"It's alive!" … and it has been reanimated incessantly, ever since Victor Frankenstein first 'gave birth' to his iconic creature in Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein. The 'mad' scientist and his 'monstrous' offspring by now serve as virtually ubiquitous cultural archetypes, while the novel itself has informed and inspired the creation of texts as diverse as The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Edward Scissorhands, or Blade Runner, to name but a few. In order to grasp the impact of the Frankenstein narrative as well as its longevity, we will begin with detailed and multifaceted readings of Shelley's novel and then, go on to explore some of Frankenstein's pop-cultural intertexts, which have revisited, revised, and re-envisioned the (his-)story of the creator and his creature time and again. The overall aim of the course is thus to compile a 'cultural history' of the Frankenstein narrative that shows us how this Gothic tale continues to shape our ideas of culture, sexuality, religion, medicine, etc. up until today.

Please buy and read/ watch:

Mary Shelley. Frankenstein. 1818. Ed. J. Paul Hunter. New York, NY: Norton, 2012.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show. 1975. Dir. Jim Sharman. Perf. Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon, and Barry Bostwick. Twentieth Century Fox, 2013.
Edward Scissorhands. 1990. Dir. Tim Burton. Perf. Johnny Depp, Winona Ryder, Dianne Wiest, and Vincent Price. Twentieth Century Fox, 2011.
Gods and Monsters. 1998. Dir. Bill Condon. Perf. Ian McKellen, Brendan Fraser, and Lynn Redgrave. Lions Gate/ Studiocanal, 2001.