Monsters: A Bedford Spotlight Reader

✍ Scribed by Andrew Hoffman

• Publisher: Bedford/St. Martin's
• Year: 2019
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 239
• Edition: 2
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Monsters explores questions about the central concept of the monstrous: Why do we create monsters? Are they animal, human, both, or neither? Which of our fears and desires do monsters embody? What can monsters tell us about our cultural and historical moments? How do we cope with the monsters that haunt our imaginations—and our societies? Readings by classic poets, contemporary fiction writers, pop culture critics, philosophers, psychologists, occultists, veterinarians, ethicists, historians, and others take up these questions and more. Questions and assignments for each selection provide a range of activities for students to write about vampires, werewolves, zombies, mermaids, serial killers, classic horror movie monsters, and more strange things that go bump in the night.

The Bedford Spotlight Reader Series is an exciting line of single-theme readers, each reflecting Bedford’s trademark care and quality. An editorial board of a dozen compositionists at schools with courses focusing on specific themes assists in the development of the series. Each reader collects thoughtfully chosen selections sufficient for an entire writing course—about 35 pieces—to allow instructors to provide carefully developed, high-quality instruction at an affordable price. Bedford Spotlight Readers are designed to help students from all majors make sustained inquiries from multiple perspectives, opening up topics such as borders, food, gender, happiness, humor, language, music, science and technology, subcultures, and sustainability, to critical analysis. The readers are flexibly arranged in thematic chapters, with each chapter focusing in depth on a different facet of the central topic. Instructor support at macmillanlearning.com includes sample syllabi and additional teaching resources.

✦ Table of Contents

About this Book
Cover Page
Inside Front Cover
Halftitle Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
About the Bedford Spotlight Reader Series
Preface for Instructors
Bedford/St. Martin’s Puts You First
Contents
Contents by Discipline
Contents by Theme
Introduction for Students
Chapter 1 Why Do We Create Monsters?
Why We Crave Horror Movies, Stephen King
From Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus, Mary Shelley
Conception, Susan Tyler Hitchcock
Why Vampires Never Die, Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan
My Zombie, Myself: Why Modern Life Feels Rather Undead, Chuck Klosterman
Japan’s Nuclear Nightmare: How the Bomb Became a Beast Called Godzilla, Peter H. Brothers
Slender Man: A Myth of the Digital Age, Clarisse Loughrey
Monsters and the Moral Imagination, Stephen T. Asma
Chapter 2 How Do Monsters Reflect Their Times?
Here Be Monsters, Ted Genoways
The Birth of Monsters, Daniel Cohen
From Beowulf, Anonymous
Naanabozho and the Gambler, Gerald Vizenor
Cursed by a Bite, Matt Kaplan
Monstrous Beginnings, W. Scott Poole
Get Ready for the Dawn of Superintelligence, Nick Bostrom
Robbie, Isaac Asimov
Chapter 3 How Does Gender Affect the Monster?
Amy Fuller, The Evolving Legend of La Llorona
Homer, from The Odyssey
Sophia Kingshill, Reclaiming the Mermaid
Ovid, The Battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs
Karen Hollinger, The Monster as Woman: Two Generations of Cat People
Carol J. Clover, Final Girl
Judith Halberstam, Bodies That Splatter: Queers and Chain Saws
Chapter 4 What Is the Power of the Monster?
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Fear of the Monster Is Really a Kind of Desire
Bram Stoker, from Dracula
Karen Backstein, (Un)safe Sex: Romancing the Vampire
Elizabeth A. Lawrence, Werewolves in Psyche and Cinema: Man-Beast Transformation and Paradox
Robert Louis Stevenson, from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Erica McCrystal, Hyde as a Monster Villain
Christian Jarrett, The Lure of Horror
Chapter 5 Is the Monster within Us?
Adolf Hitler, Nation and Race
Patrick McCormick, Why Modern Monsters Have Become Alien to Us
Thomas Fahy, Hobbes, Human Nature, and the Culture of American Violence in Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood
Anne E. Schwartz, Inside a Murdering Mind
Richard Tithecott, The Horror in the Mirror: Average Joe and the Mechanical Monster
William Andrew Myers, Ethical Aliens: The Challenge of Extreme Perpetrators to Humanism
Kevin Berger, Why We Still Need Monsters
Sentence Guides for Academic Writers
Academic Writers Present Information and Others’ Views
Academic Writers Present Their Own Views
Academic Writers Persuade by Putting It All Together
Appendix: Verbs Matter
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index of Authors and Titles
Inside Back Cover
Back Cover