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Humanities
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Re-imagining Classical Monsters
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Re-imagining Classical Monsters

A special issue of Humanities (ISSN 2076-0787).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 October 2024) | Viewed by 8367

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Phillip Zapkin

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
English Department, Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA 16823, USA
Interests: drama; adaptation; world literature; British literature; ancient literature; performance; horror
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

What scares us? Why do we sleep with the lights on? What creatures wait to grab a foot sticking out from under the covers? Why do we avoid the woods after dark?

This Special Issue of Humanities is themed on “Re-imagining Classical Monsters”. Across all cultures, there have been monsters that have terrified, taught, othered, and much more. This Special  Issue will take a broad look at how modern authors and artists across genres conceptualize creatures—non-human as well as human—that haunt the imagination.

We are broadly defining all three of our key terms in an attempt to produce a wide-ranging and inclusive exploration. Re-imagining may be done through critical analysis of works of literature, art, theatre, film, TV, video games, or other genres. Classical includes everything from ancient world monsters like Lilith, Medusa, mogwai, yokai, ghuls, or frost giants, to iconic monsters from sources like Gothic literature or Universal monsters of the seventeenth to early twentieth centuries. And monsters encompasses not only traditional non-human creatures like those listed above, but also monstrous humans like Clytemnestra, Bluebeard, Vlad the Impaler, or Countess Bathory.

Some potential topics might include:

  • Reception studies analysis
  • Feminist revisions of monsters
  • Queer revisions of monsters
  • Postcolonial revisions of monsters
  • Anti-racist revisions of monsters
  • Monstrous psychology
  • Social class/political economic analysis of monsters
  • Historicist readings of monsters
  • Ecocritical readings of monsters
  • Body image/transformation/disfiguration
  • Adaptations of fairy tales
  • Adaptations of myths or legends
  • Interactions between the human and the animal/non-human

Please be aware that Humanities does charge an article processing fee of CHF 1400 (Swiss Francs) for open access publication. Please inquire with your institution about whether funding exists to help cover the costs of publication. Otherwise, if this cost would be prohibitive, please contact Phillip Zapkin ([email protected]) to see what, if any, options exist for funding assistance on the part of Humanities.

Full length drafts of articles should be submitted through the Humanities website for this special issue by 31 August 2024 at the latest. However, Humanities publishes on a rolling schedule as soon as an article has made it through peer review, so earlier submissions are very much welcomed.

Any questions, comments, or concerns can be directed to Phillip Zapkin, the Special Issue Guest Editor, at [email protected].

Dr. Phillip Zapkin
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Humanities is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • monsters
  • horror
  • adaptation
  • reception
  • literature
  • art
  • film
  • television
  • theatre
  • drama

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Further information on MDPI's Special Issue polices can be found here.

Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

21 pages, 288 KiB  
Article
Reexamining Medea’s Monstrosity in Greek Mythology and Eilish Quin’s Medea
by Rachel Scoggins
Humanities 2024, 13(6), 168; https://doi.org/10.3390/h13060168 - 11 Dec 2024
Viewed by 317
Abstract
In 2024, Eilish Quin published the novel Medea, which is a feminist approach to the Medea myth from Greek mythology. Medea’s myth is heavily influenced by Euripides’ play Medea, a play in which she kills her children to enact revenge on [...] Read more.
In 2024, Eilish Quin published the novel Medea, which is a feminist approach to the Medea myth from Greek mythology. Medea’s myth is heavily influenced by Euripides’ play Medea, a play in which she kills her children to enact revenge on her cheating husband Jason. Quin’s novel is a reimagining of the myth, which explores Medea’s monstrosity and attempts to make her more sympathetic and less monstrous than the source text. I argue that Quin’s novel pulls from established characteristics of Medea that depict her as a monster and attempts to shift the narrative perspective. Using monster theory, I examine Medea’s monstrosity by looking at Euripides’ play and Quin’s novel. Quin attempts to recast Medea as a sympathetic woman instead of a monster through Medea’s anti-woman sentiments and monstrous power, along with her status as an outsider; moreover, Medea’s villainous nature is removed by changing the story surrounding the murder of her brother and children while stressing Jason’s excessively violent nature. Quin’s novel reflects a contemporary concern with female autonomy and victimization, but the novel’s approach highlights the issues with trying to remove Medea’s monstrosity. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Re-imagining Classical Monsters)
13 pages, 249 KiB  
Article
Bloody Transformations: Reinventing the Werewolf Through Explorations of Gender and Power in the Ginger Snaps Trilogy
by Megan Kenny
Humanities 2024, 13(6), 165; https://doi.org/10.3390/h13060165 - 26 Nov 2024
Viewed by 828
Abstract
The wolf has stalked human society for centuries, becoming a figure of fear and reverence. It is unsurprising that such a figure would infiltrate culture via folklore, myth, and legend, most notably in the form of the werewolf. A review of historical references [...] Read more.
The wolf has stalked human society for centuries, becoming a figure of fear and reverence. It is unsurprising that such a figure would infiltrate culture via folklore, myth, and legend, most notably in the form of the werewolf. A review of historical references reveals that the figure of the ‘she-wolf’ also shadows human culture, providing an outlet for fears around women’s power, desire, and sexuality. As storytelling has shifted from oral traditions to cinematic portrayals, the she-wolf has been left to the sidelines. This paper seeks to explore how the Ginger Snaps trilogy (2000–2004) reset this imbalance, providing three distinct narratives centered on the female werewolf, intertwining the stories of the Fitzgerald sisters and their lycanthropic transformation. This trilogy served to reinvent the stereotype of the werewolf, using traditional lycanthropic tropes to explore issues of feminine monstrosity, the painful transitory period of adolescence, and enduring social anxieties under patriarchal societies. This paper argues that the Ginger Snaps trilogy is an integral set of texts for understanding how the werewolf motif has transitioned into contemporary society and how it continues to act as a release point for wider social anxieties. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Re-imagining Classical Monsters)
11 pages, 229 KiB  
Article
The Devil in the Machine: The Doctor Travels through Time in Chris Bush’s Faustus: That Damned Woman
by Verna A. Foster
Humanities 2024, 13(5), 134; https://doi.org/10.3390/h13050134 - 9 Oct 2024
Viewed by 859
Abstract
Chris Bush’s Faustus: That Damned Woman (first performed in 2020) is a feminist and contemporary adaptation of Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. The magus is a woman who travels through time from the seventeenth century to the far distant future. In the process, [...] Read more.
Chris Bush’s Faustus: That Damned Woman (first performed in 2020) is a feminist and contemporary adaptation of Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. The magus is a woman who travels through time from the seventeenth century to the far distant future. In the process, Johanna Faustus becomes a brilliant scientist who attempts to create digital immortality by uploading the minds of billions of human beings to the Cloud. When a power failure destroys almost all of humanity, it is uncertain whether the universal outage is caused by Mephistopheles (in accordance with the expectations of Faustian fantasy) or is simply an unforeseen but predictable accident (in accordance with the expectations of technophobic versions of science fiction). I argue that Bush’s play traces the chronological and generic arc from magic/fantasy to science/science fiction, blending the two so that the age-old monster, the Devil, enabled by Faustian arrogance, is reimagined as an avatar for an unreliable technology that destroys what it is designed to preserve. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Re-imagining Classical Monsters)
22 pages, 326 KiB  
Article
Die Politik von Caligari: Totalitarian Anxieties in Adaptations of Robert Weine’s Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari
by Phillip Louis Zapkin
Humanities 2024, 13(5), 119; https://doi.org/10.3390/h13050119 - 16 Sep 2024
Viewed by 893
Abstract
Contemporary politics is filled with anxiety about the survival of democracy—particularly within a framework pitting liberal representative democracy against authoritarianism. In times of anxiety about authoritarianism, Western artists repeatedly return to a masterpiece of relatively early cinema: Robert Weine’s silent film Das Cabinet [...] Read more.
Contemporary politics is filled with anxiety about the survival of democracy—particularly within a framework pitting liberal representative democracy against authoritarianism. In times of anxiety about authoritarianism, Western artists repeatedly return to a masterpiece of relatively early cinema: Robert Weine’s silent film Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari, or The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. This essay examines three twenty-first century adaptations: David Lee Fisher’s 2005 remake of the film; James Morrow’s 2017 novel, The Asylum of Dr. Caligari; and Georgie Bailey’s 2022 play Caligari. I argue that while the direct politico-cultural anxieties of Weine’s film have often been overstated, the emergence of adaptations during periods of heightened concern about authoritarianism reflects a deep-seated reception of the film as anticipating autocratic governance. However, for all its fears about power, control, and the loss of self-determination, Weine’s movie also contains the seeds of liberation. Cesare ultimately sacrifices his own life rather than murdering Jane. And it is this gesture that the adaptations examined here seek—a gesture of resistance. The sleepwalker can awaken and assert a form of just resistance in the world, even if the penalties are steep. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Re-imagining Classical Monsters)
16 pages, 3520 KiB  
Article
“Still Cool as a Zombie”: Community, the Zombie Aesthetic, and the Politics of Belonging
by Colin A. Cox
Humanities 2024, 13(5), 117; https://doi.org/10.3390/h13050117 - 11 Sep 2024
Viewed by 1294
Abstract
From Night of the Living Dead (1968) to The Walking Dead (2010–2022), zombie media offers a consistent refrain, namely to avoid becoming a zombie. This refrain makes intuitive sense. Why would anyone welcome becoming a member of a roaming, mindless, and often [...] Read more.
From Night of the Living Dead (1968) to The Walking Dead (2010–2022), zombie media offers a consistent refrain, namely to avoid becoming a zombie. This refrain makes intuitive sense. Why would anyone welcome becoming a member of a roaming, mindless, and often violent undead horde symbolizing humanity’s destruction? However, zombification has affirmative, emancipatory possibilities. In “Epidemiology,” from Season 2 of the NBC sitcom Community (2009–2015), we see the zombie’s affirmative and emancipatory potential. In this essay, I argue zombification enlivens Community by provoking the show to rethink its relationship to its nominal protagonist, Jeff Winger, and to itself as a piece of avant-garde comedy television produced during the “Golden Age of Television,” what media scholars also call, “Peak” or “Prestige TV.” In this episode, Community evolves its understanding of its central protagonist by shifting, in some respects, from a conventional and historically predictable character to a character far less conventional. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Re-imagining Classical Monsters)
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18 pages, 282 KiB  
Article
Bloody Petticoats: Performative Monstrosity of the Female Slayer in Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
by Michelle L. Rushefsky
Humanities 2024, 13(2), 52; https://doi.org/10.3390/h13020052 - 14 Mar 2024
Viewed by 1770
Abstract
In 2009, Seth Grahame-Smith published Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, sparking a subgenre that situates itself within multiple genres. I draw from the rebellious nature of nineteenth-century proto-feminists who tried to reclaim the female monster as an initial methodology to analyze Grahame-Smith’s [...] Read more.
In 2009, Seth Grahame-Smith published Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, sparking a subgenre that situates itself within multiple genres. I draw from the rebellious nature of nineteenth-century proto-feminists who tried to reclaim the female monster as an initial methodology to analyze Grahame-Smith’s Elizabeth Bennet. I argue that the (white) women in this horror rewriting inadvertently become the oppressors alongside contextualized zombie theory. This article also explores Grahame-Smith’s Charlotte Lucas as a complex female monster, as she is bitten and turned into a zombie, which reflects in part Jane Austen’s Charlotte’s social status and (potential) spinsterdom. It is the mythos of the zombie that makes Grahame-Smith’s Elizabeth Bennet’s feminist subversion less remarkable. And it is Charlotte’s embodiment of both the rhetorical and the religio-mythic monster that merges two narratives: the Americanized appropriated zombie and the oppressed woman. Grahame-Smith’s characters try to embody the resistance of twenty-first feminist sensibilities but fail due to the racial undertones of the zombie tangentially present in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Re-imagining Classical Monsters)
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