MONSTERS!!
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Course begins November 2024
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Live sessions with the instructor every week
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Sessions from 1:00 - 3:00pm Eastern U.S. Time
Week 1
THE MONSTERS OF ANCIENT GREECE AND ROME
Cyclopes, three-headed dogs, perilous gods and Titans: This week we look at what makes a monster, and how ancient societies categorized monstrous beings in texts like Gilgamesh, Homer’s Odyssey, and The Wonders of the East.
Week 2
BORDER WALKERS: MONSTERS AND MARVELS OF THE MIDDLE AGES
Beowulf is famous for its monsters, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight focuses on a green figure who can survive beheading; One Thousand and One Nights tells stories of djinn and sorcerers, King Arthur fights a grotesque giant in the alliterative Morte Arthure. We will look at the medieval conception of monsters through a variety of textual lenses.
Week 3
WEREWOLVES
The first account of lycanthropy occurs in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, but from there, medieval authors and historians were fascinated by the capacity for transformation from beast to human or human to beast. This week, we will look at the origins of werewolf stories and their evolution across cultures and time from medieval Europe through modern Africa.
Week 4
VAMPIRES
Undead bloodsuckers are popular features of literature and film—but where do the stories of nosferatu begin? Are there medieval vampires? This week we will look at the historical, literary, and cinematic depictions of these sexy monsters and trace their development across cultures.
Week 5
SCIENTIFIC MONSTROSITY
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is often lauded as the first horror novel. In her account of a scientist who spent too much time wondering if he could, he never stopped to think if he should, she questions the very idea of what makes a monster. This week we will look at Frankenstein and other instances of scientific inquiry that created monster—either on purpose or by accident—and the medieval practices of alchemy that inspired Shelley’s creation.
Week 6
GHOSTS, GOBLINS AND CHRISTMAS CRAWLERS
As the weather gets cold and the days grow shorter, people are drawn to stories of ghosts, apparition, and other unsettling things. This week—in the lead up to the winter season—we will look at ghost stories, actual ghost sightings, and folkloric figures like Krampus and Baba Yaga, tracing their long history from the Middle Ages to the modern day.
More About This Course
Throughout the course of literary history, man has articulated his worst fears in the form of monsters. But many writers used the monstrous form to cry out against corruption, social inequity, political and scientific despotism; using monsters as a form of social or political commentary rather than as a device to evoke fear. In this class, we will study some of the earliest human-form monsters in world literature—British, American, and non-Anglophone texts in comparison, and trace the evolution of monsters in literature through the advent of the Gothic horror novel. We will look at the monstrous figures in Gilgamesh, Beowulf, Inferno, and Old Norse sagas, including werewolf narratives from medieval France and vampire tales from around the world.
Meet Your Instructor
Larissa Tracy
Larissa “Kat” Tracy is faculty at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She has appeared in several History Channel, National Geographic, and Discovery Channel documentaries, including Dark Marvels and The Unbelievable! hosted by Dan Aykroyd. Her work focuses on thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth century English literature that looks back to the pre-Conquest period in England and the Viking Age, with cross-cultural contacts in medieval French, Irish, and Welsh and a specific focus on social justice, law, medicine, and judicial punishment. Her publications include Torture and Brutality in Medieval Literature (2012) and the edited collections Heads Will Roll with Jeff Massey (2012), Castration and Culture in the Middle Ages (2013), Wounds and Wound Repair in Medieval Culture, with Kelly DeVries (2015), Flaying in the Premodern World (2017), Medieval and Early Modern Murder (2018), Treason (2019), and Medieval English and Dutch Literatures with Geert H.M. Claassens (2022).