Cover: Monsters, 3rd Edition by Andrew J. Hoffman

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Monsters

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Third  Edition©2025  Andrew J. Hoffman

ISBN:9781319564346

ISBN:9781319474508

About

A fun topic for serious inquiry -- at an affordable price.  What could be more interesting to read and write about than monsters? Evaluate central concepts around this theme through readings from classic and contemporary fiction writers, pop culture critics, philosophers, psychologists, historians, and others in Monsters, 3rd edition. With this text you will examine monsters from a diverse range of perspectives and learn to write effectively about them.

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Table of Contents

[[*Indicates new selection]]

Introduction for Students

 

Chapter 1: Why Do We Create Monsters?  

Stephen King, Why We Crave Horror Movies

Mary Shelley, from Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus 

Susan Tyler Hitchcock, Conception 

Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan, Why Vampires Never Die  

Chuck Klosterman, My Zombie, Myself: Why Modern Life Feels Rather Undead 

Peter H. Brothers, Japan’s Nuclear Nightmare: How the Bomb Became a Beast Called Godzilla 

*Scott O. Moore, The Momo Challenge and the Intersection of Contemporary Legend and Moral Panic 

Stephen T. Asma, Monsters and the Moral Imagination 

 

Chapter 2: How Do Monsters Reflect Their Times? 

Ted Genoways, Here Be Monsters 

Daniel Cohen, The Birth of Monsters 

*Anonymous, from Beowulf [[*new excerpt]] 

*Edward T. C. Werner, Myths of the Waters
*Basil Johnston, Weendigo

Matt Kaplan, Cursed by a Bite 

W. Scott Poole, Monstrous Beginnings 

*Iikura Kimie, Japanese Urban Legends from “The Slit-Mouthed Woman” to “Kisaragi Station”

*Bruce Sterling, AI is the Scariest Beast Ever Created

 

Chapter 3: How Does Gender Affect the Monster? 

Amy Fuller, The Evolving Legend of La Llorona 

Bram Stoker, from Dracula 

*Sarah Stang, Shrieking, Biting, and Licking: The Monstrous-Feminine in Video Games

Sophia Kingshill, Reclaiming the Mermaid

*Jalondra A. Davis, Magic, Mermaids, and the Middle Passage: On Natasha Bowen’s Skin of the Sea

*Gary Morris, Sexual Subversion: The Bride of Frankenstein

Carol J. Clover, Final Girl 

Jack Halberstam, Bodies that Splatter: Queers and Chainsaws 

 

Chapter 4: What is the Power of the Monster? 

Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Fear of the Monster Is Really a Kind of Desire 

*Daniel Loxton, The Howling Horror of Werewolves!

*Kiley Fox, Noppera Bo and the Fear of Nothingness

Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 

*Rodrigo Silva Guedes, Jeykll and Hyde: The Monster as a Metaphor

*Adam Chitwood, A Quiet Place Monsters Explained by John Krasinski

Christian Jarrett, The Lure of Horror 

 

Chapter 5: Is the Monster within Us? 

Adolf Hitler, Nation and Race 

Patrick McCormick, Why Modern Monsters Have Become Alien to Us 

*Fay Onyx, Ridding Your Monsters of Ableism

Anne E. Schwartz, Inside a Murdering Mind 

William Andrew Myers, Ethical Aliens: The Challenge of Extreme Perpetrators to Humanism 

*Mary Retta, The Unexpected Power of Seeing Yourself as the Villain

*Judith Clemens-Smucker, Stranger Teens: Eleven Transforms the Monstrous Symbolism of Adolescence through a Contemporary Narrative Arc

Kevin Berger, Why We Still Need Monsters

Andrew J. Hoffman

Andrew J. Hoffman is a Professor of English at San Diego Mesa College, where he teaches courses in grammar, composition, and British Literature. He received his B.A. in English from the University of California at Irvine and his M.A. from Syracuse University. He is the author of Monsters, part of the Bedford Spotlight series, and has contributed to The Arlington Reader, Fourth Edition. In addition, he has authored, edited, or otherwise contributed to numerous other textbooks of grammar, composition, and rhetoric, in both traditional and online formats.