FRANKENSTEIN REVEALED: A Postmodern Prometheus–Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Bi-Centennial of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

FRANKENSTEIN REVEALED: A Postmodern Prometheus – Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Bi-Centennial of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
Featured Panelists from Linda Hall Library and Kansas City Art Institute—

Eric Ward  Linda Hall Library
Science behind Frankenstein

Eleanor Lim-Midyett  Liberal Arts
Gender inequality and racism in the novel

Trey Hock  Filmmaking
Narrative shift in Frankenstein’s film adaptations

Erin Hamer-Beck  Liberal Arts
Sex Role Subversion in Bride of Frankenstein

Dwight Frizzell  Converging Media
Frankenstein soundscape

The first science fiction novel, Frankenstein, was written by Mary Shelley while she was in her late teens. At the cusp of its third century, this Gothic classic is useful in a ways unique among novels. It may be a mirror, for example, of our apprehensions about science, gender and child rearing; or a trans-linguistic lens exposing the shortcomings of romanticism; or a palimpsest unraveling our trans-human future.

Tonight’s program is a special convergence for Frankenstein, as scholars from diverse fields gather for an interdisciplinary range of presentations. We hope our discussion is provocative like Mary Shelley’s novel. Perhaps a new Creature will emerge worthy of our fearless attentions.  –Dwight Frizzell

To call in and join our lively discussion—816-931-5534

CREDITS:

ERIC WARD

Eric Ward will discuss the science that influenced Mary Shelley and how science shaped her novel, Frankenstein.

Eric Ward is Vice President for Public Programs at the Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering & Technology, where he has curated exhibitions on topics ranging from the science of CSI and natural disasters to a history of bird field guides and the building of the Panama Canal. Earlier in 2018, he was a co-curator of the Library’s exhibition, It’s Alive! Frankenstein at 200: The Science Behind the Story. He has a B.A. in English from Hawaii Pacific University, an M.L.I.S. from the University of Hawaii, and is a doctoral candidate in an interdisciplinary Ph.D. program in history and English at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He is also the author, under the pen name Jack Ambraw, of Decker’s Dilemma: A Subic Bay Mystery, published by Blank Slate Press in 2015. He is at work on a second novel in the series.

ELEANOR LIM-MIDYETT

Lim-Midyett’s panel discussion will focus on how Shelley’s work, although not readily apparent, critiques 19th century gender inequality and racism through the interactions between her main characters.

Eleanor Lim-Midyett received her B.A. degree in English Literature from Georgetown University and earned M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in East Asian Languages and Literatures from Yale University.  She was also a writer for A Magazine:  Inside Asian America and a contributor to Eastern Standard Time: A Guide to Asian Influence on American Culture. She has taught courses on Gender Studies, Asian American Studies and Chinese studies at the Kansas City Art Institute since 1994.  She is currently the History of Thought coordinator in the Liberal Arts Department at KCAI. Her classes include Topics in Gender Studies:  Constructing the Woman Warrior and In Search of Other Mothers’ Gardens which focuses on the literatures of Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison.  She is passionate about promoting gender equality and diversity and inclusion. Her interest in Shelley’s Frankenstein began with her research on Mary Wollstonecraft, Shelley’s feminist mother.

TREY HOCK

By comparing James Whales’ Frankenstein (1931) and Kenneth Branagh’s Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994) through the lens of Susan Sontag’s “The Imagination of Disaster,” Trey will explore the possible fears each film is trying to address, and the failure of Branagh’s doomed offering.

Trey Hock’s work explores the markers of narrative through short film, writing, installation, photography, performance and web-based social media platforms. His work interrogates the assumed physical and social constructions that surround us. These include narrative storytelling, the photographic frame, public and private spaces, and personal identity.

ERIN HAMER-BECK

Hamer-Beck’s panel discussion will examine the construction of horror through the social anxiety of gender roles, racism, and manufactured sexuality in the classic 1935 film, Bride of Frankenstein.

Erin Hamer-Beck is an adjunct instructor with the Kansas City Art Institute, University of Missouri – Kansas City, Washburn University, and Metropolitan Community College. She received her MA in Theatre and Film from the University of Kansas and her MFA in screenwriting from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Hamer-Beck has taught academic and creative writing, screenwriting, and film studies since 2014. She is a co-presenter with the Cinephiles on KCUR. Her short screenplay “Jukebox Baby and the Luxury Bombshells” won Best Heartland Screenplay and Audience Choice Award at the 2017 Kansas City Film Festival, she has worked as a journalist for the Kansas City Star, and she is a screenwriting mentor for Kansas City Women in Film and TV. Her First-Year Seminar course at KCAI focuses on depictions of the antihero in literature and all forms of media. For years, she has been fascinated by and in love with the film, Bride of Frankenstein.

DWIGHT FRIZZELL

Water is a primal force flowing through the soundscape of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, from the incessant rain in the introduction, to the novel’s final lines where oceanic waves are heard in the darkness as the Creature’s ice raft recedes from view.

Dwight Frizzell is an internationally recognized artist and soundscape composer who began recording environments, and playing with their acoustic imprints, early on—a practice he calls Turtle Music—as heard on his 1976 LP Beyond the Black Crack. The cultural complexities of place were fore-fronted in Dwight’s Peabody-awarded Center of the World (1997), which features his childhood neighbor Harry S. Truman at the shopping center that leveled the beloved Truman family farm in 1957. More recently, Frizzell was panel moderator for Sounding Sculptural Space at the International Sculpture Conference with composer Robert Carl and long-string instrumentalist Ellen Fullman. Dwight’s teachers included Sun Ra, Douglas Davis and Tom Mardikes. He earned a terminal degree in Sound Design for Theatre, and is currently Professor in Converging Media at KCAI. His soundscape music is available on Paradigm Discs, and his radio program, From Ark to Microchip, is heard every Wednesday night at 11:30pm on KKFI 90.1 FM.

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