Premodern Monstrosity and the Power of Perspective(s)

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To borrow an old saying, one man’s meat is another man’s poison. Tastes vary, in other words, different people like different things, and a truism of monstrosity is that one group’s monster is another group’s beloved master, mistress, child, or friend (etc.). A number of scholars over the years have considered this issue of perspective, including the influential literary critic Umberto Eco, whose study “On Ugliness” explores the monstrous things that repel us as humans. Eco considers what the attraction (and repulsion) is to the gruesome and the horrific, and asks: is ugliness found in the eye of the beholder? With such ideas in mind, for the first part of your Blogpost I’d like you to address in broad terms the ways in which monstrosity is, in essence, “in the eye of the beholder” as it pertains to one of our recent creatures. I would prefer that you address one of Shakespeare’s characters in The Tempest for this part, but since that play is now optional due to Stockton’s new post-Spring Break schedule, as an alternative you may consider the impact/influence of perspective on an ancient or medieval monster studied before spring break.

The second part of your Blog is related, but will be a bit more narrow in its focus. In his novel The Counterlife, renowned American author Philip Roth (writing as a writer very much like Roth himself) comments that “The treacherous imagination is everybody’s maker – we are all the invention of each other, everybody a conjuration conjuring up everyone else. We are all each other’s authors.” What Roth is subtly getting at in this passage is the fact that we all construct our own reality, and we all perceive the world as we will, serving as the “author” of the truths around us.  For class on Thursday, you will be reading excerpts from John Gardner’s masterful novel Grendel, which tells the well-known Beowulf story from the perspective of the monster. Next week, you will be writing a longer account where you explore and consider the point-of-view of a specific monster, so as a kind of practice for this kind of thinking – and also to fuel some preliminary thoughts about monstrosity and perspective – I’d like you to consider how the view of a particular monster changes if he/she is seen from a different perspective. So, what happens to a particular “monstrous” story when depicted from the point-of-view of another character or person from his/her world, or through the vision of him/her
themselves? Pick another monster that we have studied of late, and offer some insights about what they might say if they (or someone else from their world) got to tell their story, about how their understanding of certain actions and “realities” would differ from those around them. Feel free to be creative here, if you wish.

Is Surfing a Sport or a Pastime?

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Just a few months after our semester ends, surfing is set to debut at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. While some surfers have praised this development, others see it as being unnecessary and problematic, potentially leading to more overcrowded line-ups around the world and, in general, continuing recent trends of commercializing the sport. But, wait a minute, IS surfing really a sport? In an article assigned for class on 3/26, Brian Blickenstaff notes that many of the best surfers on earth do not enter competitive events organized by the World Surfing League, and that the judging of these competitions has often been seen as subjective and questionable. In addition, there are issues of gender, race, and sexism on tour, and “the clothing and apparel industry that banks on the surfing culture is far, far bigger than the actual professional surfing economy.”  Of course, these issues do not necessarily mean that surfing is not a sport. For this Blogpost, then, we’d like you to enter into the fray on this topic, a debate that has been raging in the world of surfing for at least 50 years, and is only intensifying with the Olympics nearly upon us. What do you think: IS surfing a sport, or just a fun pastime? In the “sport vs. art” debate, is it true that artistry, the relationship with nature, and individual expression on the waves has taken a back seat to professionalized competition and commercialization? Why do you think the way that you do? And, ultimately, why is this question so important, to “soul surfers” and competitive surfers alike?

The “Act of Fear” in the Face of Ancient/Medieval Monsters

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In Michael Chemers’ brief account of the “act of fear” (assigned for class on 3/10), he mentions the scientific view that fear is “a neurobiological response to certain stimuli” and then goes on to note that “not only what we fear but also how we conceive and define what we fear” varies from time to time, place to place, and person to person.  For part one of your blogpost, I’d like you to quote something interesting that Chemers says about “the act of fear” as it pertains to literature; more to the point, you should apply this quotation to one of the monstrous characters and stories from ancient
Greece and medieval Europe assigned for class this week. Elaborating on your thoughts, you might consider:  How does Chemers’ idea about fear connect up to the story in question?  And in this story, which character is afraid, what are they afraid of, and how does it impact their behavior? Furthermore, what does this representation of fear suggest about the writer or society that spawned this particular story?

As we have mentioned in class, Unit Two will simultaneously move us forward into the realm of imaginary monsters, but also backward in that we will make frequent connections between our make-believe creatures and the various historical ideas and “real life” monsters we examined in Unit One. So, for some early practice using this kind of comparative thinking, in the second section of your blogpost I want you to connect an imaginary monster assigned for this week with a specific “real life” figure or idea from our studies of these periods during Unit One. In other words, what are some of the links you can identify between the creative and historical monsters of the ancient and medieval worlds, and what larger ideas or issues can we discover through these connections?

On Scientific Developments in Surfing (etc.)

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For our next Blogpost, you will have several options to choose from.  The main idea here is to riff a little on some of the material we’re covering during Unit Two (on the science and technology of surfing).  But we also wanted to give you the chance to back up a little and talk about a really key element of our course that we haven’t done much with during classtime:  our fieldtrip to the New Jersey Surf Museum at Tuckerton.  All told, then, you should let your thoughts go and see what there is to see with regards to TWO of three topic options.  For each topic you choose to tackle, you should write a paragraph — so, two total paragraphs is the goal. 

Here are the three topic options that you might choose from:  1)  Follow up on our class fieldtrip.  What do you remember most?  What did you learn?  How did it help to illustrate or raise additional questions about stuff we have been doing in class?  2)  Address the age-old question of whether shaping is truly an “artform.”  You might consider such things as:  Is board shaping really an “art”?  Why or why not?  And who cares if it is “artistic” or not – what difference does it make? Is it “wrong” somehow to ride a mass-produced surfboard?  3)  For your final option, you should consider the controversial “Surf Ranch”.  What do you think of Kelly Slater’s famous man-made wave (and others like it)?  Is this technological development the latest, greatest example that surfing today has “lost it soul”, or does it represent an ingenious example of forward progress? 

Thoughts About Witches and Witch Hunts, Past and Present

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On Thursday (2/13), you are going to be reading about the witch hunts that exploded in Europe and America during the Early Modern period. These were officially-sanctioned searches, inquisitions, and trials of individuals (mostly women) who were quite literally accused of being witches. According to Webster’s Dictionary, a witch hunt is “a searching out for persecution of those accused of witchcraft.” Central to this definition is the notion that those who were accused were, in turn, persecuted – typically because the accused were generally assumed to be guilty in such cases. Since the time of these historical witch hunts, the phrase has taken on a slightly different connotation in colloquial English usage, and especially in the realm of politics. The dictionary also defines witch hunt as “the searching out and deliberate harassment of those (such as political opponents) with unpopular views.” For this blogpost, we are going to try something a little different by having you work with our assigned sources about real-life witch hunts and then seeking to connect them to some modern-day “witch hunt” (in the non-literal sense of the term implied by Webster’s second definition).

In your post, then, I’d like you to draw out an interesting idea, a statement, or a specific quotation from your assigned sources on witch trials for Thursday. Explain why you think that notion is important to our understanding of the persecution of witches, who are some of the most famous human “monsters” of all time. Then, I’d like you to use/apply your chosen idea to some twenty-first century “witch hunt” that you know about, whether it involves a controversial politician, a fallen celebrity, or something from your own experience. For most of you, the topic that will come to mind is the recent impeachment trial of Donald Trump, which the president has frequently labeled as a “witch hunt.” But that subject is almost too easy, too obvious, too cliché at this point – so I would prefer that you avoid using it as an example. Whatever example(s) you do ultimately choose, the idea here is to carefully consider some of the ideologies and “group thinking” that defines witch hunts, and to connect the real-life inquisitions of the Early Modern period to certain closed-minded events and activities from our own day.

On the Historical Growth, Globalization, and Politicization of Surfing

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Since your first Blogpost of the semester, our class has covered a lot of historical territory (literally and figuratively speaking). This second Blogpost is designed to encourage you to think more about key aspects of that history, and to view it in a new and different light. It is also aimed to invite you to think visually a bit, something you will be doing soon for your first Middle Stakes writing of the semester (due the following week). For this Blogpost, then, you will bridge the past and the present, and think historically and visually, by doing the following:

1) Pick two historical topics covered since our last Blog that you think are interesting/important. You may choose from the following list, subjects which you may want/need to narrow a bit in order to have something thoughtful to say about them: Alexander Hume Ford, the Outrigger Club, Duke Kahanamoku, the Hui Nalu Club, the “Massie affair,” surfing & Apartheid, Tom Carroll, California’s “surf Nazis”, Aboriginal surfers, the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, South China Sea Surf Club, Michael February, or Surfers 4 Peace.

2) Write at least one robust paragraph about both of the historical topics you choose (so, two paragraphs minimum). In each paragraph, you should explore the meaning and broader significance of your subject, and draw some conclusions about it in terms of the history of surfing. To do so, you must offer: a) A quotation that somehow encapsulates and addresses your subject. You should not only find and present this quote, but somehow use and interrogate it in your discussion. b) An image or video that represents your subject. You can offer us this simply by providing a link. Then, here again, you should tell us what is notable about that image, and discuss how/why it illustrates key issues related to your topic(s) and its role in the history of surfing.

Making Connections Between Medieval Monsters

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Our work this week is all about exploring the weird and wonderful monsters of the Middle Ages. We started with a thoughtful overview of medieval monstrosity and its understanding, and then took a close look at the monsters found on a variety of premodern maps. For Thursday (2/6), we will take a look at a variety of monsters from a variety of contexts – travel writing, literary manuscripts, bestiaries, and different kinds of statuaries (gargoyles and Sheela-Na-Gigs). Therefore, I thought it would be useful and interesting to do some comparing/contrasting of some of these monsters, and see what comes out of it.  As any literary scholar worth their salt might tell you, comparing different things enables the viewer to see these things in a different and more nuanced light. It is in that spirit that I want you to complete your comparisons for this blog post.

In general, I want you to complete two separate comparisons for this assignment.  For the first, you should compare the monsters of medieval maps to some form of monstrosity assigned for class on Thursday. Try and be as specific as you can here, perhaps even identifying a specific monster from a specific map (as opposed to some other, specific creature assigned for class) so that you can really hone in on the details and their implications. For your second comparison, I’d like you to compare a monster from Gerald of Wales’ ‘History and Topography of Ireland’ with a monstrous beast from the medieval bestiary assigned for class, a gargoyle, or a Sheela-Na-Gig. Again, try and be as specific as you can in your comparisons. Whatever monstrous entities you choose to compare, your analysis should amount to at least two in-depth paragraphs in which you explain your comparison, offer some observations about the monstrous entities you have selected, and then attempt to draw some conclusions about them.

Thoughts About the Birth, “Death,” and Rebirth of Surfing

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‘Surfing and Society’ is a course that will deeply explore the history, politics, and development of surfing in America, and beyond. So far, our class has focused on the development and early history of surfing, and for your first Blogpost of the semester you will be asked to do a few (relatively) simple things to get you thinking about the assigned reading for 1/30, and ways in which it connects up to what we did in the previous two classes. For this initial trial run, there are three options for you to choose from, and you should choose two of these prompts and respond to them (with your writing amounting to at least two robust paragraphs overall):

1)  One of the very first things we did on our first day together was define and discuss “the stoke.” For this option, you should apply your notions of “the stoke” to one of our recent readings. It would certainly be sensible to articulate how “the stoke” is seen, articulated, and examined in one of the literary/historical accounts we have read so far (by Captain Cook, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, and Jack London). But if you would like to apply this premise to a historical event or colonial topic mentioned in ‘The World in the Curl’ instead, that would be fine.  Whatever text or topic you wish to discuss, you should explain where and how “the stoke” is seen, and why this particular reference serves as an important and illuminating example of the early history of surfing.

2) The four historical/literary texts listed above (by Cook, Melville, Twain, and London) are fun and quirky and provide an interesting window into the premodern world of surfing. But there is a darkness lurking beneath the surface when it is realized that they are also products of colonialist expansion and exploitation in Hawaii, and the islands nearby. For this option, then, you should choose one of these works and consider it as a kind of political document, a text about war and peace, kingship and rule, imperialism, xenophobic hatred, and so on. To do so, you should focus on a particular passage where issues of power and authority are quietly at issue. How does your chosen passage bring to the page such notions as violence, religion, hatred, justice, misunderstanding, authority, and/or negotiation? Place the passage specifically within the colonial context of the day, consider its meaning and significance, and by all means free to offer some thoughts about what YOU think about the topic, text, and theme in question.

3) An important intellectual skill is comparison, and in fact one of the things we will do frequently in class is compare ideas, sources, places, and people from the broad culture of surfing. So for the third and final option, you might do some comparing and contrasting and see what comes of it. For example, you might compare and contrast such things as: Christian missionaries vs. Hawaiian religious leaders; native surfers vs. the white settler population; the morals of Polynesians vs. the morals of tourists; the US government vs. Hawaiian kings; surfing in Hawaii in the early twentieth century vs. surfing in California and other mainland locales; and/or premodern surf techniques and ideals vs. the “modern” notions of the sport that arose in the United States. Whatever topics or ideas you choose to compare, your paragraph should articulate some of the notable similarities and differences but, more to the point, what is learned through the comparison. What does your comparison reveal about early surfers and the rise, “death,” and rebirth of surfing?

It will be very interesting to see what you all have to offer in this first Blogpost of the semester!!

On Pliny the Elder and the Monstrous (Natural) History of the “Plinian Races”

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For students in my ‘Meaning of Monsters’ course, the time has come for your
first Blogpost of the semester. In this initial trial run, I want you to do a
few simple things to get you thinking about the assigned reading for 1/30, and
also to do some additional work with the important “monster theory” of Jeffrey
Jerome Cohen.  More specifically, I’d like you to do two specific things
(which should amount to at least two robust paragraphs overall):

1)  In his chapter on “The Plinian Races,” John Block Friedman makes
some interesting comments about the (supposed) monsters of the ancient world,
particularly from the perspective of the Greeks.  He includes a variety of
examples of human groups (from India and Ethiopia) who are (mis)understood by
ancient authors as having mysterious, monstrous qualities.  He also offers
some analysis of these beings, and draws some interesting conclusions about
them.  For part one of your Blogpost, then, I’d simply like you to offer a
specific quotation from Friedman’s discussion that you feel is especially
interesting or important.  Then, discuss it by explaining what you find so
intriguing about your chosen quote?  Why does it seem so noteworthy as a
window into the culture (and monsters) of ancient Greece and Rome (or India and
Ethiopia)?

2)  For part two of your response, I’d like to do a bit more work with Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s crucially important essay “Monster Culture (Seven Theses)”. Here, I’d like you to apply ONE of Cohen’s theses to ONE monster outlined by Pliny the Elder in his Natural History. If you apply and use Cohen’s ideas as a way to explore or understand Pliny’s varied discussion of monsters found both on land and in the oceans, what
connections or ideas arise by using Cohen’s model? The point here is to
further enhance your understanding of Cohen’s complex essay by working closely with it and using it to help you understand another complex piece of monstrous writing.

I’ll be curious to see what you all have to say for this first Blogpost of
the semester!!

On Single Stories and Master Narratives

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In this Blog post, I want you to practice “reading between the lines” by analyzing crucial, controversial material that is NOT found in a particular story of your choosing.  Specifically, you are to write 2 paragraphs of careful, in-depth analysis on the dangers of “single stories” (to borrow pointedly from Chimamanda Adichie’s TED talk), OR two paragraphs on the related issue of “master narratives” (as outlined by Derrick Aldridge in the article assigned for this dat). 

For your topic, then, I want you to respond to either the TedTalk by Adichie, OR the article by Aldridge.  So, you will either present an alternative “single story”, or a different “master narrative” told by historians about notable figures such as Martin Luther King, Jr. (the focus of Aldridge’s article).  If you want to respond to Adichie, I want you to pick out a significant narrative “text” that is either written BY someone from another culture, or written ABOUT some person or occurrence from another place.  If you want to respond to Aldridge, you should locate an account of a notable historical figure, and then see how that figure is shaped, framed, limited, or idealized into a simplified “master narrative.” 

Because the goal is to use and build on the ideas of (one of) these writers,
you might very well quote them and use their ideas in your analysis, as you
explore the ways in that historical and cultural stories often create “stereotypes,
and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are
incomplete. They make one story become the only story” (as Adichie mentions in
her lecture).  So, in looking at your chosen “single story” or “master
narrative”, you might ask/answer the following questions (in some way):
 What other stories are there but do not get
told?  What are some of the most important gaps or omissions in your
chosen story, and how can you tell?  Perhaps more importantly, what are
the ramifications of these gaps for what the reader perceives to be the
“reality” of the situation, the “truth” of the society, political idea, or
historical personage in question?  Putting things even more simply, if you
“read between the lines” and deconstruct the narrative (in terms of what is
seen but also NOT seen), what do you find – and why is this so important??
 To answer these questions may well require a bit of research, and the key
is to bring some intellectual nuance to an overly-simplified “story”
that will, in the process, allow your reader to more fully see the “big
picture” in regards to the situation in question.

‘Factfulness’ and the Freshman Convocation Lecture

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This year’s Freshman Convocation lecture will be given by Sister Dierdre Mullan, who has served the global community in a number of notable capacities, such as working for the United Nations as Director of the Mercy Global Concern (MGC) and also as the Executive Director of the Partnership for Global Justice at the UN.  She is one of the founding members of the NGO The Mercy Girl Effect, and in recent years she has worked with UNICEF, focusing on childrens’ and girls’ education.  Based on her considerable experience, Sister Mullan is well-positioned to speak about key global crises and, specifically, to enlighten us further about some of the major topics covered by Hans Rosling in Factfulness. In this Blog post I’d like you to draw connections between Sister Mullan’s lecture and the book itself.  And just as importantly, please offer a response that comments on Sister Mullan’s lecture at the Freshman Convocation event (on Thursday, Sept. 26th).  You might tell us, what did the speaker say that really touched a nerve with you?  What did you find interesting about her lecture, and how/why does it connect up with the themes and topics of your FRST 1002 class?  Also, what was invigorating about the entire Freshman Convocation event?  Why?  We are lucky to have Sister Mullan coming to speak with us this week, and I’ll be curious to hear your thoughts about her presentation! 

On Language, Images, and “Reality”

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For this Blogpost, I want you to consider the ways in which the language we use shapes the way we think and, in turn, I’d like you to ponder the deeper “truths” of an image of your choosing.  So, to practice both types of applied critical thinking, I want you to write a thoughtful Blogpost that is at least two paragraphs long.  Your first paragraph(s) should tackle the issue of language and reality, and the second paragraph(s) should address the “reality” of a particular image.  More specifically, here is what you should do for both parts:

Part One:  For this section, I want you to demonstrate that language does indeed serve to limit and/or shape our understanding of the world.  To do so, you may well have to get a little bit creative to come up with a suitable subject, and then make sense out of it.  To choose your topic, you might take a cue from our recent readings.  Thus, your discussion might do such things as:  examine “the use of metaphor” in a specific cultural discourse; explore “the invention” of a new term for a particular social phenomenon; assess the impact of the PC “word police” on modern language; consider the controversial “meaning of a word” in a particular usage or context; comment upon the distortion of “reality” in the language of politicians; address the ways in which vagaries of legal language might impact criminal trial proceedings; compare the impact of a translation or discuss the challenges of “code-switching” for a second-language speaker.  Once you have chosen your topic, your job is to illustrate the linguistic phenomenon in question and draw some logical conclusions about it.  A nice way to imagine this investigation, perhaps, is to see it as “uncovering the iceberg” – going deeper to illustrate ways in which the “reality” of the world as seen in various linguistic circumstances is merely just “the tip of the iceberg” and a more complex story remains somehow “beneath the surface.”

Part Two:  In the second section of your discussion, I want you to find and examine a visual image that somehow makes an argument, and that you deem to be interesting. By “interesting,” I mean that the image/video in question should have a degree of sophistication – it should be intriguing somehow and potentially effective at (persuasively) reaching its audience.  The visual “text” you choose to examine is entirely up to you. But, here are some general ideas of the kinds of visual resources you might choose to explore: a poster, photograph, political flyer, a piece of art, public graffiti, an Instagram image or Facebook post, or a comic strip.   Once you’ve chosen your visual image, your task is to explore and explain how the image works to persuade its audience.  In other words, your brief account will “interpret” the meaning of the image and explain how that idea is conveyed.  To do so, you might consider:  what is the image arguing, and how is the image making that argument through rhetorical appeals and the careful positioning and selection of different parts and details.

Online “Tour” of the Premodern World for 2019 Cohort of “Games of Thrones” Students

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For class on Thursday, January 31, I have put together an online “tour” of the premodern world for those of you in my ‘Games of Thrones’ class.  This “tour” will proceed via a series of links which I have e-mailed to all of you separately.  In all likelihood, few of you in class have been to Europe or had substantial, visceral encounters with the arts and artifacts of the Middle Ages and Renaissance.  Consequently, the basic intent of this activity is that I want you to “experience” the premodern world, at least insofar as that is possible through fragments offered on and through the internet.  Unfortunately, there is a significant difference between experiencing such objects and places firsthand as opposed to a mediated forum, but all the same, this activity will (I hope) help attune you to our period of discussion and get you immersed in the period in a different and insightful way.  In simple terms, in this Blog post I want to hear your (carefully focused) thoughts about the experience.  I’m hoping that your posting offers us some sense of both your intellectual and emotional response to the places, spaces, and artifacts under consideration.  By exploring the sites and material objects of this era and then writing about it, this activity will, hopefully, help you to recognize the relationships between time and place that are part and parcel of the very idea of the “premodern”, and in turn my wish is that you form some meaningful realizations about how specific places or works suggest certain ideals and fit in a larger cultural context.

Now, being even more specific in terms of the contents of your posting, I want you to respond to two particular “objects” of your choosing.  Your response should broadly be broken down into two sections, with each section at least a robust paragraph in length – but the more the better.  The first section should address a place or space, and then the second section should discuss a particular object or artifact.  You should select a place and artwork that really piqued your interest, or that you found especially powerful in some way, shape, or form.  Then, your response should offer some thoughts about just what these places/things seem to “mean” in your estimation.  On the subject of your place/space, which location have you chosen, and why?  What really stands out to you about it, and why is it so important and interesting?  More to the point, what does your chosen place/space suggest to us about the premodern world and the people who lived there?  Regarding your piece of art or other material object, you might track similar ideas and questions, as well as think about the minutiae of your chosen artifact.  For instance, who created it, and when?  What are central characteristics of that individual artists’ style, or how does this object suggest the stylistics of the day?  How do you think it would have been used and understood by individuals in premodern society, and how might we reflect upon it from a twenty-first century perspective?

Overall, then, what have you LEARNED by exploring your selected places/objects, and what do they seemingly TEACH us about the premodern culture(s) of Western Europe??

On “Single Stories” and the “Realities” of Language

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For your second Blog post of the semester, I want to build on our work from last class, and also look forward a bit in anticipation of our work for class on 10/17.  So, with that in mind, I would like you to put together two sections of response here, which should be at least one paragraph each.  The first section should engage with the topic of language and reality, and the second section should consider the dangers of “single stories” (to borrow deliberately from Chimamanda Adichie’s well-known TED talk). More specifically, here is what I’d like you to do in these two sections:

Part One:  In this section, I’d like you to explore one of the age-old questions of linguistics and philosophy:  How does our language shape our reality?   In order to develop your answer to this question, you should try and provide a specific example of language and “reality”.  The idea here is to address the ways in which the language we use shapes the way we think and influences the ways we understand things like race, gender, sex, politics, commercial products, and a host of other topics.  To do so, you should discuss a particular example that illustrates specific ways in which language serves to limit and/or shape our understanding of the world.  For example, you might: address “the use of metaphor” in a specific cultural discourse, consider the “invention” of a new term for a particular phenomenon, assess the impact of the PC “word police” on modern language, think about the controversial meaning of a word in a particular usage or context, comment upon the distortion of “reality” in the language of politicians, compare the challenges of “code-switching” for a second language speaker, and so on.

Part Two:  In this section, I’d like you to respond to and extend Adichie’s ideas about “single stories” by addressing a significant narrative “text” that is either written BY someone from another culture, or written ABOUT some person or occurrence from another place.  You might, therefore, select a literary story or some other form of media narrative that deals with important historical or political ideas (a feature news story or even photograph would qualify here).  Because the goal is to use and build on Adichie’s ideas as a way “in” to some other “single story”, you might want to quote her TedTalk and use her specific words and ideas in your discussion.  As Adichie states, “The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.”  So, in looking at your chosen story, you might ask/answer questions of the following type (in some way):  What other stories are there in society but do not get told?  What are some of the most important gaps or omissions in your chosen story, and how can you tell?  Perhaps more importantly, what are the ramifications of these gaps for what the reader or global citizen perceives to be the “reality” of the situation, the “truth” of the society or political idea in question?

Stockton University Students “Visit” Station Eleven

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Thursday, September 27th is the date of this year’s Freshman Convocation lecture. On that date, we are very lucky in that we will be visited by Emily St. John Mandel, the author of Station Eleven. If you are reading this post, you are probably a student in my fall Critical Thinking course, and as such you have spent a lot of time picking apart Mandel’s novel in recent classes (not to mention writing a handful of journal entries in response to the book).  In terms of this book, my hope and expectation during Unit One has been that students will read the novel, and then attend this lecture.  With that in mind, for your first Blogpost of the semester I would like you to respond to Mandel’s talk.  Specifically, I would like two paragraphs of discussion about what you saw and experienced during the Freshman Convocation.  You might consider such things as:  In the wake of this event, what stood out for you?  What did you find enjoyable (or not), and why?  What did the writer say that really touched a nerve with you?  What did you find interesting about her talk, and how/why does it connect up with the themes and topics of our class?  How did this discussion enhance your understanding of Station Eleven in terms of its themes, characters, or style?  Also, looking at Mandel’s lecture critically, why do you think this kind of event is useful and important for all of you as First Year students at Stockton? Having spent so much time together reading and examining this excellent novel, I’ll be very curious to hear your thoughts about Mandel’s visit to Stockton!

On Movie Monsters

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One of the articles assigned for you to read this week features the ideas of Leo Braudy, a noted English literature professor who has published widely on ghosts and monsters.  In a recent study, Braudy outlines four major types of monsters:  1)  The “monster from nature” who reflects our fears of losing control over the natural world.  2)  Monsters that reflect human concerns with science and its power.  3)  The “Jeckyll and Hyde monster,” doppelganger figures that represent the ways that many people live double lives, or have more than one “true” self.  4)  Monsters (especially those that somehow return from the past) that serve to interrupt our modern developments and changes.  For part one of your blogpost, I’d like you to discuss how a monster you viewed during your filmwork for this week fits within one of Braudy’s four over-arching categories.  Whether you choose a creature from a horror film or a “classic” monster movie, I’d like to explore how/why your chosen monster fits into one of these categories and thus works to “indulge our fears and desires” (to quote Braudy).

It is sad to say, but this will be your final blogpost of the semester.  Therefore, I thought this would be a good opportunity to make some final connections and draw some over-arching conclusions about your work this spring.  So, for part two, I’d like you, again, to discuss a specific movie monster you screened in preparing for class this week – but preferably a different beast than you considered in part one.  For this section, I’d simply like you to connect your monster to certain creatures, themes, and ideas we have covered previously this semester, and see what broad conclusions you can draw about movie monsters through these connections.  Since this is your last blogpost of the semester, how does your selected cinematic beast tie into some of the key ideas of the course, and what overall conclusions does it point to with regards to monsters and monstrosity?  That is the question I would like you to answer here.

Horror and Empathy in Gothic Literature

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In a recent study, scholar Ardel Haefele-Thomas suggests that Gothic horror developed as a place “in which to explore ideas about race, interracial desire, cross-class relations, ethnicity, empire, nation and ‘foreignness’ during the nineteenth century.”  Gothic horror of the kind under consideration in class this week serves the complex function of giving rise to our fears, while also exploring and critiquing them.  As Haefel-Thomas comments, “these texts transgress monstrosity in the sense that they help interrogate the very idea of what is mon­strous, opening up spaces where we can read sympathy for others who are queer, who are multiracial, who live outside of the” norms of society.

For part one of this blogpost, then, I would like you to pick a character or scene from one of the excerpted works assigned for this week – ‘Frankenstein,’ ‘Ligeia,’ ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame,’ and ‘The Island of Doctor Moreau’ – and focus on the horror embodied in/through that character or scene.  How, specifically, does the author create horror in the audience, and use it to play with the reader’s darkest fears? What ideas are in question here, and what social issues – or fears – are rendered problematic and indeed horrific?  For part two, I want you to flip that script and consider the ways in which gothic horror does not necessarily reject but sometimes welcomes the horrific monsters and their problems.  To borrow Haefele-Thomas’s words, in this section I would like you to consider how a given character or scene does NOT create horror but quite the opposite, opening up a space “where we can read sympathy for others” who are different.  In other words, how does this character, or textual moment, “transgress monstrosity” and view the monster with empathy, and to what end is this sympathy established?  If we are meant to embrace the monster somehow, why so — and how so?  What does this teach us?  I will be curious to see your responses to the ways in which Gothic horror creates fear and promotes horror, while also (sometimes) embracing those creatures that lead to horror and panic in the humans that encounter them.

Perspective(s) and Premodern Monstrosity

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We have seen this semester that, in simple terms, monstrosity lies in the eye of the beholder, and one group’s monster is another group’s beloved master (or family member, etc.).  A number of scholars over the years have considered this issue of perspective, including the influential critic Umberto Eco, whose late work ‘On Ugliness’ explores the monstrous things that repel us. Eco examines what the attraction (and repulsion) is to the gruesome and the horrific, and asks:  is ugliness also found in the eye of the beholder?  With such ideas in mind, for the first part of your Blogpost I’d like you to address in broad terms the ways in which monstrosity is, in essence, “in the eye of the beholder” as it pertains to one of our recent creatures.  I would prefer that you address one of Shakespeare’s characters in ‘The Tempest’ for this part, but if you want to consider the impact/influence of perspective on an ancient or medieval monster studied before spring break that would also be OK.

The second part of your Blog is related, but will be a bit more narrow and specific in its focus.  In his novel ‘The Counterlife’, renowned American author Philip Roth (speaking through the perspective of the writer who is the central character in the book) writes that “The treacherous imagination is everybody’s maker – we are all the invention of each other, everybody a conjuration conjuring up everyone else. We are all each other’s authors.”  What Roth is subtly getting at in this passage is the fact that we all construct our own reality, and we all perceive the world as we will, serving as the “author” of the truths around us.  For class this Thursday, you will be reading excerpts from John Gardner’s masterful novel ‘Grendel,’ which tells the well-known ‘Beowulf’ story from the perspective of the monster. Next week, you will be writing a longer account where you explore and consider the point-of-view of a specific monster, so as a kind of practice for this kind of thinking – and also to fuel some preliminary thoughts about monstrosity and perspective that we can consider in class Thursday – I’d like you to consider how the view of a particular monster changes if he/she is seen from a different perspective – from the point-of-view of another character or person from his/her world, or through the vision of him/her themselves.  Lately, we have considered this in the form of the ancient Greek Idylls that offer us the view of Polyphemus the cyclops, and you will obviously be exploring Grendel for class today.  So, I’d like you to pick another monster that we have studied of late, and offer some insights about what they might say if they (or someone else from their world) got to tell their story, about how their understanding of certain actions and “realities” would differ from those around them.  Feel free to be creative here, if you wish.

Ancient/Medieval Monstrosity and the “Act of Fear”

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In Michael Chemers’ brief account of the “act of fear” (found on pp. 10-13 of the Introduction to ‘The Monster in Theatre History’), he mentions the scientific view that fear is “a neurobiological response to certain stimuli” and then goes on to note that “not only what we fear but also how we conceive and define what we fear” varies from time to time, place to place, and person to person.  For the first section of your blogpost, I’d like you to quote something interesting that Chemers says about “the act of fear” as it pertains to literature, and apply this quotation to one of the monstrous characters and stories from ancient Greece and medieval Europe assigned for class this week. Elaborating on your thoughts, you might consider:  How does Chemers’ idea about fear connect up to the story in question?  And in this story, which character is afraid, what are they afraid of, and how does it impact their behavior? Furthermore, what does this representation of fear suggest about the writer or society that spawned this particular story?

In recent class discussions we have mentioned several times that Unit Two will simultaneously move us forward into the realm of imaginary monsters, but also backward in that we will make frequent connections between our make-believe creatures and the various historical ideas and “real life” monsters we examined in Unit One.  So, for some early practice using this kind of thinking, in the second section of your blogpost I want you to connect an imaginary monster assigned for this week with a specific “real life” figure or idea from our studies of these periods during Unit One.  In other words, what are some of the links you can identify between the creative and historical monsters of the ancient and medieval worlds, and what larger ideas or issues can we discover through these connections?

On Witches and Witch Hunts

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On Thursday (2/8), you are going to be reading about the witch hunts that exploded in Europe and America during the Early Modern period. These were officially-sanctioned searches, inquisitions, and trials of individuals (mostly women) who were quite literally accused of being witches. According to Webster’s Dictionary, a witch hunt is “a searching out for persecution of those accused of witchcraft.” Key to this definition is the implication that those who were accused were, in turn, persecuted – typically because the accused were generally assumed to be guilty in such cases. Since the time of these historical witch hunts, the phrase has taken on a slightly different connotation in colloquial English usage. The dictionary also defines witch hunt as “the searching out and deliberate harassment of those (such as political opponents) with unpopular views.” For this blogpost, we are going to try something a little different, by having you work with our assigned sources about real-life witch hunts and then seeking to connect them to some modern-day “witch hunt” (in the non-literal sense of the term implied by Webster’s second definition).

In your post, then, I’d like you to draw out an interesting idea, a statement, or a quotation from your assigned sources on witch trials for Thursday. Explain why you think that notion is important to the understanding of the persecution of witches, who are some of the most famous human “monsters” of all time. Then, I’d like you to use/apply your chosen idea to some twenty-first century “witch hunt” that you know about, whether it involves a controversial politician, a fallen celebrity, or something from your own experience. The idea here is to carefully consider some of the ideologies and “group thinking” that defines witch hunts, and to connect the real-life inquisitions of the Early Modern period to certain closed-minded events and activities from our own day.