Cover: Monsters, 2nd Edition by Andrew J. Hoffman

Monsters

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Second  Edition©2020  Andrew J. Hoffman

ISBN:9781319225049

ISBN:9781319056339

ISBN:9781319519353

ISBN:9781319489045

About

A fun topic for serious inquiry -- at an affordable price
No matter what you major is, what could be more interesting to read and write about than monsters? Evaluate central concepts around this theme through readings from classic poets, contemporary fiction writers, pop culture critics, philosophers, psychologists, occultists, scientists, ethicists, historians, and others in Monsters. With this book you will examine monsters from a diverse range of perspectives and learn to write effectively about them.

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Table of Contents

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
*Clarisse Loughrey, Slender Man: A Myth of the Digital Age
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 translation]]
*Gerald Vizenor, Nannabozho and the Gambler
Matt Kaplan, Cursed by a Bite
W. Scott Poole, Monstrous Beginnings
*Nick Bostrom, Get Ready for the Dawn of Superintelligence
*Isaac Asimov, Robbie

*Chapter 3: How Does Gender Affect the Monster?
*Amy Fuller, The Evolving Legend of La Llorona
Homer, from The Odyssey
*Sophia Kingshill, Reclaiming the Mermaid
Ovid, Battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs
Karen Hollinger, The Monster as Woman: Two Generations of Cat People
*Carol J. Clover, Final Girl
*Judith 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
Bram Stoker, from Dracula
Karen Backstein, (Un)safe Sex: Romancing the Vampire
Elizabeth A. Lawrence, Werewolves in Psyche and Cinema
*Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
*Erica McCrystal, Hyde as a Monster Villain
*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
*Thomas Fahy, Hobbes, Human Nature, and the Culture of American Violence in Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood
Anne E. Schwartz, Inside a Murdering Mind
Richard Tithecott, The Horror in the Mirror: Average Joe and the Mechanical Monster
William Andrew Myers, Ethical Aliens: The Challenge of Extreme Perpetrators to Humanism
*Kevin Berger, Why We Still Need Monsters

Sentence Guides for Academic Writers

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.