Speaking of Monsters―A Teratological Anthology

Despite its apparently monolithic definition, "teratology" (from the Greek word teras, meaning "monster," and the Latin logia, which is derived from the Greek logos, meaning "a speaking, discourse, treatise, doctrine, theory, science") seems infinitely malleable, flourishing in various rhetorical environments. Teratologies are more than a bestiary: a catalogue of "freaks" designed to celebrate the "normal." Rather, teratologies illustrate how humor, horror, fantasy, and the "real" cross-fertilize each other, resulting in the possibility of new worlds, ethics, and narratives emerging. As a general anthology of teratologies, this book simply maps what, in many ways, has already been occurring across several fields, as it tracks the expansion of this term, creating lacunae that form connections across multiple interpretive communities. It is a cross section of how "monster narratives" intersect with "outsider" positions, from different perspectives - such as those of literary critics, film critics, criminologists, law professors, historians, philosophers - and looks into various strategies of destabilizing normative binaries.

Caroline Joan (Kay) S. Picart, formerly a tenured associate professor of English and Humanities at Florida State University, is a joint Juris Doctor-MA Candidate (WST) at the University of Florida Levin College of Law and an adjunct professor of Humanities at Santa Fe College. She is also currently editor-in-chief of the Florida Journal of International Law and articles editor of the Journal of Technology Law and Policy . She has published and contracted fourteen singly authored and co-authored/co-edited books, including Monsters in and Among Us: Towards a Gothic Criminology (2007), Frames of Evil: The Holocaust as Horror in American Film (2009), Draculas, Vampires, and Other Undead Forms (2009), and Dracula in Visual Media (2010) - winner of the 2011 Lord Ruthven Award.John Edgar Browning is a PhD student and Arthur A. Schomburg Fellow in American Studies at SUNY-Buffalo. He has co-/written eight books, including Draculas, Vampires, and Other Undead Forms (2009), Dracula in Visual Media (2010, winner of the 2011 Lord Ruthven Award), and The Vampire, His Kith and Kin: A Critical Edition (2011).