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Dazed and Confused: Eroding the Line Between the Monster and Ourselves Across Genres

Category: Event Calendar

Dates and Times for this Past Event

  • Wednesday, Nov 8, 2023  6:30pm - 8:30pm
  • Wednesday, Nov 1, 2023  6:30pm - 8:30pm
  • Wednesday, Oct 25, 2023  6:30pm - 8:30pm
  • Wednesday, Oct 18, 2023  6:30pm - 8:30pm
  • Wednesday, Oct 11, 2023  6:30pm - 8:30pm
  • Wednesday, Oct 4, 2023  6:30pm - 8:30pm

Location

This six-week workshop will take place virtually via Zoom.

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Details

Through time, monsters have taken on every form within tales from around the world. The creatures within these stories range from the figure of the vampire to the monsters who take on unique features depending on the culture and landscape (for example the boo hag - - a witch who could slip out of her human skin-is specific to Gullah culture in the south and the Navajo skin- walker). The figure of the monster appears within various
holy texts and are as identifiable as Mary Shelly's Frankenstein, Pu Songling's "The Painted Skin," Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, any of the individuals we meet within the dramatic monologues of the poet Ai to Frank Bidart's "Herbert White. Whether we are referencing any of these texts or exploring these figures within the current pop-culture which includes Jordan Peele’s Us or the Hulu Monsterland
series, there is no denying that the monster lives across time, literary genres, artistic mediums, and oral traditions. Given that we are the tellers of the tale, the monster is a part of our human cartography. Alongside this legacy of the tales of the monster have been moments of history raising the question of who is the real monster? Are the creatures we have created – on the screen, on the page, on canvas - our reflections staring back at us? We can point to everything from the phenomenon of historical witch trials around the globe to the stories that continue to fill headlines about what humans are doing to other humans as evidence that we are in fact part monster ourselves? What can we look to in our psyche, experiences, or what we have taken in that will cause us to scream our own version of creature on the page?

This 6-week generative workshop will explore monster theory and the ways we can uncover the grotesque, the scary, the horrid or wretched when it comes to exploring who or what is the monster on the page in verse and prose. Some of our exploration will center around some of these concepts as we also bring it back to the page:
• What is the attraction, seduction and emotional core of the horror/monster?
• What kinds of thresholds do we come to with our monster?
• The obsession with perception —the gaze of the monster
• The monster as the shapeshifter over time
• How do we meet the monster that is within us or among us within our experiences on the page?

This is an invitation to any writer in any genre to erode the line between the monster that is separate from the monster that is the human. You have been warned. Come prepared to monster with us!