Wang, Fuson. “The Historicist Turn of Romantic-Era Disability Studies, or Frankenstein in the Dark.” Literature Compass, vol. 14, no. 7, July 2017. EBSCOhost,
https://onlinelibrary-wiley-com.une.idm.oclc.org/doi/full/10.1111/lic3.12400
- This article takes Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein and places it under the lens of disability. Fuson Wang compares different readings of the text with today’s disability critics’ views. He draws upon evidence from many different time periods including, the romantic-era of disability studies and the enlightened view of disability. Wang argues that by reading the text with disability in mind it is clear that “Shelley offers a more nuanced account of abnormal embodiment than disability scholars have traditionally allowed.” If I choose to pursue this thread, I believe that I would be able to forward Wang’s in a few different ways, however I have not chosen exactly which yet.
Bissonette, Melissa Bloom. “Teaching the Monster: Frankenstein and Critical Thinking.” College Literature, vol. 37, no. 3, 2010, pp. 106–120. EBSCOhost, http://web.a.ebscohost.com.une.idm.oclc.org/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=18&sid=cddd7c32-0ab6-4f90-b11a-3792beebdbcf%40sdc-v-sessmgr01
- I am an Elementary Education major, so this article jumped out at me as I was researching this text. Within this work Melissa Bissonette analyzes the way that Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein is taught. It is her view that the novel should be taught to new readers threw the monster and the different unknowns that he brings to the table. She argues that many students of the text lack a critical lens and are not guided in such a way that will allow they to fully analyze the text to its fullest potential. I am not convinced this is the exact article that I wish to write midterm on but it is headed in the right direction so I have decided to include it here. I would love to write about the concepts of nature vs nurture and the deferent critical lenses of that have been used to analyze this text.
The Educational Legacy of Romanticism, edited by John Willinsky, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1990. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uneedu/detail.action?docID=685980.
- Within this essay Anne McWhir examines the education of the monster in Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein through the lens of romanticism. She argues that Frankenstein’s monster was doomed both by origin and his education. McWhit delves into other works of similar topic as well as the everlasting debate of nature vs nurture. After doing a brief reading of this article, I have been lead to believe that it is this that I will base my midterm on. It covers many topics that I am interested in and provides me with many different avenues to follow when looking to forward and counter.
Hey Anna!
I love how you took the Frankenstein novel in a new direction that we didn’t really have time to talk about in much detail. Do you think you have a specific direction you feel you might take this education meets Frankenstein route? There are so many great paths you could take with this. I’m even wondering if you wanted to write your midterm essay on how Frankenstein relates to education and maybe connect that with disabilities. What if spending extra time with students with disabilities on teaching this novel and more with similar themes, would be really beneficial to them. Or maybe one aspect of your paper could be talking about how you might teach the novel to certain types of students in order for them to get the most out of the novel? Just some suggestions. I’m really excited to see where you might take this because it’s an interesting connection.
I’m noticing some similarities between your description of the article that you’re most excited about (the third one) and one of the articles that I’m thinking about working with. I found an article entitled “The Monster in a Dark Room: Frankenstein, Feminism, and Philosophy” by Nancy Yousef, which also discusses the monster’s intellectual development. It sounds like McWhir analyzes through a more strictly Romantic lens, incorporating ideas of nature vs. nurture, while Yousef takes a feminist approach by studying the research that Shelley herself conducted on ideas from Locke and Rousseau. I think it would be interesting if we both chose this topic because I bet we could take these similar ideas in completely different directions.
I like how you tied two of your sources to education. Though you’re an elementary education major, and you probably won’t teach Frankenstein to your students, it still fits for the purposes of this project. I didn’t read Frankenstein in high school but discussed it with one of my teachers in the past couple years. It seems the quintessential question for high school teachers is still “who is the monster?” This approach is so limiting! Is it true that students “are not guided in a way that will allow them to fully analyze” Frankenstein alone or other texts as well? Try searching nature vs. nurture and Frankenstein in the MLA Bibliography if you’re interested in that concept. I recall coming across an article with a similar title when conducting my search. I’m interested to know more about the essay you identified by McWhir. Romanticism is one of my favorite literary movements, and I think her attempt to tie that critical lens to education is interesting.