The 202nd meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium will be held on Tuesday,  Dec. 5, 2017 at 7pm at The New School, Theresa Lang Community and Student Center, Arnhold Hall. 55 West 13th Street, Room I-202, New York, NY.  Free and open to the public.

Elizabeth C. Denlinger on “’Too Horrible for Human Eyes’: Picturing Frankenstein’s Creature.”

Early in Frankenstein, Mary Shelley’s novel of 1818, Victor describes the monster he has created as “too horrible for human eyes.” And yet no one has been able to turn away since the earliest theatrical productions, in which the creature was played by a tall graceful actor in blue body paint. This talk will explore the extremely varied ways in which the creature has been portrayed and the relationship between those portrayals and the reader’s or viewer’s identification with him. Do we stare because he’s so hideous, or because he’s so attractive?

Elizabeth C. Denlinger received a Ph.D. from NYU. Formerly a curator at the Morgan, she has curated the Carl H. Pforzheimer Circle of Shelley and His Circle since 2008. This talk rises from an exhibition she’s guest-curating at the Morgan calledIt’s Alive! Frankenstein at 200 that will open at the Morgan in the fall of 2018.

Illustration: Barry Moser

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