Counting down to 2024: The sixtieth anniversary of The Munsters, the fiftieth anniversary of Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder's Young Frankenstein, the fortieth anniversary of Tim Burton's original Frankenweenie, the thirtieth anniversary of Kenneth Branagh’s film Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Universal Studios’ television series Monster Force, the twentieth anniversary of Geof Darrow and Steve Skroce’s comic Doc Frankenstein and Stephen Sommers’s film Van Helsing, and the tenth anniversary of Stuart Beattie’s I, Frankenstein.

Saturday, September 30, 2017

PCA Update 9/30

There is one day until the submission deadline for our sponsored session for PCA 2018 on children's and young adult versions of Frankenstein. I am disappointed to report that so far we have received ZERO proposals.

I am assuming the session will not be running.

My thanks to those that have helped spread the word about the call. Your efforts are much appreciated.

We will focus our attention now on promoting NEPCA 2018. Details can be found in the call for papers section of this site.

Michael Torregrossa
Fantastic (Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction) Area Chair

Wednesday, September 20, 2017

Han Cholo's Frankenstein

A quick update, all of the items from ThinkGeek licensed by Universal Studios are part of a larger product line from designer Han Cholo.

You can view all of the items and more at https://www.hancholo.com/collections/monster-lovers.

A Shocking New Discovery?

A final post on ThinkGeek. The retailer has yet another item licensed from Universal Studios. This one is a pin designed to resemble some of the apparatus in the lab of Henry Frankenstein. (That's not a typo; remember Universal reverses the first names of Victor and Henry Clerval.) 

Ordering instructions and full details at: https://www.thinkgeek.com/product/jpkn/.

Frankenstein the Tee-Shirt!

ThinkGeek also offers a cool-looking Frankenstein-inspired tee-shirt. The design features Mary Shelley writing and the Creature (though not a very Shelleyian one) manifesting from her imagination behind her.

A nice design here, BUT it is a woman's only shirt. If that applies to you, ordering instructions can be found at https://www.thinkgeek.com/product/jkhh/.

More from ThinkGeek

In my continued browsing of the ThinkGeek site, I also came across a set of ID bracelets (another licensed product from Universal Studios) with the following description:

You're my favorite monster 
It's important to remember that Mary Shelley never gave her monster a name. It is we who named him Frankenstein after his creator. Frankenstein may be about many things, but one of the topics the story broaches is loneliness - that feeling the monster has that he is the only one of his kind in the world. He needs his own monster to feel kinship in this world.

We know that feeling of not fitting in, and maybe you do, too. Perhaps you also have a special monster in your life, or you are that special monster for someone else. This set of bracelets, reading "His Monster" and "Her Monster," lets you declare both your relationship and your otherworldliness all in one.

More details and ordering instructions at: https://www.thinkgeek.com/product/jpkl/.

Puttin' on the Glitz?

Online retailer ThinkGeek is selling a set of Frankenstein-themed cufflinks this season. The items are officially licensed products from Universal Studios.

The set includes one Frankenstein's Monster and one Bride of Frankenstein.

Ordering instructions at https://www.thinkgeek.com/product/jpkm/.

Sunday, September 10, 2017

CFP Frankenstein 1818 to 2018: 200 Years of Mad Scientists and Monsters: A First Call for Papers (6/1/2018; NEPCA 2018)

Frankenstein 1818 to 2018:

200 Years of Mad Scientists and Monsters

A First Call for Papers



The Fantastic (Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction) Area of the Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association seeks proposals for papers and/or complete sessions to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in 1818 and to celebrate the longevity of her iconic characters of scientist Victor Frankenstein, “the pale student of unhallowed arts,” and his monstrous construct, “the thing he had put together,” as she succinctly describes them in her introduction to the 1831 reissue of the work.

Proposals should explore aspects of the novel as representations of the fantastic and/or the afterlife of the text in later fantastic narratives of any genre or medium in which adaptations have occurred.



Presentations will be part of the conference of the Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association to be held in the fall of 2018.



Please contact area chair Michael A. Torregrossa at FrankensteinandtheFantastic@gmail.com with your proposals in advance of the 1 June 2018 deadline.

Further details and submission instructions will be available at Frankenstein and the Fantastic, an outreach effort of the Fantastic (Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction) Area of the Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association, based at https://frankensteinandthefantastic.blogspot.com/.


Thursday, September 7, 2017

CFP Revisiting 1818 in 2018 (9/30/2017; NeMLA 2018)

Of potential interest:

Revisiting 1818 in 2018
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2017/09/04/revisiting-1818-in-2018

deadline for submissions: September 30, 2017

full name / name of organization: Northeast Modern Languages Association

contact email: richard.johnston@usafa.edu



Call for Papers

Panel: "Revisiting 1818 in 2018"

Northeast Modern Languages Association

12-15 April 2018

Pittsburgh, PA

Richard Johnston, United States Air Force Academy



Panel Description: 1818 is a seminal year in British literary and cultural history. Mary Shelley published Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, and Thomas Love Peacock published another important Gothic novel, Nightmare Abbey. Other notable literary works to appear in 1818 include William Hazlitt’s Lectures on the English Poets, John Keats’ Endymion, Sir Walter Scott’s The Heart of Midlothian, and Percy Shelley’s enduring sonnet “Ozymandias” (as well as Horace Smith’s less-enduring sonnet “Ozymandias,” later retitled “On a Stupendous Leg of Granite.")  In January of that year, Lord Byron sent John Murray the final part of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage; by September, he had written the first canto of Don Juan. Also in January, Samuel Taylor Coleridge delivered a lecture on Hamlet, the first in a series of major lectures on literature and philosophy. In April, Coleridge met Keats; seven months later, Keats met Fanny Brawne. Elsewhere in the arts, the Scottish painter David Wilkie finished The Penny Wedding, and the Besses o’ th’ Barn Band was established near Manchester. Building on the 1816 and 1817 panels at the last two meetings of the Northeast Modern Languages Association, this panel welcomes papers on the literature, culture, and/or enduring legacy of 1818.



Submission Guidelines: Please submit 300-word proposals by 30 September 2017. Proposals must be submitted electronically through the NeMLA website:



http://www.buffalo.edu/nemla/convention/callforpapers/submit.html

The title of this panel is “Revisiting 1818 in 2018,” and the number is 16938.


Questions? Contact Richard Johnston at Richard.Johnston@usafa.edu.


Last updated September 6, 2017

CFP Bicentenary Conference on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (11/1/2017; Venice 2/21-22/2017)

Sorry to have missed this; the search engine for the U Penn CFP is a bit buggy:


The Bicentenary Conference on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2017/08/18/the-bicentenary-conference-on-mary-shelleys-frankenstein

deadline for submissions: November 1, 2017

full name / name of organization: University of Venice, Italy

contact email: maria.parrino@unive.it



Call for papers

International Conference, Venice, 21-22 February 2018

University of Venice – Cà Foscari



The Bicentenary Conference on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

Ever since Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was first published (1818), the story of the scientist and the Creature has been constantly and widely told, discussed, adapted, filmed, and translated, making generations of readers approach the novel in an extraordinary variety of ways and languages. The myth of the ‘modern Prometheus’ which Mary Shelley invented has been passed down throughout the centuries and morphed into countless shapes and figures contributing to the enhancement of the original text.

If first-time readers are surprised to discover that Frankenstein is not the name of the monster, and that in fact the monster has no name, all readers are given the opportunity to discover that the novel is a sort of encyclopedia, a text which explores different disciplines, from science to sociology, from psychology to medicine, from history to geography. Moreover, the numerous critical approaches to the text, varying from psychoanalytic, Marxist, feminist, deconstructionist, to ecocritic, all point out the multi-faceted features of the novel.

Although it is difficult to add new and original interpretations of Frankenstein, the pressure and the pleasure to celebrate the novel remains strong and authentic. In this spirit, the conference welcomes participants to share old and new interpretations, and contributes to the promotion of the worldwide events which will be held in 2018, all paying tribute to what is unarguably one of the most famous novels in world literature. When Mary Shelley, in her long Introduction to the1831 edition, wrote about the ‘invention’ of Frankenstein, she did not know that two hundred years later others would enjoy ‘moulding and fashioning’ her original idea, fulfilling the writer’s wish for her ‘hideous progeny [to] go forth and prosper’.

This conference aims to explore, analyse, and debate Mary Shelley’s novel and bicentenary, its reception in European culture and its influence on the media.

Possible topics include but are not limited to:

  • Frankenstein: the 1818 and 1831 version
  • Mary Shelley’s biography
  • Frankenstein and translations
  • Frankenstein and multilingualism
  • Multicultural Frankenstein
  • Frankenstein and the visual arts
  • Frankenstein and films
  • Frankenstein and adaptations
  • The reception of Frankenstein
  • Teaching Frankenstein
  • Publishing Frankenstein


Papers may be given in English, Italian, French and Spanish. Please send 200 words abstract for a 20-minute paper to Michela Vanon Alliata, Alessandro Scarsella and Maria Parrino at frankensteinvenice@libero.it by 1 November 2017.



Scientific committee

Michela Vanon Alliata, Università di Venezia

Alessandro Scarsella, Università di Venezia

Maria Parrino, Università di Venezia


Last updated August 21, 2017

Sunday, September 3, 2017

CFP 200 Years of the Fantastic: Celebrating Frankenstein and Mary Shelley (10/31/2017; ICFA 3/14-18/2018)

Finally available:

CfP: “200 Years of the Fantastic: Celebrating Frankenstein and Mary Shelley,” ICFA 39, March 14-18, 2018
https://www.fantastic-arts.org/2017/cfp-200-years-of-the-fantastic-celebrating-frankenstein-and-mary-shelley-icfa-39-march-14-18-2018/
Posted on August 25, 2017 by Skye Cervone

Please join us for ICFA 39, March 14-18, 2018, when our theme will be “200 Years of the Fantastic: Celebrating Frankenstein and Mary Shelley.”

We welcome papers on the work of: Guest of Honor John Kessel (Nebula, Locus and Tiptree Award winner), Guest of Honor Nike Sulway (Tiptree and Queensland award winner; nominee for Aurealis and Crawford awards), and Guest Scholar Fred Botting (Professor, Kingston University London; author of Making Monstrous: “Frankenstein”, Criticism, Theory; Gothic; and Limits of Horror).

Mary Shelley and her Creature have had a pervasive influence on the fantastic. Brian Aldiss famously proclaimed Frankenstein as the first science fiction novel, fusing the investigation of science with the Gothic mode. Its myriad adaptation on stage, in film and beyond have continually reinvented Shelley’s tale for contemporary audiences, from James Whale’s iconic 1931 film through Showtime’s Penny Dreadful (2014-16). Frankenstein exists in many avatars and many languages. Its central invention of the scientifically created being has become a staple of the fantastic imaginary from Asimov’s robots through Ava in Ex Machina (Alex Garland 2014) or Samantha in Her (Spike Jonze 2013). Shelley Jackson’s early hypertext Patchwork Girl (1995) and Danny Boyle’s innovatively staged version of Nick Dear’s play both shows us how Frankenstein continues to push us toward innovations in form, while the novel’s interest in themes of scientific responsibility, social isolation, and gender inequality remain sharply relevant. We invite papers that explore the many legacies of Frankenstein on fantastic genres, characters, images and modes, especially those that explore the ongoing importance of women’s contributions to them, beginning with Mary Shelley. We also welcome proposals for individual papers, academic sessions, creative presentations, and panels on any aspect of the fantastic in any media.

The deadline for proposals is October 31, 2017. We encourage work from institutionally affiliated scholars, independent scholars, international scholars who work in languages other than English, graduate students, and artists.

To submit a proposal, go to http://www.fantastic-arts.org/icfa-submissions/.

To contact the Division Heads for help with submissions, go to http://www.fantastic-arts.org/annual-conference/division-heads.

To download a copy of the CfP, please click here.

CFP The Frankenstein Story in Children’s and Young Adult Culture (10/1/2017; PCA 2018)

Pleased to announce our sponsored session for PCA:

Friend or Fiend?
The Frankenstein Story in Children’s and Young Adult Culture

A Special Session of the Children’s and YA Literature and Culture Area of the Popular Culture Association

Sponsored by Frankenstein and the Fantastic, an outreach effort of the Fantastic (Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction) Area of the Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association

For the 2018 Annual Conference of the Popular Culture Association meeting in Indianapolis, Indiana, from 28-31 March 2018

Proposals no later than 1 October 2017


Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein celebrates its 200th anniversary in 2018. It is a work that has permeated popular culture, appearing in versions found across the globe, in all known media, and for all age groups. However, many aspects of this tradition remain underexplored by scholars. One of these is how the story and its characters have manifested in children’s and young adult culture.

Like Frankensteiniana for older audiences, versions of the story for young audiences offer interesting and important approaches to the novel and its textual progeny, and they deserve to be better known and analyzed, especially since, for many, works designed for the young represent their first encounters with Frankenstein and its characters.

Criticism on these works remains limited; though a growing number of scholars (see the selected bibliography appended to this call) have begun to offer more in the way of critical analysis, as opposed to just seeing them as curiosities. It is our hope that this session will continue this trend and foster further discussion and debate on these texts

In this session, we seek proposals that explore representations of Frankenstein, its story, and/or its characters in children’s and young adult culture. We are especially interested in how the Creature is received in these works, especially by children and young adult characters, but other approaches (and comments on other characters) are also valid.



SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS:

Please submit paper proposals (100 to 200 words) and a short biographic statement into the PCA Database by 1 October 2017. The site is accessible at https://conference.pcaaca.org/. Do include your university affiliation if you have one, your email address, your telephone number, and your audio-visual needs.

Upon submission, be sure, also, to send your details to the organizers (Michael A. Torregrossa, Fantastic [Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction] Area Chair, and Amie Doughty, Children’s and YA Literature and Culture Area Chair) at FrankensteinandtheFantastic@gmail.com, notifying them of your intentions to serve on the panel. Please use the subject “Frankenstein at PCA”.

Presentations at the conference will be limited to 15 to 20 minutes, depending on final panel size.

Do address any inquiries about the session to FrankensteinandtheFantastic@gmail.com.


Further details on the Frankenstein and the Fantastic project can be accessed at https://frankensteinandthefantastic.blogspot.com/.

Further details on the Children’s and YA Literature and Culture Area can be found at http://pcaaca.org/childrens-literature-culture/.


Additional Information to Note:

The Popular Culture Association does not allow submissions to multiple areas and limits presenters to one paper per conference. (Further information on these policies appears at http://pcaaca.org/national-conference/proposing-a-presentation-at-the-conference/rules-exceptions-for-presenting/.)

Accepted presenters must register AND be members of the Popular Culture Association or join for 2018. (Details can be found at http://pcaaca.org/national-conference/membership-and-registration/.)

The Popular Culture Association does offer a limited number of travel grants for the conference; nevertheless, potential presenters, when submitting their proposal, should be sure to have the necessary funds to attend the conference, as no shows are noted.



SUGGESTED BIBLIOGRAPHY:

(please send details on additional references to FrankensteinandtheFantastic@gmail.com)

Coats, Karen, and Farran Norris Sands. “Growing Up Frankenstein: Adaptations for Young Readers.” The Cambridge Companion to Frankenstein, edited by Andrew Smith, Cambridge UP, 2016, pp. 241-55.


Hawley Erin. “The Bride and Her Afterlife: Female Frankenstein Monsters on Page and Screen.” Literature/Film Quarterly, Vol. 43, No. 3, pp. 218-231.

- - -. “ ‘Children Should Play with Dead Things’: Transforming Frankenstein in Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie.” Refractory, Vol. 26, October 2015. http://refractory.unimelb.edu.au/2015/10/07/hawley/

- - -. “Reimagining the Horror Genre in Children’s Animated Film.” M / C Journal, Vol. 18, No. 6, 2015. http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/1033


Hitchcock, Susan Tyler. Frankenstein: A Cultural History. W. W. Norton, 2007,


Jowett, Lorna, and Stacey Abbott. TV Horror: Investigating the Dark Side of the Small Screen. I. B. Tauris, 2013. (see especially “ ‘Show Us Your Fangs!’: Children’s Television,” pp. 26-30)








Monday, August 14, 2017

Frankenstein (1818): The Norton Critical Edition

Frankenstein, Second Edition
Norton Critical Editions
Mary Shelley (Author), J. Paul Hunter (Editor, University of Chicago)
http://books.wwnorton.com/books/webad.aspx?id=21895

Paperback
Book Details
Retail: $17.50
December 2011
ISBN: 978-0-393-92793-1
544 pages



Description:

The best-selling student edition on the market, now available in a Second Edition.

Almost two centuries after its publication, Frankenstein remains an indisputably classic text and Mary Shelley’s finest work.

This extensively revised Norton Critical Edition includes new texts and illustrative materials that convey the enduring global conversation about Frankenstein and its author. The text is that of the 1818 first edition, published in three volumes by Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, and Jones. It is accompanied by an expansive new preface, explanatory annotations, a map of Geneva and its environs, and seven illustrations, five of them new to the Second Edition.

Context is provided in three supporting sections: “Circumstance, Influence, Composition, Revision,” “Reception, Impact, Adaptation,” and “Sources, Influences, Analogues.” Among the Second Edition’s new inclusions are historical-cultural studies by Susan Tyler Hitchcock, William St. Clair, and Elizabeth Young; Chris Baldrick on the novel’s reception; and David Pirie on the novel’s many film adaptations. Related excerpts from the Bible and from John Milton’s Paradise Lost are now included, as is Charles Lamb’s poem “The Old Familiar Faces.”

“Criticism” collects sixteen major interpretations of Frankenstein, nine of them new to the Second Edition. The new contributors are Peter Brooks, Bette London, Garrett Stewart, James. A. W. Heffernan, Patrick Brantlinger, Jonathan Bate, Anne Mellor, Jane Goodall, and Christa Knellwolf.

A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.



Contents

List of Illustrations

Introduction

The Text of Frankenstein

map: Geneva and Its Environs

Title page (1818)

Dedication (1818)

Preface

Frankenstein


Contexts

CIRCUMSTANCE, INFLUENCE, COMPOSITION, REVISION
  • Mary Shelley • Introduction to Frankenstein, Third Edition (1831)
  • John William Polidori • Letter Prefaced to The Vampyre (1819)
  • M. K. Joseph • The Composition of Frankenstein
  • Chris Baldick • [Assembling Frankenstein]
  • Richard Holmes • [Mary Shelley and the Power of Contemporary Science]
  • Christa Knellwolf and Jane Goodall • [The Significance of Place: Ingolstadt]
  • Charles E. Robinson • Texts in Search of an Editor: Reflections on The Frankenstein Notebooks and on Editorial Authority
  • Anne K. Mellor • Choosing a Text of Frankenstein to Teach

RECEPTION, IMPACT, ADAPTATION
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley • On Frankenstein
  • [John Croker] • From the Quarterly Review (January 1818)
  • Sir Walter Scott • From Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (March 1818)
  • Edinburgh Magazine • [On Frankenstein] (March 1818)
  • Gentleman’s Magazine • [On Frankenstein] (April 1818)
  • Knight’s Quarterly • [On Frankenstein] (August–November 1824)
  • Hugh Reginald Haweis • Introduction to the Routledge World Library Edition (1886)
  • Chris Baldick • [The Reception of Frankenstein]
  • William St. Clair • [Frankenstein’s Impact]
  • Susan Tyler Hitchcock • [The Monster Lives On]
  • Elizabeth Young • [Frankenstein as Historical Metaphor]
  • David Pirie • Approaches to Frankenstein [in Film]

SOURCES, INFLUENCES, ANALOGUES
  • The Book of Genesis • [Biblical Account of Creation]
  • John Milton • From Paradise Lost
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mont Blanc (1816)
  • [The Sea of Ice] (1817)
  • Mutability
  • George Gordon, Lord Byron • Prometheus
  • Darkness
  • From Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto III (1816)
  • Charles Lamb • The Old Familiar Faces 

Criticism

George Levine • Frankenstein and the Tradition of Realism

Ellen Moers • Female Gothic: The Monster’s Mother

Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar • Mary Shelley’s Monstrous Eve

Mary Poovey • “My Hideous Progeny”: The Lady and the Monster

Anne K. Mellor • Possessing Nature: The Female in Frankenstein

Peter Brooks • What Is a Monster? (According to Frankenstein)

Bette London • Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, and the Spectacle of Masculinity

Marilyn Butler • Frankenstein and Radical Science

Lawrence Lipking • Frankenstein, the True Story; or, Rousseau Judges Jean-Jacques

Garrett Stewart • In the Absence of Audience: Of Reading and Dread in Mary Shelley

James A. W. Heffernan • Looking at the Monster: Frankenstein and Film

Patrick Brantlinger • The Reading Monster

Jonathan Bate • [Frankenstein and the State of Nature]

Anne K. Mellor • Frankenstein, Racial Science, and the Yellow Peril

Jane Goodall • Electrical Romanticism

Christa Knellwolf • Geographic Boundaries and Inner Space: Frankenstein, Scientific Exploration, and the Quest for the Absolute


Mary Shelley: A Chronology

Selected Bibliography


Glut's The Frankenstein Archive

From the master of Frankensteiniana:

The Frankenstein Archive: Essays on the Monster, the Myth, the Movies, and More
Donald F. Glut
http://www.mcfarlandbooks.com/book-2.php?id=978-0-7864-1353-9

Price: $35.00
Print ISBN: 978-0-7864-1353-9
Ebook ISBN: 978-0-7864-8069-2
55 photos, index
233pp. softcover (6 x 9) 2002
Available for immediate shipment


About the Book

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s classic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus, first published in 1818, started a phenomeon that has survived the years and permeated many aspects of popular culture. It has spawned numerous films, television programs, books, comics, stage presentations, and the like, and continues to do so today.

Like the Frankenstein Monster, this work is made up of many individual parts, some of which are quite different in their specific themes, but all of which relate to Frankenstein in some way. They consider the untold true story of Frankenstein, Glenn Strange’s portrayals of the Monster, the portrayals of lesser-known actors who played the character, Peter Cushing and his role as Baron (and Dr.) Frankenstein, the classic film Young Frankenstein co-written by Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder (who also starred in it), the battles between do-gooders and the Monster and other horror figures, Frankenstein in cartoons—and much more.

Each of the 15 essays, all written by the author, is prefaced with explanatory notes that place the essay in its historical perspective, comment on its origin and content, and where appropriate, supplement the text with new, additional, or otherwise relevant information. Richly illustrated.



Table of Contents

Preface 1

1 Frankenstein: The (Untold) True Story 5

2 The "Strange" Frankenstein Monster 34

3 A Forgotten Frankenstein? 49

4 Peter Cushing: "Dr. Frankenstein, I Presume" 58

5 Young Frankenstein--Classic in the Making 66

6 Super-Heroes vs. Frankenstein (and Company) 81

7 "What’s Up, Doc Frankenstein (Jekyll and Fu Manchu)?" 96

8 The Beatles Meet Frankenstein 112

9 A Score of Frankenstein Misconceptions 117

10 Frankenstein on the Home-Movie Screen 138

11 "This Is Your Life, Frankenstein’s Monster" 152

12 Frankenstein Sings-and Dances, Too 157

13 Frankenstein in Four Colors 164

14 The Monster of Frankenstein (Almost) Returns 189

15 The New Adventures of Frankenstein 202

Index 217



About the Author

Donald F. Glut is a prolific book and article writer, and movie producer-director. He is the president of Frontline Entertainment and lives in Burbank, California.


Friedman and Kavey's Monstrous Progeny

Monstrous Progeny: A History of the Frankenstein Narratives
By Lester D. Friedman, Allison B. Kavey
https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/monstrous-progeny/9780813564234




256 pages, 37 photographs, 152.4 x 228.6

Paperback,August 1, 2016,$27.95
978-0-8135-6423-4

Cloth Over Boards,August 1, 2016,$90.00
978-0-8135-6424-1

PDF,August 1, 2016,$27.95
978-0-8135-6425-8

EPUB,August 1, 2016,$27.95
978-0-8135-7370-0


About This Book

Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein is its own type of monster mythos that will not die, a corpus whose parts keep getting harvested to animate new artistic creations. What makes this tale so adaptable and so resilient that, nearly 200 years later, it remains vitally relevant in a culture radically different from the one that spawned its birth?

Monstrous Progeny takes readers on a fascinating exploration of the Frankenstein family tree, tracing the literary and intellectual roots of Shelley’s novel from the sixteenth century and analyzing the evolution of the book’s figures and themes into modern productions that range from children’s cartoons to pornography. Along the way, media scholar Lester D. Friedman and historian Allison B. Kavey examine the adaptation and evolution of Victor Frankenstein and his monster across different genres and in different eras. In doing so, they demonstrate how Shelley’s tale and its characters continue to provide crucial reference points for current debates about bioethics, artificial intelligence, cyborg lifeforms, and the limits of scientific progress.

Blending an extensive historical overview with a detailed analysis of key texts, the authors reveal how the Frankenstein legacy arose from a series of fluid intellectual contexts and continues to pulsate through an extraordinary body of media products. Both thought-provoking and entertaining, Monstrous Progeny offers a lively look at an undying and significant cultural phenomenon.


Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Singing the Body Electric

1 In a Country of Eternal Light: Frankenstein’s Intellectual History

2 The Instruments of Life: Frankenstein’s Medical History

3 A More Horrid Contrast: From the Page to the Stage

4 It’s Still Alive: The Universal and Hammer Movie Cycles

5 The House of Frankenstein: Mary Shelley’s Step Children

6 Fifty Ways to Leave Your Monster

Notes

Select Bibliography

Index



About the Authors

LESTER D. FRIEDMAN is a professor and former chair of the Media and Society Program at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York. He is the author, coauthor, or editor of over twenty books including American Cinema of the 1970s (Rutgers University Press) and the forthcoming, Tough Ain’t Enough.

ALLISON B. KAVEY is an associate professor of early modern history at CUNY John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the CUNY Graduate Center in New York, New York. She is the author, coauthor, or editor of several books including Second Star to the Right: Peter Pan in the Cultural Imagination, co-edited with Friedman (Rutgers University Press).


Sunday, August 13, 2017

Picart on Frankenstein from 2003

A final one for the night:

Remaking the Frankenstein Myth on Film: Between Laughter and Horror
Caroline Joan S. Picart - Author
SUNY series in Psychoanalysis and Culture
http://www.sunypress.edu/p-3777-remaking-the-frankenstein-myth-.aspx

Hardcover - 268 pages
Release Date: July 2003
ISBN10: 0-7914-5769-9
ISBN13: 978-0-7914-5769-6

Price: $33.95 (listed as Out of Print)
Paperback - 268 pages
Release Date: July 2003
ISBN10: 0-7914-5770-2
ISBN13: 978-0-7914-5770-2

Available as a Google eBook for other eReaders and tablet devices.


Summary 

Explores how filmmakers and screenwriters have used comedy and science fiction to extend the boundaries of the Frankenstein narrative.

Focusing on films outside the horror genre, this book offers a unique account of the Frankenstein myth's popularity and endurance. Although the Frankenstein narrative has been a staple in horror films, it has also crossed over into other genres, particularly comedy and science fiction, resulting in such films as Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Young Frankenstein, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Bladerunner, and the Alien and Terminator film series. In addition to addressing horror's relationship to comedy and science fiction, the book also explores the versatility and power of the Frankenstein narrative as a contemporary myth through which our deepest attitudes concerning gender (masculine versus feminine), race (Same versus Other), and technology (natural versus artificial) are both revealed and concealed. The book not only examines the films themselves, but also explores early drafts of film scripts, scenes that were cut from the final releases, publicity materials, and reviews, in order to consider more fully how and why the Frankenstein myth continues to resonate in the popular imagination.

“…invites readers to explore an innovative take on horror film genres and gender. Picart’s exploration of the three shadows as well as her claim that hybrid forms of horror create opportunities for empowerment pose for the interested reader a challenge: to expand and adapt her insights in our own hybrid explorations of gender and film.” — Women and Language

"Picart tells a story of the story of every film in a gifted way; this takes talent, as well as a thorough familiarity with the films and a genuine enthusiasm for them." — Joseph Natoli, author of Memory's Orbit: Film and Culture 1999–2000

"Picart displays an assurance and command of a complex historical and critical field, which she handles with considerable focus and lucidity. She argues that the fairly rigid sexual politics of the earlier, classic Frankenstein films give way to a more complex set of visions when taken up in various comic and science fiction treatments. Her work is more than a mere commentary on earlier scholarship—it is a real advance and stands on its own as the book to read." — Thomas W. Benson, coauthor of Reality Fictions: The Films of Frederick Wiseman

Caroline Joan S. Picart is Assistant Professor of English and Humanities and Courtesy Assistant Professor of Law at Florida State University. She is the author of The Cinematic Rebirths of Frankenstein: Universal, Hammer, and Beyond and the coauthor (with Frank Smoot and Jayne Blodgett) of The Frankenstein Film Sourcebook.



Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

1. Frankenstein as Enduring Cinemyth

2. (Un)Leashing Laughter: Gender, Power, and Humor

3. Daemonic Dread

4. On the Edge of Terror and Humor

5. Postmodern Horror-Hilarity

Notes

Bibliography

About the Author

Index




Picart on Film from 2001

More for the bookshelf:

The Cinematic Rebirths of Frankenstein: Universal, Hammer, and Beyond
by Caroline Joan (Kay) S. Picart
http://www.abc-clio.com/ABC-CLIOCorporate/product.aspx?pc=C3941C


Showcases the versatility of the Frankenstein myth as expressed in the horror genre and provides a sustained critical analysis of the story's evolution over many decades, many studios, and many different styles of filmmaking.

October 2001
Praeger
Pages: 240
Volumes: 1
Size: 6 1/8x9 1/4
Topics: Popular Culture/Film

Hardcover
978-0-275-97363-6
$84.00


Description

The Frankenstein narrative is one of cinema's most durable, and it is often utilized by the studio system and the most renegade independents alike to reveal our deepest aspirations and greatest anxieties. The films have concerned themselves with demarcations of gender, race, and technology, and this new study aims to critique the more traditional interpretations of both the narrative and its sustained popularity. From James Whale's Frankenstein (1931) through Kenneth Branagh's Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994), the story remains a nuanced and ultimately ambivalent one and is discussed here in all of its myriad terms: aesthetic, cultural, psychological, and mythic.

Beginning with an examination of the narrative's origins in the myth of the birth of Dionysus from the thigh of Zeus, The Cinematic Rebirths of Frankenstein goes on to consider each of the film's many incarnations, from the Universal horror films of the thirties through the British Hammer series and beyond. Moving easily between the scholarly and the popular, the book employs both primary texts-including scripts, posters, and documentation of production histories-and a rigorous, scholarly examination of the many implications of this often-misunderstood subgenre of horror cinema.


Contents:

Preface

Introduction

Envisaging the Monstrous

The Universal Series

Beyond the Universal and Hammer Series

Mythic (Im)Mortality

BibliographyIndex


For the bookshelf: The Frankenstein Film Sourcebook

A valuable resource:

The
Frankenstein Film Sourcebook
by Caroline Joan (Kay) S. Picart, Frank Smoot, Jayne Blodgett
http://www.abc-clio.com/ABC-CLIOCorporate/product.aspx?pc=B3656C



A compilation of primary and secondary information on the numerous and multifarious film incarnations of the Frankenstein narrative, ranging across horror, comedy, science fiction, pornography, and animation.


June 2001
Greenwood
Pages: 368
Volumes: 1
Size: 6 1/8x9 1/4
Topics: Popular Culture/Film

Hardcover
978-0-313-31350-9
$75.00

eBook
978-0-313-01672-1
eBook Available from ABC-CLIO


Description

The endurance of the Frankenstein narrative as a modern cinematic myth is undeniable. Its flexibility has produced classic and contemporary horror film-most notably the Universal films of the thirties-but it has also resulted in unusual hybrids, such as musical horror-comedy (The Rocky Horror Picture Show), hyperbolic parody (Flesh for Frankenstein), and science fiction (the Alien and Terminator series). This sourcebook provides a complete guide to all of the story's filmic incarnations-including essential information such as cast, creative personnel, and plot summaries-and also guides the reader to relevant primary texts such as scripts, posters, production histories, and newspaper clippings. Utilizing an approach that is both popular and scholarly, and including spotlight essays that deal with contemporary academic approaches to the subject, The Frankenstein Film Sourcebook reveals the depth of the cinematic range of interpretations of a classic modern myth.

Comprehensive in its scope, The Frankenstein Film Sourcebook provides an alphabetical guide to two hundred films that incorporate the Frankenstein narrative. It also delves into both primary and secondary perspectives and includes discussions of aspects of the films, such as their depiction of women, which is relevant to current scholarly critiques.


Contents

Foreword by Noël Carroll

Introduction by Caroline Joan S. Picart

A Note on the Entries

An Alphabetical Listing of Frankenstein Films

Appendix One: General Texts on Frankenstein Films

Appendix Two: "Body Parts" Films

Appendix Three: "Re-Animation" Films



Must Read: The Endurance of Frankenstein

The work that begin the discipline of Frankenstein Studies in 1979:

The Endurance of Frankenstein: Essays on Mary Shelley's Novel
George Levine (Editor), U. C. Knoepflmacher (Editor)
http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520046405

Available worldwide
Paperback, 362 pages
ISBN: 9780520046405
May 1982
$33.95, £27.95


Description:

MARY SHELLEY's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus grew out of a parlor game and a nightmare vision. The story of the book's origin is a famous one, first told in the introduction Mary Shelley wrote for the 1831 edition of the novel. The two Shelleys, Byron, Mary's stepsister Claire Clairmont, and John William Polidori (Byron's physician) spent a "wet, ungenial summer in the Swiss Alps." Byron suggested that "each write a ghost story." If one is to trust Mary Shelley's account (and James Rieger has shown the untrustworthiness of its chronology and particulars), only she and "poor Polidori" took the contest seriously. The two "illustrious poets," according to her, "annoyed by the platitude of prose, speedily relinquished their uncongenial task." Polidori, too, is made to seem careless, unable to handle his story of a "skull-headed lady." Though Mary Shelley is just as deprecating when she speaks of her own "tiresome unlucky ghost story," she also suggests that its sources went deeper. Her truant muse became active as soon as she fastened on the "idea" of "making only a transcript of the grim terrors of my waking dream": "'I have found it! What terrified me will terrify others."' The twelve essays in this collection attest to the endurance of Mary Shelley's "waking dream." Appropriately, though less romantically, this book also grew out of a playful conversation at a party. When several of the contributors to this book discovered that they were all closet aficionados of Mary Shelley's novel, they decided that a book might be written in which each contributor-contestant might try to account for the persistent hold that Frankenstein continues to exercise on the popular imagination. Within a few months, two films--Warhol's Frankenstein and Mel Brooks's Young Frankenstein--and the Hall-Landau and Isherwood-Bachardy television versions of the novel appeared to remind us of our blunted purpose. These manifestations were an auspicious sign and resulted in the book Endurance of Frankenstein.



Contents:

Detailed contents list from WorldCat (http://www.worldcat.org/title/endurance-of-frankenstein-essays-on-mary-shelleys-novel/oclc/5133230), the press's website only presents the major sections.

List of Illustrations

Preface

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley and Frankenstein: A Chronology

[Part I. Traditions : looking forwards and backwards] Ambiguous heritage of Frankenstein / George Levine. Frankenstein as mystery play / Judith Wilt. Fire and ice in Frankenstein / Andrew Griffin --

[Part II. Biographical soundings : of mothers and daughters] Female Gothic / Ellen Moers. Thoughts on the aggression of daughters / U.C. Knoepflmacher --

[Part III. Contexts : society and self] Monsters in the garden : Mary Shelley and the bourgeois family / Kate Ellis. Mary Shelley's monster : politics and psyche in Frankenstein / Lee Sterrenburg. Vital artifice : Mary, Percy, and the psychopolitical integrity of Frankenstein / Peter Dale Scott --

[Part IV. Texture : language and the grotesque] "Godlike science / unhallowed arts" : language, nature and monstrosity / Peter Brooks. Frankenstein and comedy / Philip Stevick --

[Part V. Visual progeny : drama and film] Stage and film children of Frankenstein : a survey / Albert J. Lavalley. Coming to life : Frankenstein and the nature of film narrative / William Nestrick.

Appendix: "Face to face" : of man-apes, monsters, and readers.

Contributors
Selected Annotated Bibliography
Index

Essential Resource: Approaches to Teaching Shelley’s Frankenstein

Approaches to Teaching Shelley’s Frankenstein
Editor: Stephen C. Behrendt
https://www.mla.org/Publications/Bookstore/Approaches-to-Teaching-World-Literature/Approaches-to-Teaching-Shelley-s-Frankenstein

Pages: x & 190 pp.
Published: 1990
Approaches to Teaching World Literature
ISBN: 9780873525398 (Cloth)
ISBN: 9780873525404 (Paperback)


Description

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is both a literary work very much rooted in its age and a cultural artifact that transcends period. “Undeniably one of the great and influential works of the English Romantic period,” writes the editor, Stephen C. Behrendt, the novel provides “an excellent vehicle for introducing students to the complexities of Romantic art and thought.” At the same time, as this volume demonstrates, Frankenstein is often studied in college and secondary school courses focusing not on Romanticism but on science fiction, Gothic fiction, women’s literature, or film and popular culture.

The book, like others in the MLA’s Approaches to Teaching World Literature series, is divided into two parts. The first part, “Materials,” reviews editions of Frankenstein, discusses reference and critical works and recommended reading for students, and lists selected film versions of the novel. In the second part, “Approaches,” instructors present classroom strategies for teaching the novel. The essays are divided into four groupings: general issues (e.g., choosing a text, gender and pedagogy, language and style), contexts of study (e.g., biography, Romanticism), course contexts (e.g., science fiction, women’s studies, composition), and Frankenstein and film.


No contents list available.


Friday, August 11, 2017

CFP Organic Machines/Engineered Humans: (Re)Defining Humanity (Spring 2018 issue of Interdisciplinary Humanities) (11/15/2017)

Of related interest:

Organic Machines/Engineered Humans: (Re)Defining Humanity
Spring 2018 issue of Interdisciplinary Humanities
Announcement published by Dore' Ripley on Monday, August 7, 2017
https://networks.h-net.org/node/73374/announcements/189910/spring-2018-issue-interdisciplinary-humanities
(and additional information from http://www.h-e-r-a.org/hera_call.htm)

Type: Call for Papers
Date: November 15, 2017

From E.T.A Hoffmann’s Tales of Hoffmann and Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep to Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot and Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End authors have been exploring the human/machine interface since before the computer age. Today we stand on the threshold to the lab as the government contemplates microchipping all U.S. military personnel and Swedish office workers are already implanting themselves for convenience ala M.T. Anderson's Feed. A 2014 study conducted by Cisco Systems found approximately one-quarter of the white-collar professionals surveyed “would leap at the chance to get a surgical brain implant that allowed them to instantly link their thoughts to the Internet”. We are already experimenting with gene therapy, cybernetics via cochlear implants and many other technical organic enhancements, autonomous self-replicating robots, nanotechnology, mind uploading, and artificial intelligence.

The Spring 2018 edition of Interdisciplinary Humanities wants to consider topics focused on transhumanism, the singularity, and the arrival of the bio-engineered human/machine interface and what it means for the humanities as we redefine identity, pedagogy, humanity, class structure, literature (past, present, and future) and the diversity of our species. We invite papers in disciplines and areas of study. Multiple disciplines will help us understand and grapple with how we will redefine identity and the diversity of our species through the dynamic interplay of humanity and the acceleration of technology.

The Humanities Education and Research Association, Interdisciplinary Humanities’ parent organization, requires that authors become members of HERA if their essays are accepted for publication. Information on membership may be found at:http://www.h-e-r-a.org/hera_join.htm.


Contact Info:

For more information contact: Doré' Ripley, HERA (Humanities Education and Research Association)

Contact Email: dore.ripley@gmail.com
URL: http://www.h-e-r-a.org/hera_call.htm

Tuesday, July 11, 2017

Frankenstein Editions: 1818 in Oxford World's Classics Series

Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus: The 1818 Text
By Mary Shelley
Edited with an introduction by Marilyn Butler
Oxford World's Classics
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/frankenstein-or-the-modern-prometheus-9780199537150?lang=en&cc=us#

Paperback ($8.95)
Published: 01 May 2009
328 Pages
ISBN: 9780199537150


Key features
  • Based on the harder and wittier 1818 version of the text. 
  • Draws on new research and examines the novel in the context of the controversial radical sciences developing in the years following the Napoleonic Wars. 
  • Shows the relationship of Frankenstein's experiment to the contemporary debate between champions of materialistic science and proponents of received religion.
 
Description 
 
Shelley's enduringly popular and rich gothic tale, Frankenstein, confronts some of the most feared innovations of evolutionism and science--topics such as degeneracy, hereditary disease, and humankind's ability to act as creator of the modern world. This new edition, based on the harder and wittier 1818 version of the text, draws on new research and examines the novel in the context of the controversial radical sciences developing in the years following the Napoleonic Wars. In addition it shows the relationship of Frankenstein's experiment to the contemporary debate between champions of materialistic science and proponents of received religion.



Frankenstein Editions: 1831 Edition in Oxford World's Classics

Continuing to get information on all standard editions of Frankenstein into the blog. Here is the first of two from Oxford University Press.

Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus
By Mary Shelley
Edited with an Introduction and Notes by the late M. K. Joseph
Oxford World's Classics
264 Pages
6-1/8 x 9-1/4 inches
ISBN: 9780199537167

Also Available As: Ebook


Shelley's suspenseful and intellectually rich gothic tale confronts some of the most important and enduring themes in all of literature--the power of human imagination, the potential hubris of science, the gulf between appearance and essence, the effects of human cruelty, the desire for revenge and the need for forgiveness, and much more.



Frankenstein at the Huntington

The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California, includes the following event on its calendar (http://www.huntington.org/WebAssets/Templates/content.aspx?id=11160) for 2018. Further details will be posted as they become available.

May 11-12, 2018
Frankenstein Then and Now, 1818-2018
Conveners: Jerrold Hogle (University of Arizona) and Anne Mellor (UCLA)

Fisch's Frankenstein: Icon of Modern Culture

The looks comparable to Hitchcock's book in term of offering a comprehensive history of the Frankenstein tradition, but the sections are broken into smaller units and (I think) it has more illustrations. Sadly, it appears out of print. 

Frankenstein: Icon of Modern Culture
http://www.helm-information.co.uk/frankenstein.htm
Audrey A. Fisch
Series: Icons of Modern Culture

Helm Information



Books details:

978-1-903206-20-1
320pp
55 illustrations
RRP £38
April 2009


Description:

This is the fifth book in the Icons of Modern Culture series. Children and adults the world over know the lumbering, overlarge figure with the green face and bolts in his head. How did the Halloween staple known as "Frankenstein" emerge out of the anonymous novel by a "young girl," published in 1818 to mixed reviews? The answer, as this study makes clear, is that the "Frankenstein" we know today is not solely Mary Shelley’s progeny. "Frankenstein" morphed into many different forms over time, place, and genre. This volume displays and analyses the many post-Shelley "Frankensteins," exploring their continuities and disjunctions in order to trace the development of this enduring icon. The volume also traces the complex history of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, including its publishing history, its dismissal by the literary establishment, and its subsequent reclamation as a touchstone text in high school and college classrooms. Students of Shelley’s novel or of the many "Frankensteins" her novel propagated will find here an analysis of this intriguing cultural history. This volume also provides extensive extracts, gathering together an unprecedented collection of both never-before published and previously published material, so that readers can read widely and develop their own sense of "Frankenstein’s" place in our world.



Table of Contents:


List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Series Editor’s Preface


Introduction


Section 1 – Mary Shelley and the first "Frankensteins"

1. Publication

2. Frankenstein, Godwin, and Wollstonecraft

3. Reception

4. Early Science

5. The Nature of Man

6. Percy Shelley and Frankenstein

7. Mary Shelley and Frankenstein

8. Revision and Authorship


Section 2 – Beyond Mary Shelley

9. Early Theatre 1823–1826

10. Victorian Burlesque-Extravaganza

11. Other Victorian "Frankensteins"

12. Silent Film

13. Early Twentieth-Century Drama

14. Whale, Hammer, and Beyond

15. Feminist Canonisation

16. Critical Progeny

17. The Scientific Legacy of "Frankenstein"

18. Contemporary "Frankenstein"


Conclusion: Ubiquitous "Frankenstein"


Appendix: "The Death Bride" from Tales of the Dead


Bibliography


Index


About the author:

Audrey A. Fisch is Professor of English and Coordinator of Secondary English Education at New Jersey City University. She is the editor of The Other Mary Shelley: Beyond Frankenstein and The Cambridge Companion to the African American Slave Narrative and the author of American Slaves in Victorian England: Abolitionist Politics in Popular Literature and Culture.

Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley

A great overview of Mary Shelley and her writings. It includes a number of pieces on Frankenstein and the Frankenstein tradition:

The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley
http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/literature/english-literature-1700-1830/cambridge-companion-mary-shelley
Part of Cambridge Companions to Literature
Editor: Esther Schor, Princeton University, New Jersey

Product details

Date Published: January 2004
format: Paperback
isbn: 9780521007702
length: 316 pages
dimensions: 229 x 154 x 21 mm
weight: 0.52kg
contains: 14 b/w illus.

$ 30.99 (Paperback )
Other available formats:Hardback, eBook


Description

Well-known scholars review Mary Shelley's work in several contexts (literary history, aesthetic and literary culture, the legacies of her parents) and also analyze her most famous work-- Frankenstein. The contributors also examine Shelley as a biographer, cultural critic, and travel writer. The text is supplemented by a chronology, guide to further reading and select filmography.

  • Covers a wide range of topics in a clear and comprehensive way
  • The volume is well supported by a detailed chronology, bibliography and select filmography
  • Offers treatments of film and popular culture in addition to literary and cultural criticism approaches


Table of Contents

Chronology

Introduction Esther Schor (online)

Part I. 'The Author of Frankenstein':
1. Making a 'monster': an introduction to Frankenstein Anne K. Mellor (online)
2. Frankenstein, Matilda, and the legacies of Godwin and Wollstonecraft Pamela Clemit
3. Frankenstein, feminism, and literary theory Diane Long Hoeveler
4. Frankenstein on Film Esther Schor
5. Frankenstein's futurity: from replicants to robotics Jay Clayton


Part II. Fictions and Myths:
6. Valperga Stuart Curran
7. The last man Kari E. Lokke
8. Historical novelist Deidre Lynch
9. Falkner and other fictions Kate Ferguson Ellis
10. Stories for the Keepsake Charlotte Sussman
11. Proserpine and Midas Judith Pascoe

Part III. Professional Personae:
12. Mary Shelley, editor Susan J. Wolfson
13. Letters: the public/private self Betty T. Bennett
14. Mary Shelley as biographer Greg Kucich
15. Mary Shelley's travel writing Jeanne Moskal
16. Mary Shelley as cultural critic Timothy Morton

Further reading

Selected filmography.

Must Read: Hitchcock's Frankenstein: A Cultural History

A masterful survey of the Frankenstein tradition:

Frankenstein:A Cultural History
By Susan Tyler Hitchcock
W. W. Norton
http://books.wwnorton.com/books/978-0-393-06144-4/

Book Details
Hardcover
October 2007
ISBN 978-0-393-06144-4
5.9 × 8.5 in / 400 pages

Sales Territory: Worldwide including Canada, but excluding the British Commonwealth.


Overview

A lively history of the Frankenstein myth, tracing its evolution from a Romantic nightmare to its prominence in today's imaginative landscape.

Frankenstein began as the nightmare of an unwed teenage mother in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1816. At a time when the moral universe was shifting and advances in scientific knowledge promised humans dominion over that which had been God's alone, Mary Shelley envisioned a story of human presumption and its misbegotten consequences. Two centuries later, that story is still constantly retold and reinterpreted, from Halloween cartoons to ominous allusions in the public debate, capturing and conveying meaning central to our consciousness today and our concerns for tomorrow. From Victorian musical theater to Boris Karloff with neck bolts, to invocations at the President's Council on Bioethics, the monster and his myth have inspired everyone from cultural critics to comic book addicts. This is a lively and eclectic cultural history, illuminated with dozens of pictures and illustrations, and told with skill and humor. Susan Tyler Hitchcock uses film, literature, history, science, and even punk music to help us understand the meaning of this monster made by man.


Contents (from WorldCat)

Conception --
Birth and lineage --
Reception and revision --
The monster lives on --
Making more monsters --
A monster for modern times --
A brave new world of monsters --
The horror and the humor --
Monsters in the living room --
Taking the monster seriously --
The monster and his myth today.



Blog Updates 7/11

I added an about Frankenstein gadget to the blog yesterday. It includes links to Wikipedia pieces on the novel, its author(s), and its afterlife. There are also links to significant characters, but do also see the section on comics for more examples.

On a related note, if there are any Wikipedia-style pages  devoted to other characters and franchises, please send me the details at frankensteinandthefantastic@gmail.com.

Michael Torregrossa,
Area Chair/Blog Editor

Monday, July 10, 2017

Blog Update 7/10

I spent part of the day updating the comics listings in preparation for some future projects on the medium. Do send any further suggestions for links to me at frankensteinandthefantastic@gmail.com.

Michael Torregrossa
Area Chair/Blog Editor

Frankenstein (3rd Edition) from Bedford/St Martin's

Frankenstein (Case Study in Contemporary Criticism)
Third Edition ©2016
http://www.macmillanlearning.com/Catalog/product/frankenstein-thirdedition-shelley#tab

By Mary Shelley , edited by Johanna M. Smith (University of Texas at Arlington)

ISBN-10: 0-312-46318-9; ISBN-13: 978-0-312-46318-2; Format: Paper Text, 608 pages

A long-awaited revision of the bestselling Case Study in Contemporary Criticism: Frankenstein

Revised to reflect critical trends of the past 15 years, the third iteration of this widely adopted critical edition presents the 1831 text of Mary Shelley’s English Romantic novel along with critical essays that introduce students to Frankenstein from contemporary psychoanalytic, Marxist, feminist, gender/queer, postcolonial, and cultural studies perspectives. The text and essays are complemented by contextual documents, introductions (with bibliographies), and a glossary of critical and theoretical terms.

In the third edition, three of the six essays are new, representing recent gender/queer, postcolonial, and cultural theories. The contextual documents have been significantly revised to include many images of Frankenstein from contemporary popular culture.


Features:
  • An authoritative text of Frankenstein (1831)
  • Exemplary essays about Frankenstein representing contemporary critical approaches
  • A rich selection of cultural contextual documents
  • Highly praised editorial matter, including biographical and critical introductions, bibliographies, and a glossary

New to this edition:
  • Three new critical essays representing recent gender/queer, postcolonial, and cultural theories
  • Expanded collection of contextual documents and illustrations, including images of Frankenstein from contemporary popular culture
  • Updated editorial apparatus

Contents:

Part One Frankenstein: The Complete Text in Cultural Context

Biographical and Historical Contexts

The Complete Text

Part Two Frankenstein in Cultural Context

Part Three Frankenstein: A Case Study in Contemporary Criticism

A Critical History of Frankenstein

Psychoanalytic Criticism and Frankenstein
David Collings, “The Monster and the Maternal Thing: Mary Shelley’s Critique of Ideology”

Feminist Criticism and Frankenstein
Johanna M. Smith, “’Cooped Up” with “Sad Trash”: Domesticity and the Sciences in Frankenstein

Marxist Criticism and Frankenstein
Warren Montag, “’The Workshop of Filthy Creation’: A Marxist Reading of Frankenstein

Gender Criticism/Queer Theory and Frankenstein
New Grant F. Scott, “Victor’s Secret: Queer Gothic in Lynd Ward’s Illustrations to Frankenstein (1934)”

Cultural Criticism and Frankenstein
New Siobhan Carroll, “Crusades Against Frost: Frankenstein, Polar Ice, and Climate Change in 1818”

Postcolonial Criticism and Frankenstein
New Allan Lloyd Smith, “’This Thing of Darkness’: Racial Discourse in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

Glossary of Critical and Theoretical Terms



About the editor:

Johanna M. Smith is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Texas at Arlington, where she teaches drama, law and literature, and eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literature. She has published numerous articles in the latter fields, as well as a Twayne guide to Mary Shelley and a coedited anthology of eighteenth-century British women's life writings. Her current research focus is British women in the public sphere from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century.



Frankenstein from MIT Press

Frankenstein: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/frankenstein

By Mary Shelley
Edited by David H. Guston, Ed Finn and Jason Scott Robert
Introduction by Charles E. Robinson


Paperback | $19.95 Trade | £14.95 | 320 pp. | 6.5 x 9 in | May 2017 | ISBN: 9780262533287

eBook | $19.95 Trade | April 2017 | ISBN: 9780262340250
Overview

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has endured in the popular imagination for two hundred years. Begun as a ghost story by an intellectually and socially precocious eighteen-year-old author during a cold and rainy summer on the shores of Lake Geneva, the dramatic tale of Victor Frankenstein and his stitched-together creature can be read as the ultimate parable of scientific hubris. Victor, “the modern Prometheus,” tried to do what he perhaps should have left to Nature: create life. Although the novel is most often discussed in literary-historical terms—as a seminal example of romanticism or as a groundbreaking early work of science fiction—Mary Shelley was keenly aware of contemporary scientific developments and incorporated them into her story. In our era of synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, robotics, and climate engineering, this edition of Frankenstein will resonate forcefully for readers with a background or interest in science and engineering, and anyone intrigued by the fundamental questions of creativity and responsibility.

This edition of Frankenstein pairs the original 1818 version of the manuscript—meticulously line-edited and amended by Charles E. Robinson, one of the world’s preeminent authorities on the text—with annotations and essays by leading scholars exploring the social and ethical aspects of scientific creativity raised by this remarkable story. The result is a unique and accessible edition of one of the most thought-provoking and influential novels ever written.

Essays by
Elizabeth Bear, Cory Doctorow, Heather E. Douglas, Josephine Johnston, Kate MacCord, Jane Maienschein, Anne K. Mellor, Alfred Nordmann


CONTENTS (contents listing derived from JSTOR: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1pk3jfp)


     Front Matter
    (pp. i-vi)

    Table of Contents
    (pp. vii-ix)
   
 
    EDITORS’ PREFACE
    (pp. x-xix)
    DAVID H. GUSTON, ED FINN and JASON SCOTT ROBERT
   
    ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
    (pp. xx-xxi)
   
    INTRODUCTION
    (pp. xxii-xxxvi)
    CHARLES E. ROBINSON

 
    FRANKENSTEIN OR, THE MODERN PROMETHEUS

        VOLUME I
        (pp. xxxviii-69)

        VOLUME II
        (pp. 70-125)

        VOLUME III
        (pp. 126-188)

         INTRODUCTION TO FRANKENSTEIN (1831)
        (pp. 189-194)

        CHRONOLOGY OF SCIENCE AND MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY
        (pp. 195-198)
 
    ESSAYS

        TRAUMATIC RESPONSIBILITY: VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN AS CREATOR AND CASUALTY
        (pp. 201-208)
        JOSEPHINE JOHNSTON

        I’VE CREATED A MONSTER! (AND SO CAN YOU)
        (pp. 209-214)
        CORY DOCTOROW

        CHANGING CONCEPTIONS OF HUMAN NATURE
        (pp. 215-222)
        JANE MAIENSCHEIN and KATE MACCORD

        UNDISTURBED BY REALITY: VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN’S TECHNOSCIENTIFIC DREAM OF REASON
        (pp. 223-230)
        ALFRED NORDMANN

        FRANKENSTEIN REFRAMED; OR, THE TROUBLE WITH PROMETHEUS
        (pp. 231-238)
        ELIZABETH BEAR

        FRANKENSTEIN, GENDER, AND MOTHER NATURE
        (pp. 239-246)
        ANNE K. MELLOR

        THE BITTER AFTERTASTE OF TECHNICAL SWEETNESS
        (pp. 247-252)
        HEATHER E. DOUGLAS


    APPENDIXES

        REFERENCES
        (pp. 255-260)
  
        FURTHER READING
        (pp. 261-262)
    
        DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
        (pp. 263-274)
 
        CONTRIBUTORS
        (pp. 275-281)
    
    Back Matter
    (pp. 282-282)
    

About the Editors

David Guston is Professor and Founding Director of the School for the Future of Innovation in Society at Arizona State University, where he also serves as Codirector of the Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes..

Ed Finn is Founding Director of the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University, where he is also Assistant Professor with a joint appointment in the School of Arts, Media, and Engineering and the Department of English.

Jason Scott Robert is Lincoln Chair in Ethics, Associate Professor in the School of Life Sciences, and Director of the Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics at Arizona State University.

Klinger's The New Annotated Frankenstein due August 2017

The New Annotated Frankenstein
http://books.wwnorton.com/books/978-0-87140-949-2/

Mary Shelley (Author), Leslie S. Klinger (Editor)

With an Introduction by Guillermo del Toro, With an Afterword by Anne K. Mellor

A Liveright book

Book Details

Retail Price: $35.00
Hardcover
Forthcoming August 2017
ISBN 978-0-87140-949-2
8.9 × 10.3 in / 432 pages
Sales Territory: Worldwide



Two centuries after its original publication, Mary Shelley’s classic tale of gothic horror comes to vivid life in "what may very well be the best presentation of the novel" to date (Guillermo del Toro).

"Remarkably, a nineteen-year-old, writing her first novel, penned a tale that combines tragedy, morality, social commentary, and a thoughtful examination of the very nature of knowledge," writes best-selling author Leslie S. Klinger in his foreword to The New Annotated Frankenstein. Despite its undeniable status as one of the most influential works of fiction ever written, Mary Shelley’s novel is often reductively dismissed as the wellspring for tacky monster films or as a cautionary tale about experimental science gone haywire. Now, two centuries after the first publication of Frankenstein, Klinger revives Shelley’s gothic masterpiece by reproducing her original text with the most lavishly illustrated and comprehensively annotated edition to date.

Featuring over 200 illustrations and nearly 1,000 annotations, this sumptuous volume recaptures Shelley’s early nineteenth-century world with historical precision and imaginative breadth, tracing the social and political roots of the author’s revolutionary brand of Romanticism. Braiding together decades of scholarship with his own keen insights, Klinger recounts Frankenstein’s indelible contributions to the realms of science fiction, feminist theory, and modern intellectual history—not to mention film history and popular culture. The result of Klinger’s exhaustive research is a multifaceted portrait of one of Western literature’s most divinely gifted prodigies, a young novelist who defied her era’s restrictions on female ambitions by independently supporting herself and her children as a writer and editor.

Born in a world of men in the midst of a political and an emerging industrial revolution, Shelley crafted a horror story that, beyond its incisive commentary on her own milieu, is widely recognized as the first work of science fiction. The daughter of a pioneering feminist and an Enlightenment philosopher, Shelley lived and wrote at the center of British Romanticism, the “exuberant, young movement” that rebelled against tradition and reason and "with a rebellious scream gave birth to a world of gods and monsters" (del Toro).

Following his best-selling The New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft and The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, Klinger not only considers Shelley’s original 1818 text but, for the first time in any annotated volume, traces the effects of her significant revisions in the 1823 and 1831 editions. With an afterword by renowned literary scholar Anne K. Mellor, The New Annotated Frankenstein celebrates the prescient genius and undying legacy of the world’s "first truly modern myth."

The New Annotated Frankenstein includes:
  • Nearly 1,000 notes that provide information and historical context on every aspect of Frankenstein and of Mary Shelley’s life
  • Over 200 illustrations, including original artwork from the 1831 edition and dozens of photographs of real-world locations that appear in the novel
  • Extensive listings of films and theatrical adaptations
  • An introduction by Guillermo del Toro and an afterword by Anne K. Mellor





Frankenstein: The 1818 Text from Penguin Classics in 2018

Frankenstein: The 1818 Text 
http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/557081/frankenstein-the-1818-text-by-mary-shelley/9780143131847

By Mary Shelley
Introduction by Charlotte Gordon

Paperback Jan 16, 2018
288 Pages


About Frankenstein: The 1818 Text 

For the bicentennial of its first publication, Mary Shelley’s original 1818 text, introduced by National Book Critics Circle award-winner Charlotte Gordon.

2018 marks the bicentennial of Mary Shelley’s seminal novel. For the first time, Penguin Classics will publish the original 1818 text, which preserves the hard-hitting and politically-charged aspects of Shelley’s original writing, as well as her unflinching wit and strong female voice. This edition also emphasizes Shelley’s relationship with her mother—trailblazing feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, who penned A Vindication of the Rights of Woman—and demonstrates her commitment to carrying forward her mother’s ideals, placing her in the context of a feminist legacy rather than the sole female in the company of male poets, including Percy Shelley and Lord Byron.

This edition includes a new introduction and suggestions for further reading by National Book Critics Circle award-winner and Shelley expert Charlotte Gordon, literary excerpts and reviews selected by Gordon, and a chronology and essay by preeminent Shelley scholar Charles E. Robinson.