Image by Patricia Olynyk: Dynamic Extension II Digital C print on archival paper 22.25" x 61.25"
Issue 10, Fall 2018

Frankenstein at 200 “It’s Alive!”

Of Woman Born

Like her mother, Mary Shelley lived the life of a woman intellectual. Engaging public issues through her writing she offered a multifaceted view of the existing world through the speculative lens of other social and political possibilities. As a divine warning and portent of what to come, she was, in the etymological sense, a monster.

Frankenstein: A Hero for Our Time

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein lives on, constantly amazing us with its currency and power, taking on new and surprising forms, moving us as few other works of nineteenth-century fiction can. However, in our technically advanced, digital age it is not the flawed man of science who commands our sympathy or respect, but more often the monster.

Decolonializing Frankenstein

Frankenstein is, in a way, a story of a man’s desire to be liberated from himself. Nearly 150 years later, Frantz Fanon explored similar themes, such as the perspective of the creature’s desperate search for love and recognition, and also the bondage of nihilistic portraits of creators and the created.

Frankenstein Meets Climate Change: Monsters of Our Own Making

The topic of climate first comes in with the writing of the book, in 1816. The 18-year-old Mary Godwin was vacationing in Geneva, Switzerland, with her soon-to-be husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, and friends. It was not much of a vacation because the weather was terrible: gloomy, dark, rainy and cold.