CONGRESS CANCELED Taking Shape: Sculpting Monsters
Description
For centuries, the actions of monsters were more important that what the monsters looked like. Some monsters were given more specific descriptions than others, yet monstrosity was often based on Otherness, such as deformity, threatening animals, gender, or foreigners. As time goes on, many monsters take on more precise shapes based on the exaggerated physical conceptions of difference. By exploring how monsters take on specific shapes, this panel will analyze the ways in which specific fears (and desires) can create specific physical features.
The panel will be most effective with a range of methodologies and fields. While literary descriptions are often the base of how monsters are perceived, folkloric traditions that predate writing influence literary traditions. Works of history contain aspects of monstrosity, either literally or in how certain groups are described. Artistic renderings of monsters can also highlight the variety of interpretations of monstrosity. How and why monsters are formed, both as a concept and as a physical threat, has relevance across fields and eras. The panel should appeal to many areas of scholarship, particularly those that explore how gender, sexuality, and physical disabilities are presented as fearsome and monstrous. Asa S. Mittman
CONGRESS CANCELED Taking Shape: Sculpting Monsters
Fetzer 2030
For centuries, the actions of monsters were more important that what the monsters looked like. Some monsters were given more specific descriptions than others, yet monstrosity was often based on Otherness, such as deformity, threatening animals, gender, or foreigners. As time goes on, many monsters take on more precise shapes based on the exaggerated physical conceptions of difference. By exploring how monsters take on specific shapes, this panel will analyze the ways in which specific fears (and desires) can create specific physical features.
The panel will be most effective with a range of methodologies and fields. While literary descriptions are often the base of how monsters are perceived, folkloric traditions that predate writing influence literary traditions. Works of history contain aspects of monstrosity, either literally or in how certain groups are described. Artistic renderings of monsters can also highlight the variety of interpretations of monstrosity. How and why monsters are formed, both as a concept and as a physical threat, has relevance across fields and eras. The panel should appeal to many areas of scholarship, particularly those that explore how gender, sexuality, and physical disabilities are presented as fearsome and monstrous. Asa S. Mittman