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Susan Stryker's contribution to feminist history is highlighted in this article, focusing on her ability to create feminist spaces from the queer margins and challenge the category of woman. Stryker's work examines how the construction of woman as a category is influenced by power relations and conflicts on the margins of society. By studying the struggles of trans women and women considered marginal, Stryker challenges the binary division of gender and expands the historical discussion on women's nature. Two key texts, "My Words to Victor Frankenstein" and Screaming Queens, explore the complexities of gender and womanhood, offering important insights into the question of women's humanity. Stryker's work continues to resonate today, addressing issues of gender, sexual orientation, and race, and emphasizing the transformative power of rage and joy in reclaiming humanity. [Extracted from the article]

"The Making of Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein'" by Daisy Hay is a concise and visually appealing book that provides an overview of the history of Mary Shelley's famous novel. The book covers major themes, the novel's reception, and the life of the author. It is published by the Bodleian Library, which owns the manuscript of 'Frankenstein,' and is well-designed and durable. While the book offers valuable insights, some readers may take issue with the author's tendency to specify what Shelley leaves unsaid and the use of Mary Shelley's first name only. Overall, it is a recommended resource for those interested in learning more about 'Frankenstein.' [Extracted from the article]

"The Science of Life and Death in 'Frankenstein'" by Sharon Ruston is a concise and engaging survey of the scientific concepts behind Mary Shelley's famous novel. Ruston argues that Victor Frankenstein is a vitalist chemist who may or may not use electricity to bring his Creature to life. The book explores the cultural and intellectual context of Enlightenment Europe, as well as Shelley's personal experiences and influences. It delves into the scientific understandings of air, electricity, and the boundary between life and death during the early 19th century, and how these concepts are reflected in the novel. Ruston concludes by highlighting the enduring relevance of the ethical and philosophical questions raised in "Frankenstein." [Extracted from the article]

In this article, I examine Frankenstein and A Christmas Carol to depict pathological male grief and its relation to larger cultural and economic systems. The lenses brought to this endeavor are pastoral and psychoanalytic. By pastoral, I mean, generally speaking, the ways faith and care are manifested in relationships and are, therefore, integral to the reality of grief and mourning. More specifically, male pathological grief reflects distortions of both care and faith. In terms of a psychoanalytic lens, I rely on depictions of psychological defenses, unconscious motivations, and an altered version of Christopher Bollas's notion of transformational objects to depict and understand the psychopathology of Victor Frankenstein's and Ebenezer Scrooge's grief. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how Paradise Lost serves as a source for trans studies from the field's inception in the 1990s. Susan Stryker cites Adam's fallen lament as a conclusion to her landmark essay "My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Mountain of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage," but she uses his speech without attending to the troublingly misogynistic direction in which it turns. Two decades later, Karen Barad's "TransMaterialities: Trans*/Matter/Realities and Queer Political Imaginings" reproduces large portions of Stryker's essay while obscuring her Miltonic source material — as well as the distinction between the terms queer and trans. Following Stryker's citation of Milton and Barad's use of "My Words," this article offers alternative genealogies of trans femininity in Paradise Lost, from Eve's surgical birth to Adam's prelapsarian pregnancy. I argue that the imposition of Eve's labor pains and the denial of Adam's feminization expose postlapsarian sex assignment as tragically cisgender. Moreover, the persistent masculinity of Milton's angels renders them less resonant with trans femininity. Milton's portrayals of sexual difference challenge the modern evangelical argument that transphobia is biblically sanctioned. It is Milton's expansion of Genesis 2:23 in Paradise Lost that enables rather than restricts gender identities we would now call trans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The expression 'anti-gender campaigns' has rapidly made its way to describe a new and specific wave of activist and policy initiatives against gender and sexual equalities. The goals of this article are twofold: to offer a close examination of the current state of anti-gender campaigns in Europe, and to look back at the scholarship produced in the last decade. Following the historical unfolding of these campaigns, this article explores four scenes that are crucial to contemporary anti-gender politics: churches, social movements, political parties and states. By emphasising that anti-gender campaigns encompass a wide diversity of political projects, it insists on the need to consider this plurality as constitutive of the phenomenon, a goal that requires to pay more attention to the actors who use them and the ways they do it. Rather than a discussion of new empirical material, this article invites scholars to reflect on the ways to approach these developments and offers a critical overview of existing scholarship. It shows that these campaigns are a transnational kit highly adaptable to local circumstances, and that these campaigns are simultaneously about and not about gender, gender being – following Joan W. Scott's seminal reading – 'a primary way of signifying relationships of power'. Using the novel Frankenstein, this article finally argues that anti-gender campaigns are no longer under the control of their creator – the Catholic Church – but, like the creature invented by Mary Shelley, they live an emancipated and autonomous life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jeanette Winterson's Frankissstein: A Love Story (2019) draws analogies to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus (1818), which is a protocyberpunk novel. The postmodern novel interweaves Mary Shelley's writing of Frankenstein in Switzerland and transgender Ry Shelley's acquaintance with artificial intelligence in Britain. Frankissstein also connects the tale of the Titan Prometheus, Professor Victor Frankenstein creating a cyborg in Frankenstein and Ry's beloved, Victor Stein, experimenting on cyborgs with artificial intelligence. Thus, the novel's narrative switches between the nineteenth and the twenty-first centuries to depict the posthuman condition over the centuries. What it means to be human, the validity of grand narratives and all kinds of binarism are put into question throughout Frankissstein as a postmodern extension of the nineteenth-century novel Frankenstein. The paper argues that the novel provides insights into the posthuman condition through technocultural discourses. A posthumanist reading of the novel indicates that Frankissstein contributes to the deconstruction of anthropocentric binaries in humanist thinking regarding the relationship between not only humans and nonhumans but also men and women. The study also reveals that despite the time lapse, the concerns related to the posthuman condition remain the same because transgressing dichotomies lead to ambiguity in human's life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the theme of power and its proper use in various contexts, drawing on cautionary tales from folklore and literature. It discusses how the field of medicine has evolved from a focus on helping people bear illness to a quest for eliminating disease through scientific advancements. While this has led to significant medical breakthroughs, it has also resulted in unintended consequences such as health-related anxiety and an increase in the number of people who consider themselves unwell. The article suggests that instead of pursuing more power over disease, the medical field should prioritize using its existing power to help people live well. [Extracted from the article]

(p. ix); "Question Eight: Other seeds of hope in Mary Shelley's story: Is Mary Shelley's story a prophecy of new beginnings?" (Romanyshyn, 2019, p. ix); "Question Four: Out of Africa to the moon: Is Mary Shelley's story a prophecy of creating a new species of humankind?" The footnotes that I sense are another story unto themselves, however much they have threads attached to the second story.[2] I have not in this review, as is now apparent, rehearsed the plot of Mary Shelley's novel; one can do that for oneself. [Extracted from the article]

Copyright of Aforismos is the property of Dykinson SL and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Journal for Languages & Literatures of the Faculty of Philosophy in Novi Sad / Zbornik za Jezike i Knjizevnosti Filozofskog Fakulteta u Novom Sadu is the property of Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

It may be no accident that in his now well-known essay on 'posthumanist culture,' Ihab Hassan found himself turning to the same myth alluded to in the title of Mary [...]

Westworld, the HBO series created and written by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, is an indirect adaptation of Frankenstein that centers on two heroines, Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) and Maeve (Thandie Newton), android "hosts" who struggle and suffer at the hands of their corporate handlers and of the "guests" who pay to visit a world without consequences. As an innovative feminist extension of Shelley's Frankenstein, Westworld levels an implied critique against the patriarchal, self-aggrandizing attitudes of Victor Frankenstein and of modern science, which seek to probe and dominate when they should nurture and respect. As such, Westworld valorizes a filial sphere in which creators devote themselves to the emotional well-being of their creations, in which familial ties engender healthy, fully actualized individuals, and in which these individuals develop the emotional strength and circumspection necessary to seek positive social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tim Burton's stop motion-animated remake of his 1984 short film, Frankenweenie was produced and released by Walt Disney Studios. In the film, a young suburban Victor Frankenstein's dog, Sparky, dies in an accident. In keeping with Burton's absurd, macabre and Gothic auteurism's, Frankenstein resurrects his pet. This ultimately leads to a series of chaotic events where the other students discover Frankenstein's creation and subsequently resurrect of all of their deceased pets which reflect the form of other popular monsters such as, Frankenstein's monster, Dracula, the Wolfman, the Mummy and the Creature from the Black Lagoon, among many others. I will analyse these satirical reflections of popular monsters through the lens of the whimsical Gothic and seek to identify the implications of Burton's work to Disney's brand and aesthetic through the popular monster outside of Disney's popular repertoire of 'child friendly' fairy tales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

El artículo discute el renacimiento del personaje del monstruo de Frankenstein y el Prometeo moderno en la Novela Frankenstein, con un enfoque en el creador del Monstruo, Victor Frankenstein y su regreso al mundo después del humanismo. El artículo también aborda temas relacionados con las interpelaciones de la bioética, el poshumanismo y el poder de los seres humanos.

Frankenstein is not an exclusive character belonging to the realm of the Gothic narrative, but a vivid element that has evolved and adapted to diverse social contexts and geographies. Mary Shelley's work has endured the passing of time and now is a symbol of the popular culture. In this paper, I look to understand Mary Shelley's Frankenstein influence on people's attitudes regarding technology and science, particularly artificial intelligence and robots. How the negative visions and fears about the misuse of science to break traditional moral and religious boundaries are still present in popular culture. Fieldwork will be focused on reviewing several Latin American newspapers and magazine articles in Spanish and Portuguese published on the Internet. As final outcomes will show, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein still continues influencing people's imagination about science and technology, even in technically less developed regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"If he were vanquished," Victor Frankenstein states of his monstrous creation in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818), "I should be a free man." But he goes on: "Alas! what freedom? such as the peasant enjoys when his family have been massacred before his eyes, his cottage burnt, his lands laid waste, and he is turned adrift, homeless, pennyless, and alone, but free." Victor's circumstances approximate the deracinated subject of an emergent economic liberalism, while looking to other destitute and shipwrecked heroes. Yet the ironic "freedom" described here carries an added charge, which Victor underscores when he concludes this account of his ravaged condition: "Such would be my liberty." This essay revisits the geographic plotting of Frankenstein: the digression to the East in the nested "harem" episode, the voyage to England, the neglected episode of Victor's imprisonment in Ireland, and the creature's desire to live in South America. Locating Victor's concluding appeal to his "free" condition within the novel's expansive geography amplifies the political stakes of his downfall, calling attention to not only his own suffering but the wider trail of destruction left in his wake. Where existing critical accounts have emphasized the French Revolution and its violent aftermath, this obscures the novel's pointed critique of a deep and tangled history of English liberty and its destructive legacies. Reexamining the novel's geography in tandem with its use of form similarly allows us to rethink the overarching narrative design of Frankenstein, in ways that disrupt, if not more radically dislocate, existing rigid ways of thinking about the novel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a ground-breaking episode titled "The Postmodern Prometheus, "the iconic television show The X-Files, which changed the landscape of television drama, reinvented the story of Victor Frankenstein in conjunction with contemporary beliefs, the nature of scientific truths in our time, and the (sub)cultures promoted by the genre known as 'daytime television'. If Shelley's protagonist is the modern Prometheus, ours is the postmodern: a figure representing not only the imperative to evolve while contending with the cultural and philosophical implications of technological progress' but also the ethical implications of issues such as gender and disability inequity, both of which an' examined in the episode. Further, the episode, shotentirely inblackandwhite, deliberatelyreferences Shelley's textinamanner that encourages readings based on intertextualframeworks of understanding, A critical comparison of the two texts leads to the emergenceofa series of insights that illuminate not only the continued relevance of Shelley's text but also the broader context in which Romanticism is now seen as the beginning of typically contemporary concerns such as ecocritical discourse. The paper outlines such concerns, attempting to locate its analysis of the two texts within the larger inclusive framework of Romanticism as well as the nature of Post-Romanticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article proposes a cognitive-poetic reading of Susan Heyboer O'Keefe's novel Frankenstein's Monster (2010) - a modern rendition of the myth of Victor Frankenstein and his Creature - with regard to the theory of conceptual integration proposed by G. Fauconnier and M. Turner (2002). It is argued that the reader's conceptualization of the eponymous Monster emerges in the process of conceptual blending, where several input mental spaces, constructed around elements of the philosophical concept of the Great Chain of Being, are merged to produce a novel entity. Thus, the reader's active participation in meaning construction allows her/him to redefine her/his perception of monstrosity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1923 at the Royal Theatre English Opera House of London the journey of the mute Frankenstein of Thomas Potter Cook started. On that stage the creature born from the encounter between science and romantic genius definitively lost his voice to progressively assume more and more the appearance of a body that speaks for itself, beyond literary fact, and above all beyond verbal language. If in the novel by Mary Shelley the acquisition of a language is the main tool of identity emancipation for the indefinable 'product' of contemporary scientific culture, on stage the actor Cooke, who played that silent character 365 times, laid the foundations for one of the myths of modernity. The article questions the way in which the creature of Dr. Victor Frankenstein erupted into the European popular culture of the 1820s, contributing on the one hand to preparing public imagination for the debate on Darwinism that would take place forty years later; revealing on the other a new fundamental aesthetic perception, because the discoveries of the new sciences (chemistry, physics, physiology, etc.) became a common experience that can be found empirically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A review of the article "My Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix," by Susan Stryker, which appeared in 1994 in issue 1.3 of the journal "GLQ" is presented.

This paper scrutinizes criticisms of Mark Oliphant and his quest to build a cyclo-synchrotron in Canberra in the 1950s by analysing various portrayals of him, paying particular attention to the ways these portrayals, despite being written in different decades, are teleologically driven and reinforce a perception of failure. It addresses the key criticisms levelled at Oliphant: his 'difficult' personality, his perceived political naïveté and his inability to adjust to the new technological paradigm of Big Science. It questions whether these portrayals represent legitimate criticism or ideological positioning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles in the issue on topics including conflict of humanity’s responsibility for preserving the world and about the transhumanism; social accountability of the creator of the Fictional character, Victor Frankenstein.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) is one of the classic horror stories and is regarded as the forerunner of modern science fiction. Frankenstein originally a brief story, at the suggestion of Shelley, was developed to a full-length novel. Since its publication, the thrilling fantasy in last two centuries has been adapted as movies, comic stories etc. Frankenstein is about Dr. Victor Frankenstein who is interested in the secrets of life. He secretly collects bones and body parts of dead from charnel- houses and animates the creature. The monster kills Victor's brother, friend and wife and is indirectly responsible for his father's death and the maid's death. Thus, it is a creation done without thinking about the consequences. Do we make monsters or monsters are born? How do we turn a person into a monster? The novel is relevant even today as we face ethical dilemma around appropriate of stem cells, questions about organ donation and organ harvesting as well as animal to human transplants. At the same time as well, the rise of artificial intelligence indicates an uncertain future of the boundaries between machines and humans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Commonly credited with a distinctly presentist agenda, neo‐Victorian works invite readers/viewers to infer seeming parallels and continuities between the 19th century and postmodernity. The discernment of presentism's exact operations, however, presupposes an informed audience with a comparatively high level of historical knowledge and sophistication, which cannot be assumed by works targeting a diverse mass market, as in the case of televisual productions. This often results in mixed messages that undermine neo‐Victorianism's ethical agenda and endorsement of liberal politics, pitting critical self‐conscious engagement with the past against its naïve and unreflective consumption. This essay considers presentism's complex ramifications via an overview of the presentist debate and its application to neo‐Victorian studies, followed by a case study of Season Three of Showtime/Sky's popular Penny Dreadful (2014–2016) series, created by John Logan, specifically the plotline centred on the characters Brona Croft/Lily, Dr Victor Frankenstein, and Dorian Gray. Their triangulated narrative, I argue, reveals a disturbing tension between the series' apparent avowal of feminist ideals and activism, on the one hand, and a parodic skewing of both, on the other, raising issues of potential viewer manipulation and insidious historical distortion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, I suggest that the animation scene in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein poses interesting and important questions for both adaptations and criticism of the novel. While scholars and film-makers tend to agree that Victor achieves the animation of his creature through a galvanic electric spark, Shelley’s account of the creature’s animation in the novel is altogether more ambiguous, and exploits the obscurity of contemporary understandings of vitality. Shelley’s phrase “spark of being” in particular is associated at the period with phenomena as varied as the soul, electrical science and biological reproduction. I compare a series of theatrical and cinematic adaptations of the novel, from Richard Brinsley Peake’s Presumption, or the Fate of Frankenstein (1823), to James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931), Mel Brooks’s Young Frankenstein (1974), and Kenneth Branagh’s Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994). However, my focus is Bill Morrison’s film Spark of Being (2010), a silent film produced from found footage. I argue that Morrison’s film acknowledges in a way that other adaptations do not, that Shelley accounts for the animation as an obscure “chemical” experiment. Morrison’s film, like Shelley’s novel, focuses on chemical processes, rather than the galvanic shocks favored by other adaptations and indeed by scholars of the novel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A literary criticism of the novel "Frankenstein" by Gary Reed and Mary Shelley is presented. It tells the story of committed science student Victor Frankenstein who is consumed by a fanatic desire to create a living being. He assembles a human being from stolen body parts but his visage, perceives his creation to be a monster and frightens him away. Tormented by isolation and loneliness, the once-innocent creature turns to evil and unleashes a campaign of murderous revenge against his creator.

This article explores Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as an “object of care” for use in examining the relationship between creativity and responsibility in the sciences and beyond. Through three short sketches from different disciplinary lenses—literature, science and technology studies, and feminist studies—readers get a sense of the different ways scholars might consider Shelley’s text as an object of care. Through an analysis and synthesis of these three sketches, the authors illustrate the value of such an object in thinking about broad cultural issues. The article acts as a kind of boundary object by creating distinct, yet overlapping narratives from an object that is owned by many social worlds. The three sketches reveal Frankenstein as a thoughtful consideration about what it means to care for, or fail to care for, one’s creation, rather than as a cautionary tale about the evils of scientific hubris. Although infrastructures at universities often prevent interdisciplinary dialogue, the article concludes that purposeful boundary objects created around objects of care like Frankenstein can help build bridges and create shared meanings for new interdisciplinary spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses different well-known imagined monsters. Starting with the fairy tale and the films onThe Beauty and the Beast(La Belle et la Bête), hidden meanings from several psychodynamically valid perspectives are proposed with the aim of finding out what makes this story so popular and everlasting. Projected demons or impulses in Maurice Sendak'sWhere the Wild Things Areare discussed as well as Mary Shelley’sFrankensteinand his monster who are presented and connected to facts in this author’s life. In the summary links to psychoanalytic thinking are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article notes the 200th anniversary of the book "Frankenstein," by Mary Shelley. Topics discussed include how the book has influenced other media including the comics "Ex Machina," by Alex Garland and "The Far Side," by Gary Larson, how the 2018 Popular Culture Association's annual meeting in 2018 featured an event focusing on this anniversary, and human creative expression .

To show how the case of Mary Shelley's Victor Frankenstein brings light to the ethical and moral issues raised in Institutional Review Board (IRB) protocols, we nest an imaginary IRB proposal dated August 1790 by Victor Frankenstein within a discussion of the importance and function of the IRB. Considering the world of science as would have appeared in 1790 when Victor was a student at Ingolstadt, we offer a schematic overview of a fecund moment when advances in comparative anatomy, medical experimentation and theories of life involving animalcules and animal electricity sparked intensive debates about the basic principles of life and the relationship between body and soul. Constructing an IRB application based upon myriad speculations circulating up to 1790, we imagine how Victor would have drawn upon his contemporaries' scientific work to justify the feasibility of his project, as well as how he might have outlined the ethical implications of his plan to animate life from 'dead' tissues. In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Victor failed to consider his creature's autonomy, vulnerability, and welfare. In this IRB proposal, we show Victor facing those issues of justice and emphasize how the novel can be an important component in courses or workshops on research ethics. Had Victor Frankenstein had to submit an IRB proposal tragedy may have been averted, for he would have been compelled to consider the consequences of his experiment and acknowledge, if not fulfill, his concomitant responsibilities to the creature that he abandoned and left to fend for itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates Grant Morrison’sSeven Soldiers of Victory(2005–06. New York: DC Comics) as a metafictional treatise on the writing and reading of comic books in general and the superhero genre in particular. It examines howSeven Soldiersfunctions as Morrison’s commentary on the way contemporary culture tells stories, the way we interpret, reject and ultimately reclaim our role in narratives, ranging from the intimate to the ‘end of the world drama’. In the process, a paradigm for interpreting this landmark series is suggested, one whereby each component speaks to an aspect of the comic-book reading/writing experience: Zatanna, the mainstream comic reader; Bulleteer, the new reader; Frankenstein, the process of reimagining; Shining Knight, a reimagined end product; Klarion, the juvenile reader resistant to adult notions of seriousness; the Guardian, the adult reader recapturing their imagination; and Mister Miracle, the link betweenSeven Soldiersand Morrison’s wider superhero writings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following paper is a study case showing the way in which the debate and attitudes on creating artificial life were shaped by Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and how this debate was inherited by dystopian author Carel Čapek in Rossum's Universal Robots. Paralels are made at the level of simbolic topography, classic scientific discourse, its relationship with gender constructs and the growing field of disability studies. Capek's thesis seems to be more complex than many have assumed. Rather than simply offering a radical critique of man's endeavour to create artificial life, the author seems to favour mimesis rather than the scientific attempt at improving nature itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The myth of Frankenstein is one of the most emblematic myths of contemporaneity. It is open to multiple possible readings with an interdisciplinary character (philosophical, political, psychological, literary, anthropological, etc.). In this article we favour an educational and pedagogical reading: a distinction is made between the fabrication and the sculpturing of the human and the conesquences that such distinction brings to a philosophy of education that is sensible to an education as value which is quite misunderstood in these postmodern times. We have divided our article into six parts: 1. A nameless creature; 2. The creature's educating influences; 3. Is the creature a "new man"? 4. The creature's loneliness; 5. Is Victor Frankenstein a Modern Prometheus? 6. On the pedagogical teachings of the myth of Frankenstein. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the classic to the modern theatre repertory, from cinematographically impersonating famous fictional characters such as mad scientists (Victor Frankenstein), implacable vampire hunters (Abraham Van Helsing) or unbeatable detectives (Sherlock Holmes), there was only one British actor, the inimitable Peter Cushing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]