And they actually pay me to do this ...

[robinturner]

Now lessons have finished, we're all working away on our courses for the next semester. As I mentioned before, we base all our first-year courses around a theme, the idea being that students learn academic skills through studying a subject, rather than through a series of unrelated exercises (long-term solri-fans will remember my "Matrix" and "Warriors" courses). This time round, my course is to be entitled "Monsters Among Us", and is an examination of vampires, zombies, werewolves and other human-monster transformations. I'm planning to look at it from the viewpoints of anthropology (How did these myths arise?), psychology (Why do we like them?) and media/cultural studies (What messages do they give?).

I've just finished The Philosophy of Horror, which is good old-fashioned analytic philosophy based around questions like how we can be firghtened by things that we know don't exist, and am now starting The Beast Within: a history of the werewolf. I can't believe that I'm being paid to read this stuff! I can even watch my Buffy DVD's and count it as work. Sometimes you've just got to love academia.

Comments

[oblomova.livejournal.com]

If you haven't read David Skal's cultural history of horror, "Monster Show," I recommend it.

[solri.livejournal.com]

Thanks - I've just checked and it looks like they have it in the library.

[blorky.livejournal.com]

I've been fascinated by zombies for a long time, both from a horror standpoint and from a neurology standpoint. (No, I will not go into p-zombies here.) That the zombie mythos may have an actual basis in neurochem and cultural studies (google 'zombie dust') just makes me happy.

"Why have you come back to Haiti, Doctor Allen?" - Serpent and the Rainbow

[solri.livejournal.com]

The Serpent and the Rainbow was a wonderful book (and a pretty naff film). What interested me was that Wade Davis didn't just find the zombie poison and, like that Scooby-Doo character, say "See, there's a perfectly simple scientific explanation!" He then tied the biochemical side into the cultural/magical side and showed how they worked together.

[ironed_orchid]

I want your job.

Although I should add that I'm trying to think of a course in which I can use this as a teaching aid.

[sjcarpediem.livejournal.com]

I read an excellent source, once, on vampires. I seem to remember it was called "blood tears" but I can't find it, anymore. Its unfortunate; it really was a great non-fiction piece....

[hfx-ben.livejournal.com]

My take: vampires are soul-sucking psychopaths (nothing other-worldly there!) and werewolves are those who are willing be outrage convention in order to counter them (same again).

No personal experience at all in that, needless to say.

FWIW: see Erich Neumann's "Depth Psychology and a New Ethic" ... his treatment of community scape-goat ritual is, ummm, uniquely acute.
Also: Jerzi Kozinski's "Painted Bird" ... a German orphan ends up in an Eastern German village during the early years of WWII.