My university students are very good at behaving. They say “thank you, Heather,” after every class, write emails with streamlined professionalism, and (almost) always follow instructions. This quarter in my “Medicine in British Popular Culture” seminar course, we’ve committed to loosening that grip on affective constraint. We start class with silly ice-breakers, we welcome deep…
Tag: Frankenstein
Special Issue Review: Chemistry, Disability, and Frankenstein
Diana Rose Newby // Chemistry, Disability, and Frankenstein, theme issue of Literature and Medicine, vol. 36, no. 2, fall 2018. In her introduction to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley concludes with well wishes for her creation’s second life: “And now, once again, I bid my hideous progeny go forth and prosper” (25). Today,…
The Reproductive Sublime in Anthropocenic Literature, Part II: Theorizing a Reproductive Sublime
Livia Arndal Woods Edmund Burke’s 1757 A Philosophical Inquiry Into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful defines the sublime as “whatever is in any sort terrible…[and] productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling” (34). The particular strength of this emotion is the result of the sublime’s…
The Reproductive Sublime in Anthropocenic Literature, Part I: The Frankenstein Bicentennial
Livia Arndal Woods Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) has a big birthday on the horizon, a whole host of celebrations are afoot to mark the occasion, and this is the second Medical Health and Humanities blog post in as many weeks to take the novel as its subject. This hubbub reflects not only the perennial popularity…
Neonatal Jaundice in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
Cynthia Harris To many readers, Frankenstein is best read as a “birth myth,” even as a “cautionary obstetric tale” that warns of the horrors of motherhood.[1] These interpretations have historically relied on seeing Victor Frankenstein as analogous to the pregnant and later post-partum mother, possibly even to Mary Shelley herself. In my Fall semester…