Monsters Among Us

Katherine Larsen
George Washington University
Department of English
Rome 669
E-mail: klarsen@gwu.edu
Office Hours: Monday and Wednesday 9:30-10:45 and Tuesday and Thursday 8:00-9:15 at Au Bon Pain and by appointment.

Requirements Readings Schedule-Section 66 Conference Schedule

General Research Links Presentation Schedule- Section 66

Course Description Monsters are born out of cultural anxiety. They are the physical embodiment of our collective fears and if understood as such, they provide a means of understanding a culture. This course seeks to look closely at several particularly pervasive types of monster and to trace the anxieties that gave rise to them, account for their persistance, and examine how they have changed with the social and political climate. While we will examine several different types of "monster" over the course of the semester, we will focus in particular on the original texts of Beowulf,Richard III Frankenstein and Dracula, looking closely at Medieval and Renaissance England, the Gothic and Romantic Movements, Victorian Britain and several twentieth century reworkings of these texts. We will also view several films over the course of the semester, both direct adaptations and contemporary transformations of these icons of our culture. Along the way we will pose questions such as:How did they change with the times, with immigration to other cultures, with shifting values?

To arrive at the answers to these questions we will pool our individual research into a variety of topics ranging from the authors themselves to the cultures in which they created, the art they saw, the music they heard, the developments they witnessed, and the critical and popular reaction to the works both in their own time and since. We will ultimately turn this critical gaze on our own time to propose some monsters that express aspects of our culture.