Monsters seem to be here to stay.
Though we have left belief in the supernatural and "realness" of monsters in the past, we continue to craft monstrous narratives which delve into the depths of the human subconscious.
In certain cases, we love to love the monster. In others, we bond over mutual desire to see it conquered, vanquished. The inherent mutability of the monster provides us with endless opportunities to reimagine, reenvision, and reencounter these creatures.
This volume contains discussions and dissections of monsters across multiple media and geographical origins. However, the notable shifts in how we engage monsters and monstrosity feature heavily in this text. Our contributors tackle resurrections of previous series and conversations through films like Jurassic World and Krampus. Others gravitate towards the rebirth of some of the older, tried and true monsters like the vampire and the zombie, including analyses of Pride and Prejudice + Zombies, The Originals, The Vampire Diaries, iZombie, and Teen Wolf-all of which reinterpreted and reinvented these creatures for the modern audience. While the text serves to address these new iterations of the "Classic" monsters in the canon, others take a look at stranger, more fringe monster narratives like Pan's Labyrinth, The Village, or even the very real parasitic monstrosities of Monsters Inside Me.
Though many of these chapters will analytically address particular texts, like the long-running series Supernatural, others will take on the metanarrative surrounding trends within monster studies, such as the construction of identity, creation or representation of the soul, or the ongoing questions of authorship and agency within a particular story world. In its entirety, this volume endeavors to examine how 21st-century media presents and contends with the body and mind of the monster. What do they reveal about us culturally, individually, as a community? What can we learn from them?
