There's Something Lurking in the Darkness: Welcoming Monsters into Classroom Discourse

[guest_blogger]

Today’s featured blogger is Andrew Hoffman, author of Monsters: A Bedford Spotlight Reader.

Demands on instructors in English classrooms in some ways seem more complex than ever. We aim to build an inclusive curriculum. We encourage our students to think critically. We guide them to create coherent, relevant, and insightful texts. In many cases, we go beyond the standard college essay to include other forms of meaningful communication, such as videos, oral presentations, and other forms of writing. In the new edition of Monsters, there is plenty of material to inspire your students while engaging in meaningful, relevant discourse.

            The third edition of Monsters includes more writings about monsters from around the world, expanding its view of monsters to encounter creatures from legends found in Native American stories, Latin American myths, as well as tales from Africa and Asia. After all, the human experience with monsters is universal. The cry of the Wendigo, the haunting of La Llorona, the allure of mermaids, and the power of dragons – the existence of these monsters creates an opportunity for students to analyze the roles that monsters play in cultures from all around the world. Students from diverse backgrounds do not have to be confined to pigeon-holed categories of monsters. They can examine the role that monsters have played in their own lives and histories, or learn about other cultures and peoples through the very nature of the monsters they create.

            A key part of any inclusive instructional environment is a recognition of how identity is formed – and reformed – through various societal and cultural expectations and interactions. Monsters are a rich source for this conversation. Creators of monsters – or those who rethink and re-imagine monsters that are already in the popular imagination – come from as a diverse a background as today’s college students do. Examination of monster stories can lead students to question the presentation of sexuality, gender, and identity. For example, James Whale, director of the iconic 1933 movie Frankenstein, took advantage of the opportunity to create a sequel and loaded The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) with subversive images and allusions to queer culture that slipped past Hollywood censors and the mainstream heterosexual audience. Or, Jalondra A. Davis, a self-described “merwomanist,” shifts our attention from the European mermaid to figures from the African tradition, such as Mami Wata and the orisa. Even video games give us monsters that force us to question issues of sexual identity and its role in monster stories. These inquiries are not entirely new, so the current edition of Monsters retains seminal works, such as Carol Clover’s exploration of the Final Girl in horror films, and Jack Halberstam’s argument about the creation of a new monstrous queer gender in slasher films.

            It is hard to turn around these days without encountering technology that is more advanced, mysterious, and potentially threatening. In prior generations, fears about technology gave us Godzilla and Frankenstein’s creature, but today’s technology has given us new fears with new expressions -- urban legends such as the Slit-Mouthed woman or the Momo Challenge in Japan, or the machines that use artificial intelligence and other advances in computer technology that threaten to overwhelm our ability to control our own world.  Indeed, preserving our humanity in the face of many threats is a key issue. Judith Clemens-Smucker argues that these fears can make us feel threatened by those who are different from us in her examination of the television series Stranger Things, and Fay Onyx points out many ways in which creators of monsters – intentionally or not – use harmful ableist ideas that promote damaging stereotypes. Fear – of the new, the different, and the difficult – motivates many of our monster stories.

            Monsters, 3e, provides instructors with materials that can help create a classroom experience that is challenging, inclusive, insightful, and meaningful. The collection retains both primary and secondary sources that have proven successful in the classroom and adds new works from around the world from authors of different nations, races, ages, and perspectives. Ultimately, the study of monsters is really not the study of monsters; it’s the study of what it means to be human, in the past, in the present, and into tomorrow.