The field of monster studies has grown significantly over the past few years and this companion provides a comprehensive guide to the study of monsters and the monstrous from historical, regional and thematic perspectives. The collection reflects the truly multi-disciplinary nature of monster studies, bringing in scholars from literature, art history, religious studies, history, classics, and cultural and media studies. The companion will offer scholars and graduate students the first comprehensive and authoritative review of this emergent field.
Contents: Foreword, John Block Friedman; Introduction: the impact of monsters and monster studies, Asa Simon Mittman; Part I History of Monstrosity: The monstrous Caribbean, Persephone Braham; The unlucky, the bad and the ugly: categories of monstrosity from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, Surekha Davies; Beauteous beast: the water deity Mami Wata in Africa, Henry John Drewal; Rejecting and embracing the monstrous in Ancient Greece and Rome, D. Felton; Early modern past to postmodern future: changing discourses of Japanese monsters, Michael Dylan Foster; On the monstrous in the Islamic visual tradition, Francesca Leoni; Human of the heart: pitiful oni in medieval Japan, Michelle Osterfield Li; The Maya 'cosmic monster' as a political and religious symbol, Matthew Looper; Monsters lift the veil: Chinese animal hybrids and processes of transformation, Karin Myhre; From hideous to hedonist: the changing face of the 19th-century monster, Abigail Lee Six and Hannah Thompson; Centaurs, satyrs, and cynocephali: medieval scholarly teratology and the question of the human, Karl Steel; Invisible monsters: vision, horror, and contemporary culture, Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock. Part II Critical Approaches to Monstrosity: Posthuman teratology, Patricia MacCormack; Monstrous sexuality: variations on the vagina dentata, Sarah Alison Miller; Postcolonial monsters: a conversation with Partha Mitter, Partha Mitter with Asa Simon Mittman and Peter Dendle; Monstrous gender: geographies of ambiguity, Dana Oswald; Monstrosity and race in the late Middle Ages, Debra Higgs Strickland; Hic sunt dracones: the geography and cartography of monsters, Chet van Duzer; Conclusion: monsters in the 21st century: the preternatural in an age of scientific consensus, Peter J. Dendle; Postscript: the promise of monsters, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen; Bibliography; Index.
