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.
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