Monstrous Nature

Monstrous Nature PDF Author: Robin L. Murray
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0803294921
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
Godzilla, a traditional natural monster and representation of cinema’s subgenre of natural attack, also provides a cautionary symbol of the dangerous consequences of mistreating the natural world—monstrous nature on the attack. Horror films such as Godzilla invite an exploration of the complexities of a monstrous nature that humanity both creates and embodies. Robin L. Murray and Joseph K. Heumann demonstrate how the horror film and its offshoots can often be understood in relation to a monstrous nature that has evolved either deliberately or by accident and that generates fear in humanity as both character and audience. This connection between fear and the natural world opens up possibilities for ecocritical readings often missing from research on monstrous nature, the environment, and the horror film. Organized in relation to four recurring environmental themes in films that construct nature as a monster—anthropomorphism, human ecology, evolution, and gendered landscapes—the authors apply ecocritical perspectives to reveal the multiple ways nature is constructed as monstrous or in which the natural world itself constructs monsters. This interdisciplinary approach to film studies fuses cultural, theological, and scientific critiques to explore when and why nature becomes monstrous.

Monstrous Nature

Monstrous Nature PDF Author: Robin L. Murray
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0803294921
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 269

Get Book Here

Book Description
Godzilla, a traditional natural monster and representation of cinema’s subgenre of natural attack, also provides a cautionary symbol of the dangerous consequences of mistreating the natural world—monstrous nature on the attack. Horror films such as Godzilla invite an exploration of the complexities of a monstrous nature that humanity both creates and embodies. Robin L. Murray and Joseph K. Heumann demonstrate how the horror film and its offshoots can often be understood in relation to a monstrous nature that has evolved either deliberately or by accident and that generates fear in humanity as both character and audience. This connection between fear and the natural world opens up possibilities for ecocritical readings often missing from research on monstrous nature, the environment, and the horror film. Organized in relation to four recurring environmental themes in films that construct nature as a monster—anthropomorphism, human ecology, evolution, and gendered landscapes—the authors apply ecocritical perspectives to reveal the multiple ways nature is constructed as monstrous or in which the natural world itself constructs monsters. This interdisciplinary approach to film studies fuses cultural, theological, and scientific critiques to explore when and why nature becomes monstrous.

Monstrous Nature

Monstrous Nature PDF Author: Robin L. Murray
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0803285698
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
5. Zombie Evolution: A New World with or without Humans -- 6. Laughter and the Eco-horror Film: The Troma Solution -- 7. Parasite Evolution in the Eco- horror Film: When the Host Becomes the Monster -- PART 4: Gendered Landscapes and Monstrous Bodies -- 8. Gendering the Cannibal: Bodies and Landscapesin Feminist Cannibal Movies -- 9. American Mary and Body Modification: Nature and the Art of Change -- Conclusion: Monstrous Nature and the New Cli-Fi Cinema -- Filmography -- Notes -- Works Cited -- Index

Beyond Nature Writing

Beyond Nature Writing PDF Author: Karla Armbruster
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 9780813920146
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
Together, their work signals a new direction in the field and offers refreshingly original insights into a broad spectrum of texts.

Fear and Nature

Fear and Nature PDF Author: Christy Tidwell
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271090413
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 165

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Book Description
Ecohorror represents human fears about the natural world—killer plants and animals, catastrophic weather events, and disquieting encounters with the nonhuman. Its portrayals of animals, the environment, and even scientists build on popular conceptions of zoology, ecology, and the scientific process. As such, ecohorror is a genre uniquely situated to address life, art, and the dangers of scientific knowledge in the Anthropocene. Featuring new readings of the genre, Fear and Nature brings ecohorror texts and theories into conversation with other critical discourses. The chapters cover a variety of media forms, from literature and short fiction to manga, poetry, television, and film. The chronological range is equally varied, beginning in the nineteenth century with the work of Edgar Allan Poe and finishing in the twenty-first with Stephen King and Guillermo del Toro. This range highlights the significance of ecohorror as a mode. In their analyses, the contributors make explicit connections across chapters, question the limits of the genre, and address the ways in which our fears about nature intersect with those we hold about the racial, animal, and bodily “other.” A foundational text, this volume will appeal to specialists in horror studies, Gothic studies, the environmental humanities, and ecocriticism. In addition to the editors, the contributors include Kristen Angierski, Bridgitte Barclay, Marisol Cortez, Chelsea Davis, Joseph K. Heumann, Dawn Keetley, Ashley Kniss, Robin L. Murray, Brittany R. Roberts, Sharon Sharp, and Keri Stevenson.

The Boundaries of Human Nature

The Boundaries of Human Nature PDF Author: Matthew Calarco
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231550960
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
Are animals capable of wonder? Can they be said to possess language and reason? What can animals teach us about how to live well? How can they help us to see the limitations of human civilization? Is it possible to draw firm distinctions between humans and animals? And how might asking and answering questions like these lead us to rethink human-animal relations in an age of catastrophic ecological destruction? In this accessible and engaging book, Matthew Calarco explores key issues in the philosophy of animals and their significance for our contemporary world. He leads readers on a spirited tour of historical and contemporary philosophy, ranging from Plato to Donna Haraway and from the Cynics to the Jains. Calarco unearths surprising insights about animals from a number of philosophers while also underscoring ways in which the philosophical tradition has failed to challenge the dogma of human-centeredness. Along the way, he indicates how mainstream Western philosophy is both complemented and challenged by non-Western traditions and noncanonical theories about animals. Throughout, Calarco uses examples from contemporary culture to illustrate how philosophical theories about animals are deeply relevant to our lives today. The Boundaries of Human Nature shows readers why philosophy can help transform not just the way we think about animals but also how we interact with them.

Monstrous Possibilities

Monstrous Possibilities PDF Author: Amanda Howell
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031128443
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
This book focuses on how the abject spectacle of the ‘monstrous feminine’ has been reimagined by recent and contemporary screen horrors focused on the desires and subjectivities of female monsters who, as anti-heroic protagonists of revisionist and reflexive texts, exemplify gendered possibility in altered cultures of 21st century screen production and reception. As Barbara Creed notes in a recent interview, the patriarchal stereotype of horror that she named ‘the monstrous-feminine’ has, decades later, ‘embarked on a life of her own’. Focused on this altered and renewed form of female monstrosity, this study engages with an international array of recent and contemporary screen entertainments, from arthouse and indie horror films by emergent female auteurs, to the franchised products of multimedia conglomerates, to 'quality' television horror, to the social media-based creations of horror fans working as ‘pro-sumers’. In this way, the monograph in its organisation and scope maps the converged and rapidly changing environment of 21st century screen cultures in order to situate the monstrous female anti-hero as one of its distinctive products.

Eliza and Her Monsters

Eliza and Her Monsters PDF Author: Francesca Zappia
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062290150
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
“A love letter to fandom, friendship, and the stories that shape us, Eliza and Her Monsters is absolutely magical.”—Marieke Nijkamp, New York Times–bestselling author of This Is Where It Ends Eighteen-year-old Eliza Mirk is the anonymous creator of the wildly popular webcomic Monstrous Sea, but when a new boy at school tempts her to live a life offline, everything she’s worked for begins to crumble. Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl meets Noelle Stevenson’s Nimona in this acclaimed novel about art, fandom, and finding the courage to be yourself. “A must-have.”—School Library Journal In the real world, Eliza Mirk is shy, weird, and friendless. Online, Eliza is LadyConstellation, anonymous creator of a popular webcomic called Monstrous Sea. With millions of followers and fans throughout the world, Eliza’s persona is popular. Eliza can’t imagine enjoying the real world as much as she loves her digital community. Then Wallace Warland transfers to her school and Eliza begins to wonder if a life offline might be worthwhile. But when Eliza’s secret is accidentally shared with the world, everything she’s built—her story, her relationship with Wallace, and even her sanity—begins to fall apart. With pages from Eliza’s webcomic, as well as screenshots from Eliza’s online forums, this book will appeal to fans of Noelle Stevenson’s Nimona and Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl. Young Adult Library Services Association Best Book Best Fiction for Young Adults Top Ten Kirkus Best Book Texas Tayshas Pick

Pregnant Bodies from Shakespeare to Ford

Pregnant Bodies from Shakespeare to Ford PDF Author: Katarzyna Burzyńska
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000551911
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
This book explores how the pregnant body is portrayed, perceived and enacted in Shakespeare’s and his contemporaries’ drama by means of a phenomenological analysis and a recourse to early modern popular medical discourse on reproduction. Phenomenology of pregnancy is a fairly new and radical body of philosophy that questions the post-Cartesian chasm of an almost autonomous reason and an enclosed and self-sufficient (male) body as foundations of identity. Early modern drama, as is argued, was written and staged at the backdrop of revolutionary changes in medicine and science where old and new theories on the embodied self-clashed. In this world where more and more men were expected to steadily grow isolated from their bodies, the pregnant body constituted an embattled contradiction. Indebted to the theories of embodiment this book offers a meticulous and detailed investigation of a plethora of pregnant characters and their “pregnant embodiment” in the pre-modern works by Shakespeare, Middleton, Webster and Ford. The analysis in each chapter argues for an indivisible link between an intensely embodied experience of pregnancy as enacted in space and identity-shaping processes resulting in a more acute sense of selfhood and agency. Despite seemingly disparate experiences of the selected heroines and the repeated attempts at containment of their “unruly” bodies, the ever transforming and “spatial” pregnant identities remain loci of embodied selfhood and agency. This book provocatively argues that fictional characters’ experience reflects tangible realities of early modern women, while often deflecting the scientific consensus on reproduction in the period.

Actual Fucking Monsters

Actual Fucking Monsters PDF Author: James Desborough
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 0244485860
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 108

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Book Description
Aren't we all just a little tired of shiny, brooding, humanised monsters who just want to be loved? Not in this game, here you will play Actual Fucking Monsters who do horrible things are hounded and hunted to the ends of the Earth. Yes, it's fun, just a different kind.

Nothing Natural Is Shameful

Nothing Natural Is Shameful PDF Author: Joan Cadden
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812208587
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
In his Problemata, Aristotle provided medieval thinkers with the occasion to inquire into the natural causes of the sexual desires of men to act upon or be acted upon by other men, thus bringing human sexuality into the purview of natural philosophers, whose aim it was to explain the causes of objects and events in nature. With this philosophical justification, some late medieval intellectuals asked whether such dispositions might arise from anatomy or from the psychological processes of habit formation. As the fourteenth-century philosopher Walter Burley observed, "Nothing natural is shameful." The authors, scribes, and readers willing to "contemplate base things" never argued that they were not vile, but most did share the conviction that they could be explained. From the evidence that has survived in manuscripts of and related to the Problemata, two narratives emerge: a chronicle of the earnest attempts of medieval medical theorists and natural philosophers to understand the cause of homosexual desires and pleasures in terms of natural processes, and an ongoing debate as to whether the sciences were equipped or permitted to deal with such subjects at all. Mining hundreds of texts and deciphering commentaries, indices, abbreviations, and marginalia, Joan Cadden shows how European scholars deployed a standard set of philosophical tools and a variety of rhetorical strategies to produce scientific approaches to sodomy.