115年第1學期-3368 Honors: Becoming the Monster: Queering Gender, Desire, and Sexuality 課程資訊

評分方式

評分項目	配分比例	說明
Participation & attendance	30	participation and attendance
Regular class works & assignments	40	class works, assignments, and critical questions
Final project	30	(tentative) Bring your own monster (presentation)

教育目標

This course explores how monsters reimagine gender and sexuality. We analyze how literary and cinematic narratives construct monstrosity as a site of anxiety, desire, and transformation. By examining themes of hybridity, transformative bodies, reproduction, and interspecies intimacy, the monster emerges as a figure that challenges binaries—self/other, human/animal, natural/artificial—and compels us to rethink the limits and possibilities of humanity and the politics of desire. Rather than treating monstrosity as deviance, we consider how “becoming the monster” can signal resistance and alternative modes of being. Course objectives: Students taking this course are expected to: 1. Develop critical thinking skills by exploring how monsters destabilize or reinforce social norms; 2. Improve communication skills through writing and discussion about the cultural meaning of the monstrous; 3. Analyze representations of monsters in relation to identity, gender, and sexuality.

基本資料

選修課，學分數：2-0
上課時間：二/3,4
修課班級：共選修1,共選修1
修課年級：1年級以上
選課備註：國際博雅榮譽學分學程課程。人工加選。非學程同學亦可選修，請至國際學院榮譽學程網站提交申請

參考書目

(1) Charity Urbanski. “How to Make a Monster”. (https://www.medievalists.net/2023/10/how-to-make-a-monster/)
(2) Charity Urbanski. “Monster Theory and the Monstrous Races”. In Medieval Monstrosity: Imagining the Monstrous in Medieval Europe (Routledge, 2024), pp. 6-22.
(3) Jeffrey J. Cohen. “Monster Culture (Seven Theses)”. In Monster Theory: Reading Culture. Ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen. Minneapolis: U. of Minnesota Press, 1996. Page. 3-25.
(4) The Travels of Sir John Mandeville. Translated by C. W. Moseley. Penguin Classics, 2005. Selected passages.
(5) Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus (1818). In Primary Sources on Monsters. Ed. Asa Simon Mittman. Arc Humanities Press, 2018, pp. 236-39 (selection).
(6) Gayle Rubin. “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the Political Economy of Sex” (1975).

Films:
The Bride (2026)
Frankenstein (2025)
Alien: Resurrection (1997)
The Shape of Water (2017)