Humes Fall 2026 "Monsters" Readings

Surekha Davies- Monstrification

• Applicable to all readings

• Cabinet of curiosity

• Details way to deal w/ abjections; ppl experience abjection; monstirifcation is easy to distance yourself from someone you don’t want to be

• Consciousness is humanity but the decisions made w/ this consciousness must be in accordance w/ norms that are very restrictive/encourage one mode of thinking

• Monsters can also come from who is capable of harming others or social groups but who is in these groups, how do we determine who is under attack

Mary Shelley- Frankenstein

• Gothic and sublime but not in the same vein since sublime is more romantic

• Idea of wanting to play God

• Multiple foils/dopplegangers/doubles (ex. victor/the creature, Elizabeth/victor’s mom, even themes of gothic/romantic)

• Enlightenment (emphasis on reason/science and nature)

• Novel is a fight between enlightenment and romanticism/emotions

Julia Kristeva- Approaching Abjection

• Superego Freudian concept

• Connection of our emotions to our past memories and when these don’t connected, we are unsettled

• Once something leaves our body, it’s disgusting and no longer ours

• Boundary between self and other

• Idea of abject happens early on in life; when you’re a child

• Abject protects us from disgusting/unsafe things but also stops us from behaving in certain ways

Dan Sinykin and Johanna Winant, “Introduction” from Close Reading in the Twenty-First Century

• Pyramid of organizing information/analysis

• You should note if you think you have a claim and it is ok to not know your full thoughts on it yet

Karel Čapek- R.U.R

• Playing God

• What is better? Old Rossum vs New Rossum- what do you prioritize/seek in a robot/ labor/assistance or AI/modeling humanity

• New Rossum removed emotions, while Domin added them and Gall enhanced emotions

• Difference in Rossums’ motivations (which one is sinister)

• Think about/recognize the implications of your creation

• Current factory workers don’t know how to create robots —> Should we create technology that we ourselves do not know the full inner workings of

• Theme of love w/ robots in love and recognizing this Adam and Eve

Tobias Higbie- Why Do Robots Rebel? The Labor History of a Cultural Icon

• Robot doesn’t have to be a machine, but is just a human that is conditioned to do the same thing over and over again

• Speaks of class divides and how government uses that as a tool to keep people subservient

• Easier to associate robot w/ mechanical device amidst job takeovers/pressures

• Working class people become closer to machines than people

• Diff ppl of diff backgrounds view the RUR robots differently

Ruha Benjamin- Coded Exposure

• Emphasizes that technology is not necessarily a step forward but also perpetuates stereotypes in society

• Scopic vulnerability- the risks, harms, and exposure that come with the act of being seen or viewed by others (ex. facial recognition exacerbates racism by baseline tracking/automated bias)

• Different examples of evidence to show how different technologies lead to similar themes/results

• Who is responsible when the algorithm discriminates? Users? Programmers?

• People fail to eliminate that bias

• Camera can be subjective/has bias; isn’t just capturing something

Curt Leviant- “Introduction” from The Golem and the Wondrous Deeds of the Maharal of Prague, by Yudl Rosenberg

• How Golem was originally destroyed

• Original ways of animation/science behind creating the golem, signifies man made humans

• Origins of Golem story explained that Golem was meant to assist w/ labor, not just protection

• List of qualifications for Golem (refer back to Plenary slides)

Paul Wegener- The Golem: How He Came into the World (1920)

• Golem was made for protection/fill a gap humans had in existing- distinct from other creatures/robots

• Golem was not meant to reinvent the wheel (ex. not a new development in science) but for safety

• Golem is more tied to religion/mythology/Jewish folkore than scientific development

• Unmanageable monster idea- monster is created for a purpose and then there is a shift in control ex. Golem turns on creator

Scenes

• Little girl at the end takes the amulet from Golem’s chest, returning him to dust as he fulfilled his purpose

Mark Fisher-”Approaching the Eerie” from The Weird and the Eerie

• Eerie- absence where there should be a presence and presence where there should be an absence

• Eerie could come from not knowing a situation/fact/not being fully aware at all times

• When knowledge is achieved, the eerie disappears

• Weird- presence of that which does not belong (ex. an object)

Black Mirror- “Be Right Back” (Season 2, Episode 1, 2013)

• Avoidance of grief (ex. Ash’s mother w/ pictures of Ash’s brother, Martha uses AI as a quick fix)

• How desperation drives us to insanity/irrational decisions

• What does Martha want? She doesn’t want Ash to be perfect, she wants a human being

Key scenes

• Martha places Ash in the attic, connects to idea that Ash’s brother was placed in the attic by their mother which upset him

• Martha’s daughter does not call AI Ash “Dad”, but instead calls him Ash; could signify that she does not want her daughter to think AI Ash is her father

Ryan Coogler- Sinners

• Music as a form of power and resistance

• Music was created by Black culture, not something imposed

• Religion is used against Black ppl; justifies oppression and also a liberation

• Community building ex. Juke Joint and that community is very controlled (must be let in) —> cult like perception where devil arrives but in reality, is a result of exclusion

• Difference/double of church vs Juke Joint spirits are invoked at both but different connotations

Frantz Fanon- The Lived Experience of the Black Man

• Bc of French translation, it made it difficult to differentiate Fanon’s personal experience from references

• Black body is something imposed on

• Black man’s socialization- treatment based on race

• Inability to separate yourself from who you are and what the world is'; unable to see yourself properly

• Relates to double consciousness

W. E. B. Du Bois- Jesus Christ in Texas

• Religion plays a large role in creating a contradiction within discrimination ex. love thy neighbor

• Connects to Monstrification; oftentimes in religion, figures are not human and this is used as a justification in forming beliefs

• Only ppl who recognized/accepted him as Jesus were the black servant and little girl

• Ending w/ comparison and juxtaposition of crucifixion and lynching

Jerry Rafiki Jenkins- The Monsters of White Rage

• American dream in its tenant is not available to white ppl

• White rage or monsters come out when black ppl are successful

• Racism is very capitalist

• Dichotomy of systemic power being fought but also, white ppl keep Black ppl at the bottom

• If Black ppl succeed, it directly harms white ppl

Kimberly Belflower- John Proctor Is the Villain

• Themes of credibility (who is believed, why), power dynamics, cycles of oppression, solidarity, community and how community can work against you thru different social values/being stuck in your upbringing

• Female friendship

• Their takeaway of the Crucible was monstrification

Elinor Fuchs- Ef’s Visit to a Small Planet

• Don’t examine characters first; it is not the main point when analyzing plays

• Everything is intentional in a play and therefore, everything must have an explanation

• Ask abt climate, time, mood, etc

Anne Cattaneo- What is Dramaturgy?

• Dramaturgs

• help develop plays (production, adaptation, marketing)

• bring literary/historical context

• select a director

• don’t limit definition bc of its vitality and creativity

Tobin Nellhaus- A Concise Introduction to Catharsis

• 3 kinds of catharsis: elimination of audience's emotions, purification of audience’s emotions, and purification of character’s emotions

• Critique of catharsis is that the societal/political or whatever circumstances that cause this build up should be focused on instead of having an emotional release/elimination

• Never know the OG intention of catharsis because Artistotle’s ideas were lost and he died

• Applies to keywords since we never know the exact definition but just recognize other people’s interpretations

Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park- Wonders of Art, Wonders of Nature

• Couldn’t combine art and nature- never fully blended, always provoked criticism; also not sure what was manmade vs nature

• Wunderkammer- German word for wonder room/cabinet of curiosities, specialized piece of furniture used to display a private, encyclopedic collection of ordinary objects

• Showed wealth

• Didn’t want you to focus on one thing- wunderkammer overstimulated the senses

Sigmund Freud- The Uncanny

• Uncanny- something that feels frightening/unsettling bc it is simultaneously unfamiliar and strangely familiar

• Uncanny can emerge when something that should feel familiar becomes strange or disturbing

• Seeing lots of doubles that seem unnatural/dopplegangers

• Wishes vs infantile fears ex. dolls and wanting to bring these fears (repressed vs surmounted)

Richard Strauss- Salome

• Femme fetale vs childlike innocence/bratty unwavering desires

• Female sexuality is abnormal and therefore scary

• Flipping of power dynamics- Salome knows she’s being looked at and takes advantage of it

• 7 veils dance- is she in control or is she caving to the male gaze (the different versions/Salome as a child)

Linda Hutcheon and Michael Hutcheon- Staging the Female Body: Richard Strauss’s Salome

• Power of being viewed- is power in the eye of the beholder or beheld

• Gives more context abt Salome and Oscar Wilde and elaborates on the ideas of femme fetale vs childlike innocence

• Menstruation and women’s trauma was used to justify female desire

Bonnie Gordon- On the Cusp

• Castrati were famous but also the process/castration was illegal so castration was a vice and source of shame for them

• Castration was predetermined by families