Halloween and the Humanities: the Monstrous and Fantastic

Research Education at University Libraries workshops equip researchers with the tools, concepts, and skills needed for every stage of the research lifecycle.

Please join us for a panel discussion featuring students from Professor Orrin Wang's course From Frankenstein to Dracula: The Monstrous and Fantastic in Nineteenth-Century Literature. Students will share their reflections and insights from the course, offering how questions of the monstrous and fantastic impact what they love to read, watch, and think about: why are we attracted to what scares us? What is it about the fantastic that excites and unsettles us? Please get into the Halloween spirit by joining us, and come prepared to share with the group the stories, films, and games that are your favorite encounters with the monstrous and fantastic.

This event is a part of the "Library of the Macabre: Researching Horror in Popular Culture" programming for Fall 2025's Scholarship as Conversation series.

Moderator: 

Orrin Wang specializes in the study of both Romanticism and theory and is especially interested in how the two discourses converge. Wang has written on such figures as P.B. Shelley, Wordsworth, Keats, Wollstonecraft, Dacre, Kant, Derrida, and Zizek and also teaches and studies the gothic. His latest book, Techno-Magism: Media, Mediation and the Cut (2022) is part of Fordham UP's Lit Z series and is about Romanticism and media studies, and was shortlisted for that year’s Marilyn Gaull Prize. He is also the editor of Frankenstein in Theory (Bloomsbury, 2021), the General Editor of Romantic Circles, and was the recipient of the Keats Shelley Association of America's Distinguished Scholar Award for 2021. He is currently writing about the connection of fantasy and the death drive in Keats, Tennyson, and N.K. Jemisin.

Student Panelists: 

Lazar Bozic is a sophomore pursuing a double major in English and Anthropology. He is an avid writer, reader, and performer. Lazar operates the fantasy gaming & storytelling blog "Seasidecyclops" on Wordpress.

Elizabeth Dorokhina is a junior at UMD studying History and English. On campus, she is involved with UMD Help Center, Moot Court and Students for Reproductive Justice. She spent her summer working at the Geography and Map division of the Library of Congress. She is particularly interested in the ways in which literature intersects with a critical analysis of gender.