Dr Surekha Davies, Historical Monster Consultant (she/her)
I shall not be at #AHA26 this year but HUMANS: A MONSTROUS HISTORY from @[email protected] will be in the book exhibit - booth 314! Feel free to tag me in any photos you may take with it (pleeeeez!). It looks like this: 1/
Jan 8 at 11:39amWeb
Show threadDr Surekha Davies, Historical Monster Consultant (she/her)Jan 8
What's it about? HUMANS: A MONSTROUS HISTORY is about how people have defined “human” in relation to everything from apes to zombies, and how they invented race, gender, and nations along the way. 2/ www.ucpress.edu/books/humans...

Humans by Surekha Davies - Har...
Humans by Surekha Davies - Hardcover

Scholarship is a powerful tool for changing how people think, plan, and govern. By giving voice to bright minds and bold ideas, we seek to foster understanding and drive progressive change.

University of California Press
Show threadDr Surekha Davies, Historical Monster Consultant (she/her)Jan 8
With rich storytelling that braids together ancient gods and generative AI, Frankenstein’s monster and E.T., it shows how monster-making is about controlling who counts as normal. This is not a history of monsters, but a history "through monsters." Here's an excerpt from the "Machines" chapter: 3/

We’re Already at Risk of Cedin...
We’re Already at Risk of Ceding Our Humanity to AI

Machines It’s 2019. I’m in a bar in Providence, Rhode Island, chatting with graduate students and researchers with PhDs. One of them, who holds a PhD in Latin American literature, observed approvin…

Literary Hub
Show threadDr Surekha Davies, Historical Monster Consultant (she/her)Jan 8
When people hear "monster" today they think of nasty, probably imaginary beings. But what do, say, werewolves, Frankenstein's monster, and serial killers have in common? They are all category-breakers: they break norms; they straddle categories like human and animal, dead and undead, in ways that 4/
Show threadDr Surekha Davies, Historical Monster Consultant (she/her)Jan 8
...turn what seem at first glance to be tidy, separate categories into a continuum. "Monster" isn't a type of being. "Monster" is a term of classification. People invent monsters to define three types of boundaries. One is the boundary between human and other categories: animals, gods, machines. 5/
Show threadDr Surekha Davies, Historical Monster Consultant (she/her)Jan 8
Another type of boundary that people invent monsters to define are the boundaries within humanity - the social categories that define people using ideas about race, gender, and nation. 6/
Show threadDr Surekha Davies, Historical Monster Consultant (she/her)Jan 8
The third type of boundary that societies invent monsters to define are the parameters of "normal": words like freak, genius, and giant are stories and shorthands function like this.
Show threadDr Surekha Davies, Historical Monster Consultant (she/her)Jan 8
There are no monsters, yet all of them are real. They're real in the sense that they are ideas that have consequences in the world. They're stories that confect fixed, discrete, categories out of beings in the world that are constantly in flux, and that segway from one to the other. 8/
Show threadDr Surekha Davies, Historical Monster Consultant (she/her)Jan 8
In pre-1800 Europe, it was normal science to use monsters for beings that could be nice, nasty, or neutral. There were specialized terms like anthropophage (eater of human flesh) or Minotaur. Today, "monster" is generally used more sparingly to mean fantasy beings or serial killers. And yet... 9/
Show threadDr Surekha Davies, Historical Monster Consultant (she/her)Jan 8
We still tell stories about monsters that turn discrete categories into a continuum. The moral charge attached to category-breakers - which ones are storified as threats - is constantly changing. This except from the book's Epilogue gives a sense of this. 10/ bookanista.com/moving-on-fr...

Moving on from making monsters
Moving on from making monsters

Surekha Davies calls for an end to monstrifying narratives about minority populations, and an acceptance of our interdependence with each other and with nature.

Bookanista
Show threadDr Surekha Davies, Historical Monster Consultant (she/her)Jan 8
But it's not all gloom and doom. The first emotion that a category-breaker conjures up curiosity. Instead of then fearing and vilifying those who are different, we could embrace them – and in so doing give ourselves permission to grow and to experience more fully what it means to be human. 11/
Show threadDr Surekha Davies, Historical Monster Consultant (she/her)Jan 8
We might replace monstrification with monstrofuturism: a way of thinking that celebrates growth, creativity and experimental ways of being, free of the fears of conformity. A truly utopian future would have to be a Monstertopia. To learn more, check out HUMANS: A MONSTROUS HISTORY. 12/12

Humans: A Monstrous History — ...
Humans: A Monstrous History — Surekha Davies

Surekha Davies
Show threadDr Surekha Davies, Historical Monster Consultant (she/her)Jan 8
* correction: we tell stories about monsters in order to invent discrete categories out of a continuum!