin and Elizabeth Fay

contact email:
robert.lublin@umb.edu

Call for Papers: Frankenstein’s Lives: Shelley’s Novel as Cultural Phenomenon

Co-edited by Robert I. Lublin and Elizabeth Fay

We seek chapter proposals for a collection that celebrates the 200th anniversary of the publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

After 200 years, Frankenstein has emerged into an international cultural phenomenon. During the novel’s bicentennial, events took place around the world to celebrate the novel’s publication. Frankenstein continues to be more salient than ever. We are compiling a collection that explores the range of cultural responses the novel has elicited as well as the ways it continues to be relevant to our world today and to the future.

Frankenstein’s Lives will explore the various ways that the novel has proved to be a cultural touchstone, particularly in moments of stress. For instance, The Living Theatre creatively responded to the politics of the 1960s with their piece of “total theatre,” Frankenstein. Today, more than ever, the novel speaks to us as we encounter an increasingly uncertain world. Recent theatrical revisions have staged the novel in politically trenchant ways. 21st century film versions highlight 21st century fears. The novel also speaks to current political pressures that threaten to tear our world apart. Essays may take a broad range of approaches, so long as they seek to make sense of the cultural phenomenon Frankenstein has become. We welcome critical and creative interventions in our understanding of the novel as a social and cultural phenomenon.



Possible chapter topics:


  • Science Fiction
  • Frankenstein on stage
  • Gender studies
  • Technology
  • Animal studies
  • Food
  • Artistic responses
  • Music
  • Postcolonialism
  • Poststructural philosophy
  • Politics
  • Monstrosity




Please submit a proposal (500 word max) along with a brief bio (50 word max) to both Robert I. Lublin (robert.lublin@umb.edu) and Elizabeth Fay (elizabeth.fay@umb.edu) by May 20, 2019. Final essays should be 6500-9000 words, including notes and citations. Feel free to contact the co-editors if you have any questions.


Last updated February 21, 2019
This CFP has been viewed 2,920 times.



CFP The Scientist in Popular Culture (expired)

My apologies for having missed posting this earlier. It is an intriguing approach to the legacy of Shelley's novel.


Edited Collection - The Scientist in Popular Culture
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2019/08/21/edited-collection-the-scientist-in-popular-culture

deadline for submissions: September 15, 2019

full name / name of organization: Rebecca Janicker, University of Portsmouth
contact email: rebecca.janicker@port.ac.uk


From news and documentaries to TV drama and major media franchises, science has become a firm fixture in contemporary media culture. Across these diverse formats, a fascination with the perceived capacity of science – whether in the guise of medicine, criminology, space science or engineering – to transform life in wonderful and fearful ways endures. The figure of the scientist is science made manifest and, though different variants have evolved over the centuries, the scientist has remained a constant presence in Western culture. The last hundred years or so has seen many developments in science and technology and popular culture has kept abreast of these, portraying scientists that respond to the shifting hopes and fears of eager audiences. Science fiction may work variously to celebrate or denigrate scientific values and activities and many horror fictions have explored the ramifications of dabbling in science and technology. Moreover, the recent flourishing of superhero narratives has meant a strong focus on such characters and scenarios. The imaginary feats and failures, as well as the cultural prominence, of scientists have attained ever-greater heights as a result. Science and scientists have also flourished in other genres, such as forensic drama, police procedurals and true crime narratives, found their way into children’s fictions, and into comedy.

Acknowledging the long and enduring history of fictional scientists, including adaptations and re-imaginings, this planned essay collection seeks to offer critical interrogations of recent portrayals of the scientist as well as fresh insights into long-established characters. Scientists have featured on the big screen from the early days of cinema and held their own on the small for decades, from network television staples and lavish HBO offerings to recent fare on streaming services like Netflix. With this tradition in mind, suggested case studies might include, though are not limited to, the following texts:

Films: Annihilation (2018); Back to the Future (1985); Contact (1997); Deep Blue Sea (1999); Despicable Me (2010); The Fly (1958), The Fly (1986); Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931); Frankenstein,etc (Universal), Curse of Frankenstein, etc (Hammer), I, Frankenstein (2014); Godzilla (1998), Godzilla (2014); Hollow Man (2000); Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989); I Am Legend (2007); The Invisible Man (1933); Island of Lost Souls (1932), The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977), The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996); Jurassic Park (1993), etc; The Man with Two Brains (1983); The Martian (2015); MCU (Black Panther, Deadpool, The Hulk, Iron Man, Spider-Man, Venom,etc); Mimic (1997); The Nutty Professor (1996); The Omega Man (1971); Outbreak (1995); Piranha (1978); Re-Animator (1985); Splice (2009); World War Z (2013); Young Frankenstein (1974); 28 Days Later (2002), plus any prequels, sequels and other franchise entries.

TV: The Alienist; American Horror Story; The Big Bang Theory; Bones; Chernobyl; CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, CSI: Miami, CSI: NY, CSI: Cyber; Dexter; Doctor Who; The Flash; Futurama; Game of Thrones; Hannibal; The O.A.; Penny Dreadful; Rick and Morty; Ripper Street; Sherlock; Silent Witness; The Strain; Stranger Things; Waking the Dead; The Walking Dead; Westworld, plus any spin-offs and other franchise entries.

Potential topics might include: issues of representation (e.g. age, childhood, gender, race, sexuality); genre (e.g. detective fiction, forensic drama, medical drama, police procedurals); Gothic and horror tropes; the role of the scientist in environmental catastrophes and outbreaks; national identity and history; science and ideology (e.g. philosophy, religion, scientism); science in partnership (e.g. business, Government, military, etc)



Advice for Contributors

Please send 250 word abstracts, along with a short bio, to Rebecca.Janicker@port.ac.uk by September 15, 2019. Abstracts should aim to clarify the intended scope and focus of the essay and include a provisional title. Queries are welcome at the same email address.



Publishers have been contacted about the project and abstracts will form part of the written proposal. The final essays will be scholarly and engaging and 7000–8000 words in total.



About the Editor

Rebecca Janicker is a Senior Lecturer in Film and Media Studies at the University of Portsmouth, UK. She received her PhD from the University of Nottingham in 2014 and had her thesis published as The Literary Haunted House: Lovecraft, Matheson, King and the Horror in Between (McFarland, 2015). She is the editor of Reading ‘American Horror Story’: Essays on the Television Franchise (McFarland, 2017) and has published journal articles and book chapters on Gothic and horror in literature and comics, film and TV.



Last updated August 22, 2019


Thursday, September 26, 2019

Monster Force (1994)

Monster Force (1994) is a short-lived animated series from Universal. It sets the studio's famous monsters into the near future year of 2020, where a team of heroes, aided by Frankenstein's Monster, face off against a band of evil monsters lead by Dracula. Of note, the 2020 of Monster Force is a highly advanced era compared to our time, and the show is very much a science fiction series full of advanced technology.

The first seven episodes of the series were released on DVD back in 2009. Here's hoping for a full release next year (when we catch up to the show).



Wednesday, September 25, 2019

Young Frankenstein (1974)

Young Frankenstein (1974), from Gene Wilder and Mel Brooks, is simultaneously a brilliant homage to and send-up of the Universal Frankenstein films. It presents a continuation and recasting of the Frankenstein story that brings a descendant of Victor Frankenstein back to his ancestral home, where (as the musical adaption so matter-of-factly puts it) he joins the family business.


Frankenweenie (1984 and 2012)

Tim Burton's Frankenweenie begin as a short film (1984) and was later remade into a full-length feature (2012). It offers an interesting recasting of the Frankenstein story in its account of the love between a young boy and his pet.



Frankenstein Unbound (1990)

Frankenstein Unbound (1990), a rare science-fictional take on the story, is based on the acclaimed novel of the same name by Brian W. Aldiss. The film (and the novel before it) casts a time traveler from the future back to the year 1817. There he encounters both characters from Frankenstein as well as a young Mary Shelley.


Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994)

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994) offers an interesting adaptation of the novel. It is not a totally faithful retelling but does offer some insight into how such a production might be envisioned.