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

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).

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.

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.

CFP Natality vs Immortality: The Case of Frankenstein & The Creature Conference (10/1/2018; Cyprus)

Been meaning to post this since the summer. Would be a great opportunity, if it was closer. (Why are all the cool conferences outside the US?)

Natality vs Immortality: The Case of Frankenstein & The Creature
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2018/06/28/natality-vs-immortality-the-case-of-frankenstein-the-creature

deadline for submissions:
October 1, 2018


full name / name of organization:
University of Cyprus


contact email:
cyprusfrankenreads@gmail.com



Papers are invited on any theme arising from the novel. We especially welcome papers investigating the novel and its adaptations in any medium that focus on contrasting perspectives and discourses of the quest for the origin, meaning and purpose of life. This is an invitation for posters, 20-minute papers or alternative/experimental presentations. Place and dates of symposium: University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus, 30 November-1 December 2018. Deadline for proposals 01 October 2018. Please send 200 word proposals to: cyprusfrankenreads@gmail.com. Speakers will be notified by 08 October 2018. Conference Coordinators: Evy Varsamopoulou (evyvarsa@ucy.ac.cy) and Olga Michael (olgamichael86@gmail.com).

Last updated July 30, 2018

CFP Frankenstein Unbound: An Interdisciplinary Conference Exploring Mary Shelley and Gothic Legacies (6/29/2018; Bournemouth 10/31-11/01/2018)

Finally, a call that is current (though only barely):


Frankenstein Unbound: An Interdisciplinary Conference Exploring Mary Shelley and Gothic Legacies
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2018/05/03/frankenstein-unbound-an-interdisciplinary-conference-exploring-mary-shelley-and

deadline for submissions: June 29, 2018

full name / name of organization: Arts University Bournemouth

contact email: frankensteinunboundconference@gmail.com



DEADLINE FOR ABSTRACTS EXTENDED: 29th June 2018

Dates: Wednesday 31 October and Thursday 1 November 2018

Venues: Conference - St Peter’s Church, Bournemouth



Keynote Speakers:

Sir Christopher Frayling, Chancellor, Arts University Bournemouth

Professor Elaine Graham, University of Chester

Professor Sir Peter Cooke, CRAB Studios (TBC)



In 1849, Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley’s heart were brought to the graveyard of St. Peter’s Church in Bournemouth, where they were buried with the remains of Mary Shelley’s parents Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin.

In 2018, Arts University Bournemouth and St. Peter’s Church, in association with Bournemouth University, celebrate the bicentenary of the publication of Mary Shelley’s most famous work Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (1818) as part of the Shelley Frankenstein Festival. The academic conference, located at this unique venue, will offer new and re-situated perspectives on Mary Shelley and her writings, her family and circle, and her most famous work. We are pleased to acknowledge colleagues at Bournemouth University for their organisational support.

We invite papers and presentations themed around, but not limited to, the following:

• Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, and the Romantics
• Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley
• Mary Shelley beyond Frankenstein
• The Shelley family: history and legacy
• Monstrous Romantics
• Frankenstein and the sea
• Theology and Frankenstein
• Frankenstein and philosophy
• Frankenstein at home and abroad
• Adaptations and afterlives
• Frankenstein and medical humanities
• The abject and the sublime
• Frankenstein and emotion
• Guilt and crime in Frankenstein
• Interpretations of Frankenstein in the creative industries (Film, Art, Theatre, Dance, Writing etc)
• Mary Shelley and Gothic legacies
• Gothic architecture
• The Gothic imagination

We welcome proposals for themed panel sessions (maximum three papers), individual twenty-minute presentations, or creative submissions from practitioners and scholars of all fields. We particularly encourage submissions from post-graduate students and Early Career Researchers. Please submit an abstract (300 words) and short biography (100 words) to frankensteinunboundconference@gmail.com by Friday 29th June 2018.

For more information and updates visit our website: https://frankensteinunbound.wordpress.com/.

CFP Frankenstein: Two Hundred Years of Monsters Conference (expired)

Came across this by accident today; sadly, it is also expired.

Frankenstein: Two Hundred Years of Monsters
http://hrc.cass.anu.edu.au/events/frankenstein-two-hundred-years-monsters


- Call for Papers -

Frankenstein 2018: Two Hundred Years of Monsters

12 ‐ 15 September 2018
The Australian National University and the National Film and Sound Archive, Canberra


Nearly two centuries after its anonymous publication on 1 January 1818, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or, The Modern Prometheus remains as topical as ever. Its core story - of a recklessly ambitious and naïve scientist whose artificial, human-like creature arouses only horror and disgust, and escapes control to seek revenge on his creator - has become, for better or worse, the techno‐scientific fable of modernity. First adapted for stage by Richard Brinsley Peake in 1823, and for film by Edison Studios in 1910, the story has inspired more theatre, film, television and other adaptations than any other modern narrative, with more than 50 screen adaptations appearing in the 2010s alone. From Fritz Lang’s Metropolis to Alex Garland’s Ex Machina, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show to The Addams Family, the Frankenstein myth reaches into every recess of high and popular culture.

We invite proposals for 20-­minute papers or 3 x 20‐minute panel sessions from scholars across the humanities, sciences, and social sciences that respond in interdisciplinary ways to this most interdisciplinary of novels, including, but not limited to:

• Literary studies, especially of the long eighteenth century, Romanticism, Victorian and neo­‐Victorian literature
• Re-tellings and re-­‐imaginings of the Frankenstein story in various modes and genres, e.g. SF, steampunk, speculative fiction, slash fiction, etc.
• Film, television, theatre and performance, and visual studies
• Digital humanities, reception studies, histories of popular culture, and media ecologies
• Gender studies, queer theory, and the history of sexuality
• Disability studies and post‐humanism
• The history of medicine, especially reproductive technologies
• Science and technology studies; images and imaginaries of science and scientists
• The history and philosophy of biology, especially in relation to vitalism
• Eco‐criticism and the Anthropocene
• Affect theory and the history of emotions
• Frankenstein and race, colonialism, empire
• Global and local Frankensteins, e.g. Australian Frankensteins
• Frankenstein and material history
• Cyborgs, robots, artificial intelligence, and machine learning
• Synthetic biology, genetic engineering, and artificial life

To maintain order among this menagerie of monsters, we propose the following four overarching themes, each of which will be addressed by one of our keynote speakers:

Frankenstein in 1818: historicising the monster
(Professor Sharon Ruston, Lancaster)

Frankenstein as scientific fable: from grave-­‐robbing and galvanism to synthetic biology and machine learning
(Professor Genevieve Bell, Australian National University)

Adaptation and experimentation: Frankenstein in film and other media
(Assistant Professor Shane Denson, Stanford)

Frankenstein’s queer family: gender, sexuality, reproduction and the work of care
(Professor Julie Carlson, University of California, Santa Barbara)


Please send proposals for papers or sessions - including a title, 250­‐word abstract, and brief author biography - to Dr Russell Smith at russell.smith@anu.edu.au.

The deadline for proposals is 6 April 2018. Proposals will be reviewed by a committee comprising scholars from the humanities, sciences, and social sciences, and applicants will be informed of the outcome within two weeks of the submission deadline. Please note that we will endeavour to notify overseas applicants earlier if they submit proposals before the submission deadline.

For further information and updates, as well as information about the Humanities Research Centre’s annual theme for 2018, Imagining Science and Technology 200 Years after Frankenstein, see here.

Please direct any inquiries to Penny Brew at hrc@anu.edu.au.

CFP Of 'Gods and Monsters': Shelley's Frankenstein Two Hundred Years On (expired)

Not sure how I missed posting this sooner:

Of 'Gods and Monsters': Shelley's Frankenstein Two Hundred Years On
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2017/10/24/of-gods-and-monsters-shelleys-frankenstein-two-hundred-years-on

deadline for submissions: January 15, 2018

full name / name of organization: Roger Stanley/Southeast Regional Conference on Christianity and Literature

contact email: rstanley@uu.edu



Of ‘Gods and Monsters’: Shelley’s Frankenstein Two Hundred Years On

Southeast Conference on Christianity and Literature

19-21 April 2018

Union University

Jackson, Tennessee


Keynote Speaker:

Dr. Christina Bieber Lake, Clyde S. Kilby Professor of English, Wheaton College

Prophets of the Posthuman: American Literature, Biotechnology and the Ethics ofPersonhood

(Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 2013)

Dr. Bieber Lake is also the author of the book The Incarnational Art of Flannery O’Connor and many articles which have appeared in Books & Culture and elsewhere.


The primary theme of the convention will be a celebration of the bicentennial of the publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Union University itself envisions a campus-wide, interdisciplinary commemoration for the calendar year, though the focus for this conference will be, as always, on the intersection of theology and fiction.

Within the Frankenstein motif, possible topics and areas of interest include:

--Mary Shelley’s legacy in contemporary science fiction

---Creation: Human, subhuman and posthuman

--Narrative frames and the voice of the marginalized

--Science, technology, and the limitations of knowledge

--Maternity and paternity

--Idealized vs. “monstrous” femininity

--“Singularity” in terms of AI vs. human intelligence

--Revisions of Frankenstein in movies/pop culture


As always, SECCL is open to other proposals concerning the relationship of Christianity and literature. Abstracts from graduate students are also welcome. Undergraduates should send complete papers.

Send abstracts (400-500) words via email attachment to Prof. Roger Stanley, at rstanley@uu.edu . The submission deadline is January 15, 2018.

CFP Diagnosing History: Medicine in Television Costume Dramas (9/15/2018)

Here's an interesting idea:

Diagnosing History: Medicine in Television Costume Dramas
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2018/06/20/diagnosing-history-medicine-in-television-costume-dramas

deadline for submissions: September 15, 2018

full name / name of organization: Dr. Julie Anne Taddeo

contact email: taddeo@umd.edu


There has been a long relationship between television and medicine: some of the small screen’s most popular shows, on both sides of the Atlantic, have been medical in focus, from hospital-set dramas like ER to reality TV shows and docudramas like One Born Every Minute. This fascination with doctors, hospitals and bodies is also shared by period drama television, but scholarship has paid little attention to this intersection/relationship. Recent period dramas including The Knick, Mercy Street, and Charite, for example, use the hospital setting familiar from older shows like Bramwell, to address larger themes about the professionalization of medicine, medical innovations and failures, and the gender politics that surround the profession. Dramas like Call the Midwife document the progress of the NHS and female reproductive health while also engaging in contemporary debates about contraception, abortion, and disability. In addition, medical-driven narratives abound in almost every period drama on our screens today: war-induced mental and physical trauma in Peaky Blinders; Spanish ‘flu in The Village; gay conversion plotlines in A Place to Call Home; bodily and facial disfigurement in Home Fires; medical experimentation and monstrosity in Penny Dreadful and Frankenstein Chronicles; nursing as a vehicle of female emancipation in The Crimson Field and Morocco: Love in Times of War; and all of the above and many more in Downton Abbey, whose most famous plotlines are medical in nature.

This edited collection seeks to address this important area of period drama studies, and we are looking for proposals for essays on any of the above issues, or which may be interdisciplinary in approach and engage with the medical humanities, interrogating relationships between medicine and history, class, gender or race. Our collection aims to be international in scope, so submissions about period dramas from/situated in any country are welcome.


Please send a 500 word abstract and brief biography by Sept 15, 2018 to:

Julie Anne Taddeo: taddeo@umd.edu

James Leggott: james.leggott@northumbria.ac.uk

Katherine Byrne: kbyrne@ulster.ac.uk

CFP The Silent Revolution Conference (6/30/2018; Lisbon 11/5-6/2018)

1818-2018 – the silent revolution: of fears, folly & the female
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2018/06/22/1818-2018-%E2%80%93-the-silent-revolution-of-fears-folly-the-female

deadline for submissions: June 30, 2018

full name / name of organization: Universidade Catolica Portuguesa

contact email: cecc@fch.lisboa.ucp.pt




1818-2018 – the silent revolution: of fears, folly & the female

Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Lisbon

5-6 November 2018


In 2018 we celebrate events which took place two hundred years ago: the publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and the birth of Emily Brontë. While the two events are markedly different, as the former is a tangible work of art and the latter more of a promise of what was to come, both have contributed to challenge and change the conceptions and perceptions of the time, thus performing a silent, subtle revolution in the world of letters.


Shelley and Brontë are mostly famous for one novel each, but these novels have helped shape Western imagination and literature, as they arguably ‘disclose uncommon powers of poetic imagination’, as Walter Scott said a propos Shelley’s oeuvre [Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine 2 (March 1818)].


By focusing on characters who do not belong anywhere – ‘I am an unfortunate and deserted creature; I look around, and I have no relation or friend upon earth’ (Shelley, 2004: 160) and ‘Not a soul knew to whom it [Heathcliff] belonged’ (Brontë, 1965: 78) –, both novels seem to question the hegemonic discourse of the time. As such, their global appeal may precisely reside in their radical difference and ‘unbelonging’ (Rushdie, 2013), which, paradoxically, make them potential sites for multiple identifications – the female, the savage, the foreigner.


This conference brings the two female authors together, for their œuvres, as different as they are, may shed light on a topic that resonates nowadays – how gender impacts on authorship, imagination, and a sense of humanity. If, as Woolf claims, ‘women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man as twice its natural size’ (Woolf, 2000: 45), is it entirely possible that women authors have resorted to the misshapen, dark, monstrous Other as alter egos of their own perception of themselves and their place in society?


The conference wishes to be a locus of celebration and discussion, both by placing the authors in the context of their time (coeval artists and ideas), and by displacing them and investigating their impact on literature and other media (music, cinema, videogames, etc.). By rereading the works critically in the context of a 200-hundred-year time lapse, the conference aims to look at the texts as clues ‘to how we live, how we have been living, how we have been led to imagine ourselves, how our language has trapped as well as liberated us, how the very act of naming has been till now a male prerogative, and how we can begin to see and name – and therefore live – afresh’ (Rich, 1979: 35).



Papers on the following topics are welcome:

• Male privilege in literature: revising concepts of authority and authorship
• Female gaze and the imagination
• 19th-century language, gender and cultural filters
• Concepts of human being, humanity, humanness and ‘technogenesis’
• Displacement and replacement as male anxieties
• 1st-person narration: giving voice and / or visibility to ghosts, monsters and waifs
• The impact of Shelly and Brontë in English-speaking and world literature
• Pseudonymity and power
• The monster within: representations of (female) fear and folly in literature
• ‘Savagery’ at the heart of Europe and the ideal of la mission civilisatrice
• Siting contestation: literature on progress and knowledge
• Is Gothic literature female?
• Translating ‘strangeness’ into different languages and / or media
• The afterlife of Frankenstein and Wuthering Heights in art and pop culture
• Fandom and the Gothic experience

Keynote speakers:

Luísa Leal Faria (Universidade Católica Portuguesa)

Marie Mulvey-Roberts (University of the West of England – Bristol)




Click below for further information.

Romantic Assembly (2018 International Conference on Romanticism) (expired)

Sorry to have missed posting this earlier:


International Conference on Romanticism
Romantic Assembly
http://pearce.caah.clemson.edu/international-conference-romanticism/
October 25-28, 2018

From Bodies Assembled to Assembled Bodies

To acknowledge and celebrate the 200th anniversary of the publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, we invite reflection on the notion of assembly: from bodies assembled to assemblies of bodies. We look forward to paper proposals on related acts of embodiment, factory production, and political assembly (from the National Assembly during the French Revolution to the recent waves of public protest that embody the right to assemble enshrined in the US Constitution). We aim to look both backward and forward, and we invite all participants to explore what it means to assemble various and sundry things, even things we sometimes call persons.

Scholars working in any area of Romanticism are invited to submit proposals for the annual meeting of the International Conference on Romanticism (ICR) to be hosted by Clemson University and held at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Greenville, South Carolina.


We have called this year’s conference “Romantic Assembly” to acknowledge and celebrate the 200th anniversary of the publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. We invite broad reflection on the notion of assembly and look forward to paper proposals on related acts of embodiment, factory production, and political assembly (from the National Assembly during the French Revolution to the recent waves of public protest that embody the right to assemble enshrined in the US Constitution). From bodies assembled to assemblies of bodies, we aim to look both backward and forward, and we invite all participants to explore what it means to assemble various and sundry things, even things we sometimes call persons.


We are excited to see the theme interpreted broadly and in ways we have not anticipated, but some possible modes of approach could include the following:

• Anthologies, literary history, and assembling Romantic texts
• Assembling words: rhetoric and form
• Assembly and the senses
• Bodies and embodiment
• Categories of knowledge as assemblies
• Disassembly, dissolution, fragmentation
• Genre as assembly
• Identity as assembly or assemblage
• Industrialization
• Military and martial assembly
• Nation formation
• Political assembly and acts of protest
• Romantic and post-Romantic philosophies and critical theories of assembly
• Romantic-era assemblies: Halls, Balls, Lectures, Schools
• Romantic systems
• Scientific assembly
• World-building

Deadline for presentation abstracts and complete panels or roundtables: April 1, 2018



The International Conference on Romanticism was founded in 1991 and aims to pursue the study of Romanticism across linguistic, national, and political disciplines. For more information please visit http://icr.byu.edu. Conference attendees and participants must be current members of ICR. Please visit http://icr.byu.edu/membership to become a member or renew your membership.

Frankenstein and Its Classics

Due out this summer:
Frankenstein and Its Classics: The Modern Prometheus from Antiquity to Science Fiction

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/frankenstein-and-its-classics-9781350054875/
Editor(s): Benjamin Eldon Stevens, Jesse Weiner, Brett M. Rogers

Published: 08-09-2018
Format: Paperback
Edition: 1st
Extent: 288
ISBN: 9781350054875
Imprint: Bloomsbury Academic
Series: Bloomsbury Studies in Classical Reception
Illustrations: 14 bw illus
Dimensions: 6 1/8" x 9 1/4"
List price: $29.95

Also available in hardcover and ebook formats.



About Frankenstein and Its Classics

Frankenstein and Its Classics is the first collection of scholarship dedicated to how Frankenstein and works inspired by it draw on ancient Greek and Roman literature, history, philosophy, and myth. Presenting twelve new essays intended for students, scholars, and other readers of Mary Shelley's novel, the volume explores classical receptions in some of Frankenstein's most important scenes, sources, and adaptations. Not limited to literature, the chapters discuss a wide range of modern materials-including recent films like Alex Garland's Ex Machina and comics like Matt Fraction's and Christian Ward's Ody-C-in relation to ancient works including Hesiod's Theogony, Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound, Ovid's Metamorphoses, and Apuleius's The Golden Ass.

All together, these studies show how Frankenstein, a foundational work of science fiction, brings ancient thought to bear on some of today's most pressing issues, from bioengineering and the creation of artificial intelligence to the struggles of marginalized communities and political revolution. This addition to the comparative study of classics and science fiction reveals deep similarities between ancient and modern ways of imagining the world-and emphasizes the prescience and ongoing importance of Mary Shelley's immortal novel. As Frankenstein turns 200, its complex engagement with classical traditions is more significant than ever.


Table of contents

Introduction: The Modern Prometheus Turns 200
Jesse Weiner, Hamilton College, USA; Benjamin Eldon Stevens, Trinity University, USA;
Brett M. Rogers, University of Puget Sound, USA

Section 1: Promethean Heat

1. Patchwork Paratexts and Monstrous Metapoetics: “After tea M reads Ovid”
Genevieve Liveley, University of Bristol, UK

2. Prometheus and Dr. Darwin's Vermicelli: Another Stir to the Frankenstein Broth
Martin Priestman, University of Roehampton, UK

3. The Politics of Revivification in Lucan's Bellum Civile and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
Andrew McClellan, University of Delaware, USA

4. Romantic Prometheis and the Molding of Frankenstein
Suzanne L. Barnett, Francis Marion University

5. Why “The Year without a Summer”?
David A. Gapp, Hamilton College, USA

6. The Sublime Monster: Frankenstein, or The Modern Pandora
Matthew Gumpert, Bogaziçi University, Turkey

Section 2: Hideous Progeny

7. Cupid and Psyche in Frankenstein: Mary Shelley's Apuleian Science Fiction?
Benjamin Eldon Stevens, Trinity University, USA

8. “The Pale Student of Unhallowed Arts”: Frankenstein, Aristotle, and the Wisdom of Lucretius
Carl A. Rubino, Hamilton College, USA

9. Timothy Leary and the Psychodynamics of Stealing Fire
Nese Devenot, University of Puget Sound, USA

10. Frankenfilm: Classical Monstrosity in Bill Morrison's Spark of Being
Jesse Weiner, Hamilton College, USA

11. Alex Garland's Ex Machina or The Modern Epimetheus: Science Fiction after Mary Shelley
Emma Hammond, University of Bristol, UK

12. The Postmodern Prometheus and Posthuman Reproductions in Science Fiction
Brett M. Rogers, University of Puget Sound, USA

Suggestions for Further Reading: Other Modern Prometheis
Sam Cooper, Bard High School Early Colleges Queens, USA

Works cited
Index


Reviews

“Frankenstein's patchwork of classical allusions were as diverse and uncanny as the monster itself. Putting Prometheus back into the “promethean”, this timely and exciting volume shows how classical mythology, refracted through Frankenstein, shapes ethical debates prompted by technological and scientific advances today.” – Jennifer Wallace, Harris Fellow and Director of Studies in English, Peterhouse, University of Cambridge, UK.

“This highly scholarly, yet very accessible, collection grounds the original Frankenstein and adaptations of it in numerous ancient Greco-Roman sources, some for the first time and all with a revealing thoroughness unavailable until now.” – Jerrold E. Hogle, Professor of English and University Distinguished Professor, University of Arizona, USA.

Adapting Frankenstein: The Monster's Eternal Lives in Popular Culture

This looks like a great (and affordable) text to pair with the Cambridge Companion to Frankenstein. I wish it was out now.

Adapting Frankenstein: The Monster's Eternal Lives in Popular Culture

Edited by Dennis R. Cutchins and Dennis R. Perry

http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526108913/

(North American distribution through Oxford University Press: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/adapting-frankenstein-9781526108913?cc=us&lang=en&)

Book Information

Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-5261-0891-3
Pages: 400
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Price: £25.00
Published Date: August 2018

Available in North America for $39.95 beginning 01 October 2018.

Description

 

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is one of the most popular novels in western literature. It has been adapted and re-assembled in countless forms, from Hammer Horror films to young-adult books and bandes dessinées. Beginning with the idea of the 'Frankenstein Complex', this edited collection provides a series of creative readings that explore the elaborate intertextual networks that make up the novel's remarkable afterlife. It broadens the scope of research on Frankenstein while deepening our understanding of a text that, 200 years after its original publication, continues to intrigue and terrify us in new and unexpected ways. 

 

 

Contents

 

Introduction

The Frankenstein Complex: when the text is more than a text - Dennis Cutchins and Dennis R. Perry

Part I: Dramatic adaptations of Frankenstein on stage and radio

1 Frankenstein's spectacular nineteenth-century stage history and legacy - Lissette Lopez Szwydky

2 A Frankensteinian model for adaptation studies, or 'It Lives!': adaptive symbiosis and Peake's Presumption, or the fate of Frankenstein - Glenn Jellenik

3 The gothic imagination in American sound recordings of Frankenstein - Laurence Raw

Part II: Cinematic and television adaptations of Frankenstein

4 A paranoid parable of adaptation: Forbidden Planet, Frankenstein, and the atomic age - Dennis R. Perry

5 The Curse of Frankenstein: Hammer film studios' reinvention of horror cinema - Morgan C. O'Brien

6 The Frankenstein Complex on the small screen: Mary Shelley's motivic novel as adjacent adaptation - Kyle Bishop

7 The new ethics of Frankenstein: responsibility and obedience in I, Robot and X-Men: First Class - Matt Lorenz

8 Hammer films and the perfection of the Frankenstein project - Maria K. Bachman and Paul Peterson

Part III: Literary adaptations of Frankenstein

9 'Plainly stitched together': Frankenstein, neo-Victorian fiction, and the palimpsestuous literary past - Jamie Horrocks

10 Frankensteinian re-articulations in Scotland: monstrous marriage, maternity, and the politics of embodiment - Carol Margaret Davison

11 Young Frankensteins: graphic children's texts and the twenty-first-century monster - Jessica Straley

12 In his image: the mad scientist remade in the young adult novel - Farran Norris Sands

13 The soul of the matter: Frankenstein meets H. P. Lovecraft's 'Herbert West-Reanimator' - Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock

Part IV: Frankenstein in art, illustrations, and comics: from X-Men to steampunk

14 Illustration, adaptation and the development of Frankenstein's visual lexicon - Kate Newell

15 'The X-Men meet Frankenstein! "Nuff Said"': adapting Mary Shelley's monster in superhero comic books- Joe Darowski

16 Expressionism, deformity and abject texture in bande dessinée appropriations of Frankenstein - Véronique Bragard and Catherine Thewissen

Part V: New media adaptations of Frankenstein

17 Assembling the body/text: Frankenstein in new media - Tully Barnett and Ben Kooyman

18 Adaptations of 'liveness' in theatrical representations of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein - Kelly Jones

Afterword

Frankenstein's pulse: an afterword - Richard J. Hand

Index

Editors

Dennis R. Cutchins is Associate Professor of American Literature at Brigham Young University

Dennis R. Perry is Associate Professor of American Literature at Brigham Young University

Frankenstein 200 Exhibition Catalog

I wasn't sure what this was when I pre-ordered it, but is an interesting addition to my collection. The book is the catalog (with images and description) of a current exhibition at Indiana University's Lilly Library. I'm glad they have preserved the content for posterity.


Frankenstein 200:The Birth, Life, and Resurrection of Mary Shelley's Monster
Rebecca Baumann, foreword by Jonathan Kearns
http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?products_id=809318
(also available on JSTOR at http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt22p7j32)


Indiana University Press
Distribution: World
Publication date: 04/25/2018
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-253-03905-7
Paperback: $25.00
Other formats available:ebook $24.99

Two centuries ago, a teenage genius created a monster that still walks among us. In 1818, Mary Shelley published Frankenstein, and in doing so set forth into the world a scientist and his monster. The daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, famed women’s rights advocate, and William Godwin, radical political thinker and writer, Mary Shelley is considered the mother of the modern genres of horror and science fiction. At its core, however, Shelley’s Frankenstein is a contemplation on what it means to be human, what it means to chase perfection, and what it means to fear things suchsuch things as ugliness, loneliness, and rejection.

In celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of the publication of Frankenstein, the Lilly Library at Indiana University presents Frankenstein 200: The Birth, Life, and Resurrection of Mary Shelley’s Monster. This beautifully illustrated catalog looks closely at Mary Shelley’s life and influences, examines the hundreds of reincarnations her book and its characters have enjoyed, and highlights the vast, deep, and eclectic collections of the Lilly Library. This exhibition catalog is a celebration of books, of the monstrousness that exists within us all, and of the genius of Mary Shelley.


Contents:


Foreword: Cavendish’s Daughters: Speculative Fiction and Women’s History by Jonathan Kearns

Stitched and Bound by Love and Fear: Books, Monsters, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein by Rebecca Baumann

Case 1: Mary Shelley and the Birth of Frankenstein

Case 2: Mary and Percy

Case 3: Mary Beyond Frankenstein

Case 4: Mary’s Father, William Godwin

Case 5: Mary’s Mother, Mary Wollstonecraft

Case 6: Mad Science

Case 7: The Gothic

Case 8: The Monster’s Books

Case 9: Victor Frankenstein’s Books

Case 10: Frankenstein in Popular Culture (includes comics)

Case 11: The Undead

Case 12: Artificial Life

Case 13: Adapting Frankenstein

Case 14: Illustrating Frankenstein

Case 15: Outsiders and Others

Case 16: More Monsters

Case 17 and Case 18: Weird Women

Bibliography


Author Bio:

Rebecca Baumann is Head of Public Services at the Lilly Library of Indiana University and adjunct faculty with the Department of Information and Library Science. Baumann is obsessively passionate about sharing the library’s eclectic and wide-ranging collections with visitors of all sorts. Her research interests center on the history of the book, with special emphasis on 19th- and 20th-century British and American science fiction, horror, crime, and pulp. She considers herself a defender of weird books and a friend to all monsters.

Advance Notice: Global Frankenstein

Forthcoming from Palgrave Macmillan. It sounds promising, but I wish they would also offer affordable paperback editions. I will update the blog once a contents list and cover art are posted:


Global Frankenstein 
Editors: Davison, Carol Margaret, Mulvey-Roberts, Marie (Eds.)
https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9783319781419

Hardcover ca. $109.00
price for USA

Due: November 11, 2018
ISBN 978-3-319-78141-9


Bibliographic Information

Series Title: Studies in Global Science Fiction
Copyright2018
PublisherPalgrave Macmillan
ISBN 978-3-319-78142-6; Hardcover ISBN978-3-319-78141-9
Number of Illustrations and Tables 30 b/w illustrations
Topics: Nineteenth-Century Literature


Explores the versatility and interdisciplinary applications of Frankenstein in areas such as science, alchemy, hypertext, dance, art, post-humanism, computer games, and Victorian steampunk
Provides a global perspective with international authors and multi-national examples
Engages with the afterlife of Frankenstein and gives fresh prominence in the bicentennial year of its publication

Comprised of sixteen original essays by experts in the field, including leading and lesser-known international scholars, Global Frankenstein considers the tremendous adaptability and rich afterlives of Mary Shelley’s iconic novel, Frankenstein, at its bicentenary, in such fields and disciplines as digital technology, film, theatre, dance, medicine, book illustration, science fiction, comic books, science, and performance art. This ground-breaking, celebratory volume, edited by two established Gothic Studies scholars, reassesses Frankenstein’s global impact for the twenty-first century across a myriad of cultures and nations, from Japan, Mexico, and Turkey, to Britain, Iraq, Europe, and North America. Offering compelling critical dissections of reincarnations of Frankenstein, a generically hybrid novel described by its early reviewers as a “bold,” “bizarre,” and “impious” production by a writer “with no common powers of mind”, this collection interrogates its sustained relevance over two centuries during which it has engaged with such issues as mortality, global capitalism, gender, race, embodiment, neoliberalism, disability, technology, and the role of science.


About the Editors:

Carol Margaret Davison is Professor at the University of Windsor, Canada and the author of History of the Gothic: Gothic Literature, 1764-1824 (2009) and Anti-Semitism and British Gothic Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). She recently edited The Gothic and Death (2017) and The Edinburgh Companion to the Scottish Gothic (2017) with Monica Germanà.

Marie Mulvey-Roberts is Professor of English Literature at the University of the West of England, Bristol, UK and author of Dangerous Bodies: Historicising the Gothic Corporeal (2016), winner of the Alan Lloyd Smith Memorial Prize. She has authored, edited, and co-edited over 30 books. Recently she made a film on Frankenstein for a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) on the literary South West.