The Monstrous Fantastic Conference Paper Abstracts - International ...

dynamics as point out how queer the story has always been. I will elaborate this thesis by analyzing how Olaf Stapledon’s Sirius further exploresand articulates the queer potential of Shelley’s novel, both in its critical interrogation of hetero-normative sexuality and in its deconstruction ofthe categories of the person and the human.From Darkness into Light: Science Fiction, Horror, and H. G. Well's The Island of Dr. MoreauDavid BañuelosUniversity of California, RiversideMany works generally classified as science fiction also strongly demonstrate qualities of the horror genre. Such "borderline" cases can beparticularly useful in understanding how these different genres function. One such borderline case is H. G. Well's The Island of Dr. Moreau,which combines elements such as cognition, estrangement, ambiguity, terror, horror, the monstrous, the grotesque, and the sublime. Thecontent, structure, and style of this novel all combine elements of science fiction and horror into a complex, but unified, whole. The beast menare almost perfect examples of the science-fictional grotesque, except that their scientific origins are not revealed until the story is half-wayover. This renders them more terrifying then cognitively estranging. When we finally understand what the beast men truly are, they becomescience-fictionally sublime, while remaining grotesque. Like Frankenstein's creature, the beast men are sublime in that they demonstrate theamazing power of the human intellect, to create beings so like humans, and grotesque in that they seem to violate the normal laws of "nature."Throughout the story, we see information omitted or concealed, while the protagonist, Prendick, unlike the typical science fiction protagonist,takes little initiative in uncovering the truth. He either chooses not to ask seemingly important questions, or if he does ask, his questions aredeflected, answered with lies, or completely ignored. Prendick usually accepts these evasions rather than persist in his questioning. Thus,Prendick, and we the readers, are left in a state of terror, rather than cognitive estrangement. By combining science fiction and horror, TheIsland of Dr. Moreau produces intellectual and aesthetic effects that neither could achieve alone.The Dynamo Poets and the Monstrosity of Industrial CapitalismBrian McAllisterAlbany State UniversityThis paper explores the development of a set of tropes employed by a group of leftist poets of the 1930’s who were associated with Dynamo: AJournal of Revolutionary Poetry particularly Kenneth Fearing, Sol Funaroff, Edwin Rolfe, and Muriel Rukeyser. This is an under-appreciatedgroup of writers who grew out of the so-called proletarian school of poets in the 1920’s to form a school of poetics antithetical to the prevailingtaste for imagism. As self-professed outsiders both in aesthetics and in politics they appropriated and expanded, sometimes to a fantasticextent, a number of beast metaphors found in progressive writing of the time. American literature of the late nineteenth and earlytwentieth centuries, especially literature of progressive political stance, employed a variety of animal tropes to depict the evils of moderncapitalism. For example, we are all familiar with the comparison of the railroad companies to an octopus most memorably deployed in FrankNorris’s 1901 novel. An octopus was an apt metaphor for a corporation that spread its tentacles across the country and into every otherbusiness that it touched. Less well known is Vachel lindsay’s use of feline imagery to describe the machinery of big business—locomotives andpump engines, for example. Lindsay’s machines are ominous crouching beasts with insatiable appetites that demand obeisance from thosewho serve them. These images and others were expanded in the hands of the Dynamo poets to create a monster of Industrial Capitalism.Especially culminating in the work of Edwin Rolfe, this monster becomes a kind of gargantuan zombie whose body is literally made up of theremains of workers it has first forced to do its bidding and then consumed.128. (CYA) The Line Between the Human and the Monster MapleChair: Leisa ClarkUniversity of South Florida"My, my, there are always monsters!”: The Conflation of Monstrosity and Humanity in D.M. Cornish’s Monster Blood Tattoo TrilogyDaryl RitchotThe University of British Columbia OkanaganIn D. M. Cornish's Monster Blood Tattoo Trilogy readers are transported to the Half-Continent, a neo-Victorian world where monsters of variousshapes and sizes wander the wilderness and wreak havoc on humanity. Life on the Half-Continent revolves around these monsters and ways toprotect humanity from the dangers they represent. However, when Rossamünd Bookchild, the foundling protagonist of the series, leaves theorphanage to embark on his adult life both he and the reader learn that monsters and humans are really not as different as is generally thoughton the Half-Continent: some monsters are shown to be helpful and harmless while some humans, specifically the monster hunters known aslahzars, are shown to be little more than the indiscriminate killers which they are supposed to hunt. In this paper I will both question ourconception of monstrosity and explore how the monstrous alters our idea of what it means to be human. My exploration will be grounded inthe theory of the monstrous put forth by Richard Kearney in Strangers, Gods and Monsters: Interpreting Otherness. Specifically, that whilemonsters are a representation of evil from without, they are also an externalization of the evils that humans themselves possess. Furthermore,I will supplement my examination of the lahzars by reading them through discourses from posthumanism, most notably the cyborg theory ofDonna Haraway. As a result of the lahzars having artificial glands and organs implanted within their bodies to grant them “superpowers” to aidin their fight against monsters, many people fear the lahzars almost as much as they fear monsters: these enhancements turn them intopseudo-monsters. By examining the conflation of humans and monsters within these novels I will show that neither humans nor monstersshould be judged on their race and appearance but on their actions.The Human Monster: Redemptive (Im)possibilities in The House of the Scorpion and Rot & RuinDorothy Karlin