Themes and Readings
All participants will be expected to have read Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) before arriving at the lab, as well as a number of other essays. All materials will be available to accepted participants through the e-class platform of the University of Thessaly at least a month before the beginning of the program.
Penelope Papailias_Spectropolitics: Posthuman Death and Hybrid Bodies
Μary Shelley was vague in her description of the experimental assemblage / animation of the Victor's 'creature', while subsequent filmic remediations and mythologization have emphasized certain aspects (electricity) and introduced others (chemistry). In this section, I invite us to return to the suggestive idea of a new inhuman-superhuman composed of dead body parts poached from 'vaults and charnel houses' as well as Frankenstein's later 'abortion' of a female 'creature', as a means to open contemporary discussion in the field of death/dead body studies, biopolitics/necropolitics, posthumanism, feminist/gender theory, new media studies. This section could open up to historical and contemporary politics of handling the bodies of the stigmatized and dispossessed and the knowledge/power dynamics of science in various ages -- from body-snatching of poor, criminal racial others (anatomy) to dead bodies of refugees (genetics), the liminal lives related to socially 'monstrous' coupling and body manipulation ('mulatto', transgender, cyborg) and the spectral/ mediatic return of collective-composite subaltern subjects as a political and ethical call for recognition, response and justice.
Key reading:
Recommended readings:
|
Laura Kunreuther_Animation
This section will explore the concept of animation that emerges as a key theme in Frankenstein. How does animation relate to the fact of listening or witnessing another person/creature’s tale that similarly structures the novel and has become a central mode of engagement for today’s figures of liminality like contemporary refugees? What correlations and differences might we discern between animating a being into life and witnessing or listening to their tale?The third suggested reading reflects on the classroom as a ‘semi-private room’ and may provide an opportunity for us to think about what we are doing as an intimate, semi-private group in PSL and how that relates to the practice of experimental humanities.
Key Reading:
Recommended readings:
Leandros Kyriakopoulos_Aestheticizing Monsters
This discussion aspires to situate the image and imagination of the monster into the context of romantic modernity, and to explore the relations between literary realism, difference, melancholy and exclusion.
Key reading:
Recommended Readings:
|
Eirini Avramopoulou_The 'monster' within: Abjected psychic spaces and affective encounters
Focusing on the movement of emotions and on the political economy of fear, this seminar will address historical, political and social processes related to the production of the subject, interpellation and abjection, through the following questions: What does fear do? How does it work to mediate bodies and define thin and thick limits between the self and the other? How does it affect, as much as it gets affected, by space, history, trauma and identity?
Key reading:
Recommended readings:
Anna Karakatsouli_Frankenstein: A Publishing History
This section will be an introduction to the History of the Book focused on Mary Shelley and her book Frankenstein. We are going to discuss about writers, publishers and readers in early 19th century Britain, literary criticism and gender issues as well.
Key Reading:
Recommended Readings:
|
Daniel Karpowitz_Figures of Speech
The intersection of African Americans and violent crime have long constituted each other in American life and the white imagination-literary, sociological and historical. James Baldwin explored this terrain most brilliantly in his essay “Many Thousands Gone” - a passionate critique of both white supremacy and African American protest literature of the Left. The essay is centered around Baldwin’s reading of the notorious literary character Bigger Thomas, a murderer supposedly produced by the injustices of American capitalism. We will read Baldwin’s essay “Many Thousands Gone” and a contemporary chapter of non-fiction that depicts the speeches given by graduates of a college-in-prison program.
Key reading:
Suggested Reading:
Additional recommended readings: 1) For a sweeping contextualization of the contemporary phenomenon of mass incarceration, and an argument about the intersections of political economy and the construction of race, consider "Deadly Symbiosis", Loic Wacquant (Boston Review). 2) For a thoughtful attempt to complete the racially-polarized political narratives characteristic of the “Jim Crow” literature, consider the book Locking Up Our Own, by civil rights lawyer James Forman Jr. 3) For a take on the figure of African American’s in US literature and literary criticism, see Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. |