U2 - Uncanny Monsters of the Narrative Arts: From Frankenstein to Ghosts to Cyborgs

Course Summary:

This undergraduate course explores how the narrative arts—literature, film, and drama—employ monstrous figures such as Frankenstein’s creature, ghosts, and cyborgs to explore unsettling truths about identity, mortality, and repression. Drawing on Freud’s concept of the uncanny, Derrida’s hauntology, and introductory perspectives on key psychoanalytic theories, we examine how stories reveal and conceal the "monsters within"—the disavowed and repressed aspects of our unconscious and cultural imagination.

Monsters in narrative arts serve as both reflections and disruptions of human fantasies about life, death, and meaning. By analyzing texts such as Frankenstein, Lincoln in the Bardo, Blade Runner, and Beloved, as well as key theoretical works, students will consider how these figures mediate between what is familiar and strange, destabilizing cultural assumptions while challenging us to confront what we fear most. The course is structured to explore complex theories--for example, Derrida's notion of "hauntology," Freud's concept of "the uncanny," and Lacan’s concepts of the imaginary, symbolic, and real--without requiring prior knowledge, using accessible summaries and readings to guide our discussions.

Learning Objectives:

Understand the concept of the uncanny and its application to the narrative arts.
Explore how narrative arts use monsters, ghosts, and cyborgs to expose repressed truths about identity, mortality, and desire.
Analyze how stories sustain and destabilize cultural structures of power, knowledge, and belief.
Investigate how the narrative arts negotiate the tension between the imaginary, symbolic, and real.
Develop critical reading and analytical skills through engagement with texts, films, and theoretical concepts.

Course Schedule

Week 1: Introduction to the Uncanny and Monstrosity

Readings:
- Sigmund Freud, "The Uncanny" (excerpts).
- Nicholas Royle, The Uncanny (Introduction and Chapter 1).
- Bruce Fink, A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis (selections summarizing the imaginary, symbolic, and real).
Discussion Topics:
- What makes something "uncanny"?
- Monsters as embodiments of repressed fears and desires.

Week 2: Frankenstein and the Origins of the Modern Monster

Readings:
- Mary Shelley, Frankenstein.
- Nicholas Royle, The Uncanny (Chapter 3: “The Uncanny and Literature”).
Discussion Topics:
- The creature as a mirror of Victor’s repressed unconscious.
- Romanticism as a "critical" return of the repressed monsters of the Enlightenment.
- Creation, death, and the rupture of the symbolic order.

Week 3: Ghosts and Hauntology

Readings:
- George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo.
- Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx (selections on hauntology, summarized for accessibility).
Discussion Topics:
- Ghosts as figures of presence and absence.
- How Lincoln in the Bardo uses spectrality to confront mortality and relationality.
- What are the metaphysical beliefs behind the world of Lincoln in the Bardo? What are the historical-political beliefs? How are they related? What role does the experimental form of the novel play?

Week 4: Gothic Doubles and Splitting the Self

Readings:
- Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
- Royle, The Uncanny (Chapter 6: “The Uncanny and the Double”).
Discussion Topics:
- The gothic double as an uncanny revelation of hidden desires. Does the scariness of the Gothic monsters say anything about Gothic repression?
- Splitting the self to disavow death and "the truth of the unconscious" (Lacan).

Week 5: Cyborgs and the Uncanny Hybrid

Readings:
- Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (selections).
- Donna Haraway, A Cyborg Manifesto (selections).
Films:
- Blade Runner (dir. Ridley Scott).
Discussion Topics:
- Cyborgs as uncanny mediators of human and non-human.
- Challenging boundaries of identity, life, and death.

Week 6: Monsters of Race and Trauma

Readings:
- Toni Morrison, Beloved (selections).
- Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (Chapter 5, summarized).
Films:
- Get Out (dir. Jordan Peele).
Discussion Topics:
- The racialized monster as a figure of historical trauma.
- Ghostly presences and repressed cultural violence.

Week 7: Maternal Monstrosity and the Uncanny Feminine

Readings:
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper.
- Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror (selections).
Films:
- The Babadook (dir. Jennifer Kent).
Discussion Topics:
- The uncanny mother as an abject figure.
- Feminine monstrosity as a disruption of identity and control.
- Feminist takes on "maternal monstrosity."

Week 8: Monsters, Ideology, and the Real

Readings:
- Slavoj Žižek, The Sublime Object of Ideology (selections, simplified).
- Royle, The Uncanny (Chapter 9: “The Uncanny and Politics”).
Films:
- The Thing (dir. John Carpenter).
Discussion Topics:
- Monsters as ruptures in ideological fantasy.
- How narratives confront audiences with the ungraspable Real.

Week 9: Narrative Arts as Uncanny Monsters

Readings:
- Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (selections).
- Derrida, Specters of Marx (conclusion, simplified).
- Peter Brooks, Reading for the Plot.
Discussion Topics:
- How stories sustain and destabilize cultural structures.
- The narrative arts as uncanny monsters that reveal the repressed within ourselves.

Assignments

Weekly Reading Responses (20%)Reflect on how a text or film engages with the uncanny and reveals hidden dimensions of the self.
Midterm Essay (30%)A 5–7 page analysis of a chosen text or film exploring how it uses monstrosity to mediate between the symbolic and the Real.
Final Project (40%)A 10–12 page research paper or creative project analyzing how a narrative work functions as an "uncanny monster."
Participation (10%)Active engagement in discussions, workshops, and film screenings.

Key Themes:

Monsters as reflections of the repressed.
Ghosts and the presence of absence, the absence of presence.
Cyborgs and hybridization: the destabilization of identity.
The uncanny as a confrontation with cultural and personal fears.