Reading List: Vampires and Zombies: Transcultural Migrations and Transnational Interpretations

Monsters Studies now at UP of Mississippi:

Vampires and Zombies: Transcultural Migrations and Transnational Interpretations http://www.upress.state.ms.us/books/1845

Edited by Dorothea Fischer-Hornung and Monika Mueller

240 pages (approx.), 6 x 9 inches, introduction, 9 b&w illustrations, bibliography, index

9781496804747 Printed casebinding $65.00S


Essays that hunt down what happens when the undead go global

Contributions by Katarzyna Ancuta, Daniella Borgia, Timothy R. Fox, Richard J. Hand, Ewan Kirkland, Sabine Metzger, Timothy M. Robinson, Carmen Serrano, Rasmus R. Simonsen, and Johannes Weber

The undead are very much alive in contemporary entertainment and lore. Indeed, vampires and zombies have garnered attention in print media, cinema, and on television. The vampire, with roots in medieval European folklore, and the zombie, with origins in Afro-Caribbean mythology, have both undergone significant transformations in global culture, proliferating as deviant representatives of the zeitgeist.

As this volume demonstrates, distribution of vampires and zombies across time and space has revealed these undead figures to carry multiple meanings. Of all monsters, vampires and zombies seem to be the most trendy--the most regularly incarnate of the undead and the monsters most frequently represented in the media and pop culture. Moreover, both figures have experienced radical reinterpretations. If in the past vampires were evil, blood-sucking exploiters and zombies were brainless victims, they now have metamorphosed into kinder and gentler blood-sucking vampires and crueler, more relentless, flesh-eating zombies. Although the portrayals of both vampires and zombies can be traced back to specific regions and predate mass media, the introduction of mass distribution through film and game technologies has significantly modified their depiction over time and in new environments. Among other topics, contributors discuss zombies in Thai films, vampire novels of Mexico, and undead avatars in horror videogames. This volume--with scholars from different national and cultural backgrounds--explores the transformations that the vampire and zombie figures undergo when they travel globally and through various media and cultures.

Contents (from WorldCat)

pt. 1 MIGRATORY TRANSFORMATIONS --
The Smiling Dead; Or, On The Empirical Impossibility Of Thai Zombies / Katarzyna Ancuta --
"She Loves The Blood Of The Young" The Bloodthirsty Female as Cultural Mediator in Lafcadio Hearn's "The Story of Chugoro" / Sabine Metzger --
Octavia Butler's Vampiric Vision Fledgling as a Transnational Neo-Slave Narrative / Timothy M. Robinson --

pt. 2 NON/NORMATIVE SEXUALITIES --
Appetite For Disruption The Cinematic Zombie and Queer Theory / Rasmus R. Simonsen --
Vampiros Mexicanos Nonnormative Sexualities in Contemporary Vampire Novels of Mexico / Danielle Borgia --
Hybridity Sucks European Vampirism Encounters Haitian Voodoo in The White Witch of Rosehall / Monika Mueller --

pt. 3 CULTURAL ANXIETIES --
Revamping Dracula On The Mexican Silver Screen Fernando Mendez's El vampiro / Carmen Serrano --
The Reanimation Of Yellow-Peril Anxieties In Max Brooks's World War Z / Timothy R. Fox --

pt. 4 CIRCULATING TECHNOLOGIES --
"Doctor! I'm Losing Blood!" "Nonsense! Your Blood Is Right Here" The Vampirism of Carl Theodor Dreyer's Film Vampyr / Johannes Weber --
Disruptive Corpses Tales of the Living Dead in Horror Comics of the 1950s and Beyond / Richard J. Hand --
Undead Avatars The Zombie in Horror Video Games / Ewan Kirkland.



Dorothea Fischer-Hornung, Heidelberg, Germany, is senior lecturer (retired) in the English Department and the Heidelberg Center for American Studies, Heidelberg University. She is the editor of Aesthetic Practices and Politics in Media, Music, and Art: Performing Migration and founding coeditor of the interdisciplinary journal Atlantic Studies Global Currents. Monika Mueller, Bochum, Germany, is senior lecturer of American literature and culture at the University of Bochum, Germany. She is the author of George Eliot U.S.: Transatlantic Literary and Cultural Perspectives.

240 pages (approx.), 6 x 9 inches, introduction, 9 b&w illustrations, bibliography, index

Reading List: Monstrous Progeny

Another Frankenstein book released this summer:

Monstrous Progeny: A History of the Frankenstein Narratives
https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/monstrous-progeny/9780813564234

By Lester D. Friedman, Allison B. Kavey

256 pages, 37 photographs, 6 x 9

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

Cloth,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

 

 

Reading List: Cambridge Companion to Frankenstein

I was pretty excited to discover this book over the summer. It looks like an invaluable resource. 

The Cambridge Companion to Frankenstein
http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/literature/english-literature-1700-1830/cambridge-companion-frankenstein?format=PB

Part of Cambridge Companions to Literature
Editor: Andrew Smith

Date Published: August 2016
format: Paperback (Also available in hardcover and as an ebook)
isbn: 9781107450608
length: 288 pages
dimensions: 227 x 151 x 15
contains: 10 b/w illus.

The Cambridge Companion to Frankenstein consists of sixteen original essays on Mary Shelley's novel by leading scholars, providing an invaluable introduction to Frankenstein and its various critical contexts. Theoretically informed but accessibly written, this volume relates Frankenstein to various social, literary, scientific and historical contexts, and outlines how critical theories such as ecocriticism, posthumanism, and queer theory generate new and important discussion in illuminating ways. The volume also explores the cultural afterlife of the novel including its adaptations in various media such as drama, film, television, graphic novels, and literature aimed at children and young adults. Written by an international team of leading experts, the essays provide new insights into the novel and the various critical approaches which can be applied to it. The volume is an essential guide to students and academics who are interested in Frankenstein and who wish to know more about its complex literary history.

• Provides a comprehensive and accessible overview of the novel using a number of different approaches by leading scholars
• Explores themes and theories such as gender and identity, the environment, politics and science of the time
• Looks at Frankenstein in popular culture today including adaptations on stage, television, the graphic novel and in children's literature

Table of Contents

Introduction Andrew Smith

Part I. Historical and Literary Contexts:
1. Frankenstein: its composition and publication Charles E. Robinson
2. Contextualising sources Lisa Vargo
3. Romantic contexts Jerrold E. Hogle
4. The context of the novel Catherine Lanone
5. Scientific contexts Andrew Smith
6. Frankenstein's politics Adriana Craciun

Part II. Theories and Forms:
7. The female Gothic Angela Wright
8. What is queer about Frankenstein? George E. Haggerty
9. Race and Frankenstein Patrick Brantlinger
10. Frankenstein and ecocriticism Timothy Morton
11. The posthuman Andy Mousley

Part III. Adaptations:
12. Dramatic adaptations of Frankenstein Diane Long Hoeveler
13. Frankenstein and film Mark Jancovich
14. Literature David Punter
15. Frankenstein in comics and graphic novels Christopher Murray
16. Growing up Frankenstein: adaptations for young readers Karen Coats and Farran Norris Sands


EditorAndrew Smith, University of Sheffield
Andrew Smith is Reader in Nineteenth-Century English Literature at the University of Sheffield. His 18 books include the forthcoming Gothic Death 1740–1914: A Literary History, The Ghost Story 1840–1920: A Cultural History (2010), Gothic Literature (2007, revised edition 2013), Victorian Demons (2004) and Gothic Radicalism (2000). He edits, with Benjamin Fisher, the award-winning series Gothic Literary Studies and Gothic Authors: Critical Revisions. He also edits, with William Hughes, The Edinburgh Companions to the Gothic series. He is a past President of the International Gothic Association.

Reading List: Magic in Medieval Manuscripts

Sophie Page’s Magic in Medieval Manuscripts is part of a series celebrating the art of illuminated manuscripts held by the British Library, and it offers an interesting look at magical belief and practices in the Middle Ages. The opening chapter focuses on magicians in medieval literature, but the remainder of the book is grounded in reality, exploring how real magicians were believed to employ their craft. 

Details from the publisher as follows:



Magic in Medieval Manuscripts
http://www.utppublishing.com/Magic-in-Medieval-Manuscripts.html

By Sophie Page
University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division © 2004
World Rights
65 Pages

Paper
ISBN 9780802037978
Published Sep 2004
$27.95

Magic existed in diverse forms in the Middle Ages, from simple charms to complex and subversive demonic magic. Its negative characteristics were defined by theologians who sought to isolate undesirable rituals and beliefs, but there were also many who believed that the condemned texts and practices were valuable and compatible with orthodox piety.

Magic in Medieval Manuscripts explores the place of magic in the medieval world and the contradictory responses it evoked, through an exploration of images and texts in British Library manuscripts. These range from representations of the magician, wise-woman and witch, to charms against lightning, wax images for inciting love, and diagrams to find treasure. Most elaborate of all the magical practices are rituals for communicating with and commanding spirits. Whether expressions of piety, ambition, or daring, these rituals reveal a medieval fascination with the points of contact between this world and the celestial and infernal realms.

Sophie Page is a lecturer in the Department of History at University College London.

Reading List: Godzilla on My Mind

Final post for the night:

Godzilla turned 60 last year, yet this event seems to have been largely unacknowledged by the academic world, despite the appearance of a blockbuster film this past summer. His 50th birthday, however, was commemorated by William Tsutsui's Godzilla on My Mind: Fifty Years of the King of Monsters (2004). The book is both a history of the Godzilla franchise and its popularity as well as a personal account of Tsutsui's own fascination and love for the monster. It is an interesting and insightful book.

GODZILLA ON MY MIND: Fifty Years of the King of Monsters
William Tsutsui

St. Martin's Press
Palgrave Macmillan Trade
October 2004
Trade Paperback
ISBN: 9781403964748
ISBN10: 1403964742
5.60 x 8.45 inches, 256 pages
Includes 24 black-and-white illustrations throughout
$ 18.00

This year, to mark the fiftieth anniversary of his first appearance on the screen, the original, uncut version of Godzilla was released in American theaters to the delight of Sci-Fi and B-Movie fans everywhere. Ever since Godzilla (or, Gojira, as he is known in Japan) crawled out of his radioactive birthplace to cut a swath of destruction through Tokyo, he has claimed a place alongside King Kong and others in the movie monster pantheon. He is the third most recognizable Japanese celebrity in the United States, and his fan base continues to grow as children today prove his enduring appeal. Now, Bill Tsutsui, a life-long fan and historian, takes a light-hearted look at the big, green, radioactive lizard, revealing how he was born and how he became a megastar. With humorous anecdotes, Godzilla on My Mind explores his lasting cultural impact on the world. This book is sure to be welcomed by pop culture enthusiasts, fans, and historians alike.

Reading List: TV Horror

Also of definite interest to Monster Studies is the very recent work TV Horror: Investigating the Darker Side of the Small Screen (2013) by Lorna Jewett and Stacy Abbott. The two authors are both experts in monstrous media, and their team-up is a must read for anyone interested in monsters on the small screen and offers a great primer on how television has made use of monsters and other motifs of horror. It is a great book, but it frequently left me wanting more. Aside from the opening chapter, their survey is thematic rather than chronological, and I often wanted to know the bigger picture connecting everything together. Similarly, their discussion is usually limited to a small number of texts, and one wonders how other similar works might fit into their schema. These thoughts aside, the book is well-worth a read and will no doubt open many avenues for further research. 

TV Horror: Investigating the Darker Side of the Small Screen

Lorna Jowett (author), Stacey Abbott (author)

Imprint: I.B.Tauris

Publisher: I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd

Series: Investigating Cult TV Series

Hardback £62.00

ISBN: 9781848856172

Publication Date: 18 Dec 2012

Number of Pages: 256

Height: 216

Width: 134

Paperback £14.99

ISBN: 9781848856189

Publication Date: 18 Dec 2012

Number of Pages: 256

Height: 216

Width: 134

Horror is a universally popular, pervasive TV genre, with shows like True Blood, Being Human, The Walking Dead and American Horror Story making a bloody splash across our television screens. This complete, utterly accessible, sometimes scary new book is the definitive work on TV horror. It shows how this most adaptable of genres has continued to be a part of the broadcast landscape, unsettling audiences and pushing the boundaries of acceptability. The authors demonstrate how TV Horror continues to provoke and terrify audiences by bringing the monstrous and the supernatural into the home, whether through adaptations of Stephen King and classic horror novels, or by reworking the gothic and surrealism in Twin Peaks and Carnivale. They uncover horror in mainstream television from procedural dramas to children's television and, through close analysis of landmark TV auteurs including Rod Serling, Nigel Kneale, Dan Curtis and Stephen Moffat, together with case studies of such shows as Dark Shadows, Dexter, Pushing Daisies, Torchwood, and Supernatural, they explore its evolution on television.

This book is a must-have for those studying TV Genre as well as for anyone with a taste for the gruesome and the macabre.

Contents:

Introduction: Horror Begins at Home

Chapter 1 | The TV in TV Horror: Production and Broadcast Contexts 

Chapter 2 |Mainstreaming Horror 

Chapter 3 | Shaping Horror: From Single Play to Serial Drama 

Chapter 4 | Adaptation: Translating Horror Tales 

Chapter 5 | The Horror Auteur 

Chapter 6 | Revising the Gothic 

Chapter 7 | The Excess of TV Horror 

Chapter 8 | Horror, Art and Disruption 

Chapter 9 | TV as Horror 

Chapter 10 | The Monster in Our Living Room: From Barnabas Collins to Dexter Morgan

Conclusion: The Road So Far

Authors:

Lorna Jowett is a reader in Television Studies at the University of Northampton, UK, where she teaches some of her favourite things, including horror, science fiction, and television, sometimes all at once. Her monograph, Sex and the Slayer: A Gender Studies Primer for the Buffy Fan, was published in 2005 and recent publications cover Angel, Supernatural, Pushing Daisies and representation in cult television.

Stacey Abbott is a reader in Film and Television Studies at the University of Roehampton and is the author of Celluloid Vampires (2007) and the editor of The Cult TV Book (I.B.Tauris, 2010). Recent publications cover many of her favourite television programmes, including Angel, Alias, Supernatural, Dexter, True Blood and Torchwood. She is the general editor for the Investigating Cult TV Series at I.B.Tauris.

Reading List: Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley

Three posts for the new year on suggested reading for Monster Studies. The first up is The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley (2003) edited by Esther Schor. The collection offers a complete look at Shelley's writings, and I learned a lot about her in reading the various essays.

The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley
Part of Cambridge Companions to Literature
EDITOR: Esther Schor
DATE PUBLISHED: January 2004
PaperbackISBN: 9780521007702

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.

Contents:

Chronology
Preface

Part I. 'The Author of Frankenstein':
1. Making a 'monster': an introduction to Frankenstein Anne K. Mellor
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.

Clive Bloom's Gothic Histories

Here's the start of our reading list. Clive Bloom's Gothic Histories: The Taste for Terror, 1764 to the Present (2010) is an interesting little book that has been both praised and pilloried. The book covers a lot of ground (usually very quickly), and, while it is hard to discern the intended audience, there are some useful nuggets to be found within.

The following details are from the publisher's website:

Gothic Histories: The Taste for Terror, 1764 to the Present

By: Clive Bloom

Published: 06-06-2010
Format: Paperback
Edition: 1st
Extent: 224
ISBN: 9781847060518
Imprint: Continuum
Dimensions: 5" x 7 3/4"
RRP: $24.95

About Gothic Histories

In the middle of the eighteenth century the Gothic became the universal language of architecture, painting and literature, expressing a love not only of ruins, decay and medieval pageantry, but also the drug-induced monsters of the mind.

By explaining the international dimension of Gothicism and dealing in detail with German, French and American authors, Gothic Histories demonstrates the development of the genre in every area of art and includes original research on Gothic theatre, spiritualism, ‘ghost seeing' and spirit photography and the central impact of penny-dreadful writers on the genre, while also including a host of forgotten or ignored authors and their biographies.

Gothic Histories is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of the Gothic and its literary double, the horror genre, leading the reader from their origins in the haunted landscapes of the Romantics through Frankenstein and Dracula to the very different worlds of Hannibal Lecter and Goth culture. Comprehensive and up-to-date, it is a fascinating guide to the Gothic and horror in film, fiction and popular culture.


Table Of Contents

Acknowledgements
1.Now Welcome the Night: The Origins of Gothic Culture
2. Every True Goth: From Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill to Thomas De Quincey' Opium Dreams
3. With Raven Wings: Ann Radcliffe, German Horrors ands the Divine Marquis
4. Land of Shadows: Melmoth the Wanderer and Sweeney Todd
5. Dark Reflections in a Dull Mirror: Fuseli's ‘The Nightmare' and the Origins of Gothic Theatre
6. Desire and Loathing Strangely Mixed: Gothic Melodrama and The Phantom of the Opera
7. Do You See It? The Gothic and the Ghostly
8. It's Alive: The Rise of the Gothic Movie
9. After Midnight: Goth Culture, Vampire Games and the Irresistible Rise of Twilight
Further Selected Readings in the Gothic
Index


About the author:

Clive Bloom is Professor Emeritus of English and American Studies at Middlesex University, UK. He currently teaches at both New York University and the University of Notre Dame. He has written many books on popular culture, cultural history and literary criticism, regularly appears on radio and television and contributes to a number of national newspapers.

Useful reviews include the following:

Franklin, Caroline. HistoryExtra.com: The Official Website of BBC History Magazine 1 July 2010. Web. http://www.historyextra.com/book-review/gothic-histories-taste-terror-1764-present

Mackley, Jon. Literary London: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Representation of London 8.2 (September 2010). Web. http://www.literarylondon.org/london-journal/september2010/mackley2.html

Reyes, Xavier Aldana. The Gothic Imagination 3 June 2011. Web. http://www.gothic.stir.ac.uk/blog/clive-bloom-gothic-histories-the-taste-for-terror/

Rogers, Deborah D. Times Higher Education 20 May 2010. Web. http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/411634.article