Facing Familiar Fears: Race, Gender, and Technology in Frankenstein

Schedule

Tue May 17 2022 at 07:00 pm to 09:00 pm

Location

Film Noir Cinema | Brooklyn, NY

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This talk will explore Frankenstein's text with an eye toward science's impact on racial, sexual, and gender-based discrimination.
About this Event

Are humans only born, or can they be made? Must your origins determine your future? Are you fated to be who you are, or can you choose? What lessons does Mary Shelley's Frankenstein have to teach us about Black Lives Matter and the role of science and technology in shaping our concept of who counts as human? What can we learn through Shelley's novel about extending human rights--including the right to reproduce--to synthetic, artificial life forms?

Though it was first published more than two centuries ago, Shelley's groundbreaking narrative is as relevant and provocative today as it was in 1818. Its blend of science fiction, horror, and gothic drama provide a phantasmagorical laboratory in which progressive generations of scholars, writers, and artists continue to test what it means to be human. This talk will explore Frankenstein's implications for modern autonomy and identity issues by analyzing the original text with an eye toward science's impact on racial, sexual, and gender-based discrimination. Topics will range from incest to artificial life, and slavery to the singularity.


About the Instructor

Wendy C. Nielsen (www.wendynielsen.com) is Associate Professor of English at Montclair State University in New Jersey, where she teaches European Romanticism, Science Fiction, Enlightenment literature, and other courses about comparative literature. She is interested in solving why certain popular figures recur in British, German, and French literature, as seen in her book Women Warriors in Romantic Drama (University of Delaware Press, 2012) and the forthcoming monograph, Motherless Creations: Fictions of Artificial Life, 1650-1890 (Routledge, 2022). She regularly publishes scholarly essays in academic journals on world literature, Romantic-era automata, theater, the French Revolution, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Olympe de Gouges, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Elizabeth Inchbald, Charlotte Corday, and Boadicea.

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Please be advised that this class is not included in the Global Spring 2022 Pass or the New York Spring 2022 Pass.

Please check with your local health authority on the current requirements for masks and vaccination for attending live events.

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Where is it happening?

Film Noir Cinema, 122 Meserole Avenue, Brooklyn, United States

Event Location & Nearby Stays:

Tickets

USD 15.00

The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies

Host or Publisher The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies

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