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Monsters Teaching Us to Be Human: Teaching Empathy & Advocacy through Monster Texts

Colleen Karn

Methodist College

HERA 2020

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Why Monsters?�Why Frankenstein?

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My Challenge

Teach high level critical thinking through literary and cultural analysis of cultural texts to nursing, social work, and health care administration students in a general education course.

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The Course

HUM301: Legacy of Literature

  • 300 Level General Education Humanities
  • The impact of a single cultural text
  • Central Text with Ancestors and Offspring

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Lesson Learned from LIT101

  • Health Science students don’t see any value in literature and humanities courses
  • Students want right and wrong answers
  • Popular culture doesn’t put up their “out of my comfort zone” walls
  • Horror doesn’t scare them but poetry does
  • Trick them into critical analysis using popular culture

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Frankenstein as Central Text

  • Popular culture, monsters, & horror
  • Ethical Dilemmas
  • Science & Medicine
  • Easily apply critical theories such as feminism, Marxism, post-colonialism, & psychoanalytic
  • Monsters and Monster Theory

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Lessons Learned from �First Semester of HUM301

  • Students felt critical theories---feminism, Marxism, etc.---were inaccessible
  • Preferred Monster Theory---seen as “not high academic”
  • Students weren’t afraid of Frankenstein or horror because they thought they already knew it

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Evolution of Course

  • Switched to Monster Theory
  • Focused more on the horror as heightened lesson
  • Focused more on monster as Other
  • Added history of monsters and monstrosity
  • Added lessons on who have been considered monsters and why

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Definition of ‘Monster’

  • an animal or plant of abnormal form or structure
  • a person of unnatural or extreme ugliness or deformity
  • a thing of extraordinary or daunting size
  • an imaginary frightening creature that is often large or ugly
  • a person of unnatural or extreme wickedness
  • one who deviates from normal or acceptable behavior or character

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Definition of ‘Monster’

  • an animal or plant of abnormal form or structure
  • a person of unnatural or extreme ugliness or deformity
  • a thing of extraordinary or daunting size
  • an imaginary frightening creature that is often large or ugly
  • a person of unnatural or extreme wickedness
  • one who deviates from normal or acceptable behavior or character

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17th Century

Physically deformed labeled “monsters”

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Student Discussion Posts �Reacting to “Who are Monsters?”

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Teaching True Horror

  • Cultures purposely monstrifying populations
  • Dehumanization
  • Gain Power: war, colonization, slavery, class system
  • Maintain Hegemony

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Monstrification & Dehumanization�through�Cultural Texts

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Dehumanization through Animalization

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1901

“When a knock is heard at the door she [a white woman] shudders with nameless horror. The black brute is lurking in the dark, a monstrous beast, crazed with lust. His ferocity is almost demoniacal. A mad bull or tiger could scarcely be more brutal. A whole community is frenzied with horror, with the blind and furious rage for vengeance.”

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1933

King Kong

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In 1940, the Nazis released their propaganda film, The Eternal Jew. “One of the film's most notorious sequences compares Jews to rats that carry contagion, flood the continent, and devour precious resources” (USHMM).

(RAT)

(ERRADICATE IT)

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In 1943, G. G. Otto’s “The Jew as World Parasite” was published by the Wehrmacht; in it, not only were Jews deemed, as the title indicates, parasites, but they were also referred to “Jewish demons.”

(Insatiable)

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De-Monstrification & �Re-Humanization�through�Cultural Texts

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​

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1981

An American Werewolf in London

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1958

Attack of the 50 Foot Woman

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2009

Monsters

vs.

Aliens

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Student Discussion Posts �Reacting to Monstrifying Others

“My initial response was outrage and disbelief in how anyone could have believed those portrayals of the Jews. I felt that it was a great injustice that they were othered in the first place. This angered me that one culture would ostracize and demonize an entire race so completely and heartlessly.”

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End Goal

  • Awareness of othering
  • Realization of self as monster-other
  • Empathy for othered people and populations
  • Advocacy for Others---especially in their future careers as health care and human service professionals

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Frankenstein, Monsters & Horror

  • Begin with a “safe” fictional text to establish concepts and move to real horror
  • Teach students to think critically about cultural texts and their world
  • Inspire empathy and advocacy for othered populations