ENGL C101 Guide for Christine Swiridoff: Assigned Readings

Readings by classic poets, contemporary fiction writers, pop culture critics, philosophers, psychologists, occultists, veterinarians, ethicists, historians, and others focus on central themes realted to monsters as Monsters helps you make sustained inquries from multiple perspectives in order to focus your writing.

Explores what human traits monsters represent and why they are so ubiquitous in people's imaginations and share so many features across different cultures.Using colorful and absorbing evidence from virtually all times and places, Monsters is the first attempt by an anthropologist to delve into the mysterious, frightful abyss of mythical beasts and to interpret their role in the psyche and in society.

Through a historical sampling of monsters, these essays argue that our fascination for the monstrous testifies to our continued desire to explore difference and prohibition.

Monsters embody our deepest anxieties and vulnerabilities, Asma argues, but they also symbolize the mysterious and incoherent territory beyond the safe enclosures of rational thought. Exploring sources as diverse as philosophical treatises, scientific notebooks, and novels, Asma unravels traditional monster stories for the clues they offer about the inner logic of an era's fears and fascinations.

As Timothy Beal follows monsters throughout religious texts and traditions, he also discovers religion lurking in the modern horror genre, from classics like Frankenstein and Dracula to the contemporary spookiness of H.P. Lovecraft's short stories and the Hellraiser films. Drawing upon a broad range of ancient texts and popular culture, from rabbinic lore to Goth counterculture, he explores the fascinating and often disturbing ways in which monsters haunt religion and religion haunts the monstrous.