Download or read book Unnatural Reproductions and Monstrosity written by Andrea Wood and published by . This book was released on 2014-08-27 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much has been written about gender and the monstrous, but sustained engagement with textual manifestations of cultural and unconscious fears and anxieties about "unnatural" reproduction has been limited. This book expands the current discourse on the monstrous reproductive potential of bodies-as well as minds-from a more interdisciplinary and transhistorical framework. While scholarly interest in monsters and the monstrous is certainly not new, studies on monstrous reproduction and birth have tended to be either discipline or period specific, and many are now dated. Drawing from diverse interdisciplinary perspectives in film and media studies, literary studies, history, medicine and women's and gender studies, Unnatural Reproductions and Monstrosity builds upon pre-existing work while engaging more directly with monstrous progeny, as well as with unnatural reproduction(s), which threaten to eclipse the future, cast uncertainty on the present, and reimagine the past. Ultimately, then, the primary contribution of this book lies not only with its extensive treatment of reproductive monstrosity and unnatural parturition, but with the breadth and intriguing continuity that only a wide lens can provide. This book does not attempt to provide a complete historical assessment or catalog of the enduring cultural fascination with the reproductive origins and potential of monsters. Rather, it provides diverse interdisciplinary and transhistorical perspectives with single unifying theme of unnatural reproduction(s), which is unique to the collection, remaining central to the concept of monstrosity and its evolving narrative incarnations. This interdisciplinary collection spanning the areas of history, literature, medical humanities, and film and media studies explores the transhistorical textual fascination with reproductive monstrosity and unnatural parturition. The collection's four sections provide perspective on hyperbolic and monstrous representations of reproduction and birth that speak to anxieties and fears about gender and sexuality, codified through "unnatural" manifestations and their progeny. By focusing not only on the effect of the monstrous, but also on its reproduction in a variety of genres and modes from science to cinema, the essays in this collection offer critical insight into enduring questions about the genesis of monsters and their reproductive potential that have long haunted the world and continue to shape many fears about the future. This book analyzes how fears about unnatural reproduction and monstrous offspring-and their frequent connections to the feminine-have proliferated and propagated across the very texts which are repetitively created and consumed. Unnatural Reproductions and Monstrosity is an important interdisciplinary book for university library collections and scholars working in women's and gender studies, film and media studies, history, literature, and medical humanities.
Download or read book Monstrous Women in Comics written by Samantha Langsdale and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2020-04-20 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contributions by Novia Shih-Shan Chen, Elizabeth Rae Coody, Keri Crist-Wagner, Sara Durazo-DeMoss, Charlotte Johanne Fabricius, Ayanni C. Hanna, Christina M. Knopf, Tomoko Kuribayashi, Samantha Langsdale, Jeannie Ludlow, Marcela Murillo, Sho Ogawa, Pauline J. Reynolds, Stefanie Snider, J. Richard Stevens, Justin Wigard, Daniel F. Yezbick, and Jing Zhang Monsters seem to be everywhere these days, in popular shows on television, in award-winning novels, and again and again in Hollywood blockbusters. They are figures that lurk in the margins and so, by contrast, help to illuminate the center—the embodiment of abnormality that summons the definition of normalcy by virtue of everything they are not. Samantha Langsdale and Elizabeth Rae Coody’s edited volume explores the coding of woman as monstrous and how the monster as dangerously evocative of women/femininity/the female is exacerbated by the intersection of gender with sexuality, race, nationality, and disability. To analyze monstrous women is not only to examine comics, but also to witness how those constructions correspond to women’s real material experiences. Each section takes a critical look at the cultural context surrounding varied monstrous voices: embodiment, maternity, childhood, power, and performance. Featured are essays on such comics as Faith, Monstress, Bitch Planet, and Batgirl and such characters as Harley Quinn and Wonder Woman. This volume probes into the patriarchal contexts wherein men are assumed to be representative of the normative, universal subject, such that women frequently become monsters.
Download or read book Evil Children in the Popular Imagination written by Karen J. Renner and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-12-15 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on narratives with supernatural components, Karen J. Renner argues that the recent proliferation of stories about evil children demonstrates not a declining faith in the innocence of childhood but a desire to preserve its purity. From novels to music videos, photography to video games, the evil child haunts a range of texts and comes in a variety of forms, including changelings, ferals, and monstrous newborns. In this book, Renner illustrates how each subtype offers a different explanation for the problem of the “evil” child and adapts to changing historical circumstances and ideologies.
Download or read book Unbecoming Female Monsters written by Cristina Santos and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2016-12-07 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unbecoming Female Monsters: Witches, Vampires, and Virgins is a multi-cultural and interdisciplinary work that traces the construct of female monsters as an embodiment of socio-cultural fears of female sexuality and reproductive powers. This book examines the female sexual maturation cycle and the various archetypes of female monsters associated with each stage of sexual development as seen in literature, art, film, television, and popular culture. Recommended for scholars of Latin American studies, literature, cultural studies, women and gender studies, popular culture, and film studies.
Download or read book Screening Children in Post apocalypse Film and Television written by Debbie Olson and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2023-11-16 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection examines the child’s role in contemporary post-apocalyptic films and television.. By exploring the function of child characters within a dystopian framework, this volume illustrates how traditional notions of childhood are tethered to sites of adult conflict and disaster, a connection that often works to reaffirm the “rightness” of past systems of social order.
Download or read book Imagining We in the Age of I written by Mary Harrod and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-07-29 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner, MeCCSA Edited Collection of the Year, MeCCSA Outstanding Achievement Awards 2022 In the early twenty-first century shifts in gender and sexuality, work and mobility patterns and especially technology have provoked interest in perceived threats to social bonding on a global scale. This edited collection explores the fracturing of couple culture but also its persistence. Looking at a variety of media sites—including film, television, popular print fiction, new media and new technologies—this volume’s diverse range of contributors examine how mediated scenes of intimacy proliferate, while real-life experiences are cast in a newly uncertain light. The collection thus challenges a latent but growing tendency towards perceptions of romantic decline, in a variety of cultural contexts and with attention to the impact of COVID-19. This is an accessible and timely collection suitable for scholars in gender studies, media, cultural studies and communication studies.
Download or read book The Jurassic Park Book written by Matthew Melia and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2023-11-16 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive 1990s blockbuster, Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park met with almost universal critical and popular acclaim, broke new ground with its CGI recreation of dinosaurs, and started one of the most profitable of all movie franchises. To mark the film's 30th anniversary, this exciting illustrated collection of new essays interrogates the Jurassic Park phenomenon from a diverse range of critical, historical, and theoretical angles. The primary focus is on Jurassic Park itself but there is also discussion of the franchise and its numerous spin-offs. As well as leading international scholars of film studies and history, contributors include experts in special effects, science on screen, fan studies, and palaeontology. Comprehensive, up to date, and accessible, The Jurassic Park Book appeals not only to students and scholars of Hollywood and contemporary culture, but also to the global audience of fans of the greatest of all dinosaur movies.
Download or read book Affective Intensities and Evolving Horror Forms written by Adam Daniel and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-03 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Horror cinema is a genre that is undergoing constant evolution, from the sub-genre of 'found footage,' to post-cinematic new media forms such as Youtube horror, horror video games and cinematic virtual reality horror. By investigating how these new forms alter the dynamics of spectatorship, this book charts how cinema's affective capacities have shifted in relation to these modifications in the forms of cinematic horror. It applies a rich theoretical synthesis of phenomenological and Deleuzian approaches to a number of case studies, including films like The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity and Creep as well as video games such as Alien: Isolation and new media forms such as Youtube horror and virtual reality horror.
Download or read book Supernatural Encounters written by Stephen Gordon and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-12-06 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The belief in the reality of demons and the restless dead formed a central facet of the medieval worldview. Whether a pestilent-spreading corpse mobilised by the devil, a purgatorial spirit returning to earth to ask for suffrage, or a shape-shifting demon intent on crushing its victims as they slept, encounters with supernatural entities were often met with consternation and fear. Chroniclers, hagiographers, sermon writers, satirists, poets, and even medical practitioners utilised the cultural ‘text’ of the supernatural encounter in many different ways, showcasing the multiplicity of contemporary attitudes to death, disease, and the afterlife. In this volume, Stephen Gordon explores the ways in which conflicting ideas about the intention and agency of supernatural entities were understood and articulated in different social and literary contexts. Focusing primarily on material from medieval England, c.1050–1450, Gordon discusses how writers such as William of Malmesbury, William of Newburgh, Walter Map, John Mirk, and Geoffrey Chaucer utilised the belief in demons, nightmares, and walking corpses for pointed critical effect. Ultimately, this monograph provides new insights into the ways in which the broad ontological category of the ‘revenant’ was conceptualised in the medieval world.
Download or read book Growing Up with Vampires written by Simon Bacon and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2018-07-10 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vampire narratives are generally thought of as adult or young adult fare, yet there is a long history of their appearance in books, film and other media meant for children. They emerge as expressions of anxiety about change and growing up but sometimes turn out to be new best friends who highlight the beauty of difference and individuality. This collection of new essays examines the history of vampires in 20th and 21st century Western popular media marketed to preteens and explores their significance and symbolism.
Download or read book Gothic Animals written by Ruth Heholt and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-12-10 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book begins with the assumption that the presence of non-human creatures causes an always-already uncanny rift in human assumptions about reality. Exploring the dark side of animal nature and the ‘otherness’ of animals as viewed by humans, and employing cutting-edge theory on non-human animals, eco-criticism, literary and cultural theory, this book takes the Gothic genre into new territory. After the dissemination of Darwin’s theories of evolution, nineteenth-century fiction quickly picked up on the idea of the ‘animal within’. Here, the fear explored was of an unruly, defiant, degenerate and entirely amoral animality lying (mostly) dormant within all of us. However, non-humans and humans have other sorts of encounters, too, and even before Darwin, humans have often had an uneasy relationship with animals, which, as Donna Haraway puts it, have a way of ‘looking back’ at us. In this book, the focus is not on the ‘animal within’ but rather on the animal ‘with-out’: other and entirely incomprehensible.
Download or read book The Playful Undead and Video Games written by Stephen J. Webley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-07-17 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the central role of the zombie in contemporary popular culture as they appear in video games. Moving beyond traditional explanations of their enduring appeal – that they embody an aesthetic that combines horror with a mindless target; that lower age ratings for zombie games widen the market; or that Artificial Intelligence routines for zombies are easier to develop – the book provides a multidisciplinary and comprehensive look at this cultural phenomenon. Drawing on detailed case studies from across the genre, contributors from a variety of backgrounds offer insights into how the study of zombies in the context of video games informs an analysis of their impact on contemporary popular culture. Issues such as gender, politics, intellectual property law, queer theory, narrative storytelling and worldbuilding, videogame techniques and technology, and man’s relation to monsters are closely examined in their relation to zombie video games. Breaking new ground in the study of video games and popular culture, this volume will be of interest to researchers in a broad range of areas including media, popular culture, video games, and media psychology.
Download or read book Women in Classical Video Games written by Jane Draycott and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-08-11 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite the prevalence of video games set in or inspired by classical antiquity, the medium has to date remained markedly understudied in the disciplines of classics and ancient history, with the role of women in these video games especially neglected. Women in Classical Video Games seeks to address this imbalance as the first book-length work of scholarship to examine the depiction of women in video games set in classical antiquity. The volume surveys the history of women in these games and the range of figures presented from the 1980s to the modern day, alongside discussion of issues such as historical accuracy, authenticity, gender, sexuality, monstrosity, hegemony, race and ethnicity, and the use of tropes. A wide range of games of different types and modes are discussed, with particular attention paid to the Assassin's Creed franchise's 21st-century ventures into classical antiquity (first in Origins (2017), set in Hellenistic Egypt, and then in Odyssey (2018), set in classical Greece), which have caught the imagination not only of gamers, but also of academics, especially in relation to their accompanying educational Discovery Modes. The detailed case studies presented here form a compelling case for the indispensability of the medium to both reception studies and gender studies, and offer nuanced answers to such questions as how and why women are portrayed in the ways that they are.
Download or read book Emblematic Monsters written by Alan W. Bates and published by Rodopi. This book was released on 2005 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Emblematic Monsters is a social history of monstrous births as seen through popular print, scholarly books and the proceedings of learned societies.
Download or read book Monstrous Progeny written by Lester D. Friedman and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2016-08 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Monster in the Media Assessing the Monstrous in Mary Shelley s Frankenstein and Stuart Beattie s I Frankenstein written by Lisa Maria Engel and published by . This book was released on 2015-01-30 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2014 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1.3, University of Hamburg (Anglistik/Amerikanistik), course: Die Medialitat der Monster, language: English, comment: Kommentar des Dozenten: fine work, useful secondary literature, relevant research questions, areas of improvement: structure and form., abstract: Using the example of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" (1818) and the contemporary film "I, Frankenstein" (2014), this term paper will examine the question if the way monstrosity is perceived and defined actually is influenced by and dependent on the society's value systems and anxieties. Therefore, it will be investigated what differences can be found in the portrayal of monstrosity in the 19th century novel and the contemporary film, and from what circumstances these differences might derive. In order to do so, it has to be disclosed, who or what poses as the monster in the novel and the film, and which anxieties affect the respective society. Hence, this term paper first of all provides some selected approaches to monsters and monstrosity. Next Mary Shelley's novel "Frankenstein" as well as Stuart Beattie's "I, Frankenstein" will be shortly summarized, analyzed, and compared with respect to their cultural background and the introduced criteria that form monstrosity. Finally, the findings will be summarized and evaluated with regard to the investigated questions.
Download or read book All Around Monstrous Monster Media in Their Historical Contexts written by Verena Bernardi and published by Vernon Press. This book was released on 2019-10-31 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We know all kinds of monsters. Vampires who suck human blood, werewolves who harass tourists in London or Paris, zombies who long to feast on our brains, or Godzilla, who is famous in and outside of Japan for destroying whole cities at once. Regardless of their monstrosity, all of these creatures are figments of the human mind and as real as they may seem, monsters are and always have been constructed by human beings. In other words, they are imagined. How they are imagined, however, depends on many different aspects and changes throughout history. The present volume provides an insight into the construction of monstrosity in different kinds of media, including literature, film, and TV series. It will show how and by whom monsters are really created, how time changes the perception of monsters and what characterizes specific monstrosities in their specific historical contexts. The book will provide valuable insights for scholars in different fields, whose interest focuses on either media studies or history.
