Story and photos by Charlotte West
At the University of California Santa Cruz, a group of scholars is focusing on the creatures that lurk in our nightmares, captivate our imaginations, and reveal our deepest fears and desires. Welcome to the Center for Monster Studies, a one-of-a-kind research hub that wants to show the world that monsters are far more than just things that go bump in the night.
Established in 2022, the Center for Monster Studies is the brainchild of Michael Chemers, a professor of dramatic literature and the center’s founding director. The goal? To create an interdisciplinary space where scholars from across the academic spectrum can come together to explore the role of monsters in culture, literature, politics, and even science and technology.
“Monster studies was founded as a discrete field of inquiry about 30 years ago,” Chemers explains. “But anthropologists, cultural studies folks, and artists have been interested in monsters for a long time. The history of monsters in culture goes back before history begins.”
Mexican-born writer and filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, who made films such as Hellboy and Pan’s Labyrinth, describes monsters as “the ultimate outcasts.”
“In fairy tales, monsters exist to be a manifestation of something that we need to understand, not only a problem we need to overcome, but…much like angels represent the beautiful, pure, eternal side of the human spirit, monsters need to represent a more tangible, more mortal side of being human: aging, decay, darkness,” he wrote.
Monsters are very real and have real effects on people, Chemers says, even though they don’t exist.
His colleague Renée Fox, an associate professor of literature who serves as the center’s co-director, interrupts him. “It depends on how you think about existence,” she says. “They exist in our imaginative lives. They exist in our media.”
Each October, the center hosts its annual Festival of Monsters, offering public lectures and performances in addition to an academic conference that draws dozens of scholars from around the world to explore the ways monsters pervade our culture.
This year’s festival, which kicked off on October 18 at the Museum of Art and History in downtown Santa Cruz, featured New York Times bestselling author Kirsten White, reading from her feminist retellings of classic horror stories. Chris Zephro, owner of Trick or Treat Studios, offered a behind-the-scenes look at how his Soquel-based company makes some of the most iconic horror latex masks, such as Michael Myers from Halloween and the clowns from the 1988 Killer Klowns from Outer Space film.
The Festival of Monsters academic conference, held on the UC Santa Cruz campus, included panels on monstrous ecologies, Black monstrosity, zombies and serial killers, monsters and motherhood, and body horror. The conference concluded with the Monsters Ball, a masquerade ball. “It’s a nice way, after an intense three days of scholarly work, to remember that we’re all in this because we think monsters are incredibly fun,” Fox says.
Monster studies transcends academic boundaries
The Center for Monster Studies aims to bridge the gap between scientific inquiry and cultural studies, exploring how monsters in literature or other cultural media might reflect or influence our understanding of real-world phenomena.
Monsters have long been objects of study in humanities disciplines such as literature and film — Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Bram Stoker’s Dracula come to mind. But Chemers and Fox say they are actively working on collaborating with colleagues in the physical and biological sciences. “Monster studies really transcends traditional academic boundaries,” Fox says.
An example of this collaboration is with evolutionary biologist Beth Shapiro, who studies de-extinction — the process of bringing extinct species back to life. Shapiro’s work includes research on potentially reviving wooly mammoths, which she outlines in her 2015 book How to Clone a Mammoth. This research echoes the Frankenstein myth, providing a real-world context for exploring the themes of creation and scientific responsibility that have long been central to monster narratives, Chemers says.
But what exactly is a monster? According to Chemers, monsters are symbolic representations of culture that can be mapped onto real people or phenomena. It can often be a way of othering people who are different.
This process, which he terms “monsterization,” can be a prelude to atrocity when applied to real individuals or groups. “It’s a way of dehumanizing that person, so that then you can do what you really wanted to do in the first place, which is to persecute.”
Many researchers working in monster studies also have ties to queer theory or critical race studies. “A lot of work on monsters that is really focused on desire and how monsters help us think through different kinds of desires that haven’t always been socially legitimate desires,” Fox says. “Monsters let those desires come out.”
But monsters are not always the stuff of the nightmares — they can also be mesmerizing and magical. “One of the really wonderful things about working in monster studies is discovering just how many people out there in the world, like both of us, look at monsters and love them and are not scared by them,” Fox says. “We see them as these really creative figures, as these ways of thinking outside of social categories.”
“Monster studies was founded as a discrete field of inquiry about 30 years ago. But anthropologists, cultural studies folks, and artists have been interested in monsters for a long time. The history of monsters in culture goes back before history begins.”
For undergraduate students, the Center for Monster Studies also offers a unique opportunity to engage with material through a lens that’s both accessible and exciting. Chemers and Fox have found that their monster-themed classes consistently draw high enrollment numbers, attracting students who might otherwise shy away from traditional literature or theater history courses.
“Nobody would sign up for an introduction to literary theory class,” Fox says. “But 400 students will sign up for a Harry Potter class.”
PhD student Ariane Farris, who studies facial difference and its symbolic representation in literature, says she is drawn to monsters because they offer a metaphor. “I really love that representative quality, the way that you can put these stories onto monsters and use them to tell stories about things that we sometimes can’t talk about as easily,” she explains.
The Center for Monster Studies also produces a podcast, “The Show Where They Talk About Monsters.” The podcast, hosted by Chemers, traces the origin and evolution of different monsters through history and across cultures.
Students can’t yet major in monsters, but Chemers and Fox say that they hope to eventually offer a minor in monster studies through the center.
“Not only is monster studies really fun, but it is also really revelatory about the human experience and the way that we process fear,” Chemers says. “That’s very important in this day and age where we’re surrounded by political chaos and environmental degradation. It’s a time when monsters would emerge, and we believe that the more we know about those monsters, the better off we are.”
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