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.

Friday, October 19, 2018

Frankenstein and the Fantastic 2018 Session

A much belated posting. 

The third of our Frankenstein at 200 commemorative sessions runs today at the meeting of the Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association. Full panel details follow.



40th Annual Conference of the Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association
Worcester State University (Worcester, Massachusetts)
19-20 October 2018

Friday, 19 October at 2-3:15
Session 2: Frankenstein 1818 to 2018: 200 Years of Mad Scientists and Monsters I (S-205)
Chair: Saraliza Anzaldua (UCLA)

Frankenstein: A Personal History
Daniel Shank Cruz (Utica College)

Daniel Shank Cruz grew up in New York City and Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He is a graduate of Goshen College (B.A.) and Northern Illinois University (M.A., Ph.D.) and is currently an Associate Professor of English at Utica College in upstate New York. Daniel is the author of Queering Mennonite Literature, which is forthcoming from Penn State University Press in spring 2019. He has also published articles on a variety of contemporary North American authors in journals such as Crítica Hispánica, Mennonite Quarterly Review, the Journal of Mennonite Writing, and the Journal of Contemporary Thought, as well as in several book collections. His research interests include the intersections between ethnic minority literatures (especially Mennonite literature and Latinx literature) and queer literatures, archiving, and the role of geographical space in literature.

Looking at Frankenstein: Ten Filmmakers Capture the Monster
James Osborne (College of Saint Rose)

James Osborne teaches writing and film in the Department of English at the College of Saint Rose, Albany, New York. He holds a PhD in English from the University of Arizona, an MA in English from Brooklyn College/CUNY, and a BA in English, with Dramatic Arts as a related field, from the University of Connecticut. His principal area of academic research is in adaptation studies, an interest explored in his dissertation, “Looking at Frankenstein: Ten Film Visions of Mary Shelley’s Novel, 1990-2015.” He lives in Albany, New York, with his wife Denise, a lecturer in Portuguese at the University at Albany.

Frankenstein and Transatlantic Monster Making in Robert J. Myer’s The Cross of Frankenstein (1975)
Matt Grinder (Union Institute and University)

Matt Grinder is a PhD Candidate at Union Institute and University where he studies literature and culture with an emphasis on Native American Literature.  He also works as an English and Philosophy adjunct faculty member at Central Maine Community College.




Friday, 19 October at 3:30-4:45
Session 10: Frankenstein 1818 to 2018: 200 Years of Mad Scientists and Monsters II (S-205)
Chair: Marty Norden (University of Massachusetts Amherst)

New Adam, New Eve: The Brides of Frankenstein in Theodore Roszak’s Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein (1986) and John Kessel’s Pride and Prometheus (2018)
Faye Ringel (U. S. Coast Guard Academy, Emerita)

Faye Ringel, the founder of the Fantastic Area, is Professor Emerita of English at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, CT, having taught in the Department of Humanities for 25 years. She directed the Honors Program and taught the Honors Colloquium, composition and literature.  After retiring from CGA, she taught British Literature at UConn Avery Point. Faye holds an A.B. in Comparative Literature from Brandeis University and doctorate in Comparative Literature from Brown University. She is the author of New England's Gothic Literature: History and Folklore of the Supernatural (E. Mellen Press, 1995) and articles in scholarly encyclopedias, collections, and journals, including  a chapter in The Cambridge Companion to the American Gothic (2017) edited by Jeffrey Weinstock. Faye is a long-time NEPCA member and presenter, and she has published articles and presented conference papers on (among many other subjects) New England vampires, urban fantasy, demonic cooks, Lovecraft, King, Tolkien, Yiddish folklore, and sea music.

Frankenstein’s Justine Moritz: The Female Monster and Her Body
Saraliza Anzaldua (UCLA)

Saraliza Anzaldua, a frequent presenter in the Fantastic Area, is a teratologist with a B.A. in Sociology from the University of Texas, Dallas and an M.A. in English Literature from National Taiwan University. She is currently a doctoral student with the philosophy department of UCLA. Her work is devoted to promoting teratology as a framework for social theory and moral inquiry. She also studies Chinese social philosophy, and Japanese martial philosophy.

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