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.

(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)