Adapting Frankenstein: The Monster’s Eternal Lives in Popular Culture
We propose to edit a book of new essays on the general
subject of the many ways Frankenstein has been adapted in popular
culture, including films, television, radio, graphic novels, comic
books, newspaper cartoons, music, the stage, novels, short stories,
children’s and adolescent literatures, new media, and so forth.
We are interested in what has made Frankenstein’s monster so indestructibly fascinating to the public mind through the many generations since his inception in 1818—almost 200 years ago! We are interested in essays that explore the creature’s versatile ability to appear as threatening monster or sympathetic high school loser, as Milton the Monster or Frankenweenie, as eternal outsider refined in a Tibetan monastery or as a cloned sheep. We are also interested in indirect adaptations: Edward Scissorhands, The Stepford Wives, The Golem, The Colossus of New York, Godzilla and other spawn of the atomic age, as well as zombies and the various replicants, androids, robots, and re-animations.
We are interested in what has made Frankenstein’s monster so indestructibly fascinating to the public mind through the many generations since his inception in 1818—almost 200 years ago! We are interested in essays that explore the creature’s versatile ability to appear as threatening monster or sympathetic high school loser, as Milton the Monster or Frankenweenie, as eternal outsider refined in a Tibetan monastery or as a cloned sheep. We are also interested in indirect adaptations: Edward Scissorhands, The Stepford Wives, The Golem, The Colossus of New York, Godzilla and other spawn of the atomic age, as well as zombies and the various replicants, androids, robots, and re-animations.
Paper proposals should be around 300-450 words and should reflect current inter-textual approaches in adaptation theory. They might ask such questions as how an adaptation engages its source(s), our culture, and, perhaps, other adaptations; the relevance of a particular adaptation in the context of its time and culture; the significance of the monster’s role as cultural icon or matrix figure; how an adaptation changes our view of the source text, etc. Studies on adaption such as Hutcheon, The Theory of Adaptation, Leitch, Film Adaptation and its Discontents, Perry and Sederholm, Adapting Poe: Re-Imaginings in Popular Culture, and Albrecht-Crane and Cutchins, Adaptation Studies: New Approaches provide model adaptation studies and theory along the lines we suggest. We expect that successful articles will be rigorous and scholarly, but accessible to a more general audience.
Send proposals to Professors Dennis R. Perry (dperry@byu.edu) or Dennis Cutchins (dennis_cutchins@byu.edu) before June 30, 2013.
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