Reading Group: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

Frankenstein began as a contest among friends to see who could write the most frightening ghost story during a June vacation so rainy, overcast, and cold that 1816 later became known as “the year without a summer.” Two centuries later, Mary Shelley’s novel about an ambitious inventor and the lonely monster he brings to life retains a strong grip on our cultural imagination. This fall, you’re invited to discover firsthand what wisdom Frankenstein has in store for readers and Christians today.
As a tale of intellectual ambition and technological overreach, Frankenstein looks back toward Adam’s creation in Genesis and ahead to our use of genetic testing of embryos today. The novel questions why and how new life comes into the world, and what human beings need to thrive. Join Lumen Center Fellow in Literature Cassandra Nelson to discuss family and free will, care and abandonment, and the promise and peril lurking within new technologies and the human heart. All readers are welcome.
This group will meet on the following Tuesdays from 12:00- 1:15 p.m:
Sept. 15
Sept. 22
Sept. 29
Oct. 6
Please bring your own copy of the 1818 edition of Frankenstein. (Beware! Shelley published a revised text in 1831. We will be reading her earlier text.) The Broadview version is recommended but not required.