Category: News

Publications

Articles and book chapters

Hellstrand, Ingvil, Sara Orning, Aino-Kaisa Koistinen & Donna MacCormack (2024): We can’t settle for normality: Towards feminist monster studies. In Steve Rawle & Martin Hall (eds.) Transnational Monsters: Reframing Monstrosity and Global Crisis. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 1–17. Access the authors’ draft here!

The Monster Network (Ingvil Hellstrand, Line Henriksen, Aino-Kaisa Koistinen, Donna McCormack & Sara Orning) 2021: Collective Voices and the Materialization of Ideas. The Monster as Methods. In Caterina Nirta & Andrea Pavoni (eds.), Monstrous Ontologies: Politics Ethics Materiality. Vernon press, 143–167. Access the text here!

Hellstrand, Ingvil, Line Henriksen, Aino-Kaisa Koistinen, Donna McCormack Sara & Orning 2018: Monstrous Promises? Introduction to Promises of Monsters Special Issue. Somatechnics vol. 8 no. 2, 143–162.

Hellstrand, Ingvil, Line Henriksen, Aino-Kaisa Koistinen, Donna McCormack & Sara Orning 2017: Welcome to the Monster Network. Fafnir – Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research 4 no. 3–4, 80–83. Access the text here!

Special Issues

Hellstrand, Ingvil, Line Henriksen, Aino-Kaisa Koistinen, Donna McCormack & Sara Orning (eds., 2018): Promises of Monsters Special Issue. Somatechnics vol. 8 no. 2.

Other

Have a look at the monstrous stuff lurking in the Monster Archive of our old website!

Halloween treat: New episodes of Monster Talks out!

Image: The Monster Talks logo (Artwork by Joanne Teresa Taylor, NettOp, University of Stavanger).

Monster Talks is a podcast series that explores the figure of the monster and the concept of the monstrous as important thinking tools for addressing dynamics of power, inclusion and exclusion, discrimination and violence. The podcast is produced by The Monster Network in collaboration with Network for Gender Studies at UiS.

All episodes and their transcripts are available from the podcast’s website at UiS.

Artwork by Joanne Teresa Taylor, NettOp, University of Stavanger.

Strange Futures, Unruly Origins: Collectives revolves around community building as well as structures of inclusion and exclusion, or inclusiveness and exclusiveness. We invite a discussion on the politics and ethics as well as aesthetics of communities and collective voices in order to explore the premises but also the limitations of monstrous kinship, family, and community in the now, in the past and in potential futures. One of the questions behind the organising of this panel has been, in times of crisis, be they for example ecological political, medical, or technological, who get to belong and who are marginalised and potentially monsterised. With professor, Patricia MacCormack (Anglia Ruskin University, UK) and two collectives: Not Lone Wolf Collective and The Monster Network. Hosted by Aino-Kaisa Koistinen from The Monster Network.

You can find a transcription here (pdf, opens in new tab)

Strange Futures, Unruly Origins: Science Fiction

Strange Futures, Unruly Origins: Science Fiction explores the role of the monster in arts and storytelling practices, with a particular focus on how stories of monsters and the monstrous as a methodological perspective and a methodological tool may and also sometimes may not challenge our understanding of the past and open up to unexpected and potentially more promising futures. We ask what are perhaps the limits to the figure of the monster and what are the challenges when working with the monstrous in art and storytelling the idea of futures and the power of speculation. With Regina Kanyu Wang(PhD candidate in Co-Futures, University of Oslo, Norway and writer of speculative fiction), Marietta Radomska (associate prof., Linköpings University, Sweden), Susanne Winterling (Artist and Professor of fine arts), and Sami Ahmad Khan (Co-Futures, University of Oslo, Norway). Hosted by Line Henriksen from The Monster Network.

You can find a transcription here (pdf, opens in new tab)

Monster Talks transcribed – and a Halloween treat!

In the recent years, The Monster Network has taken up measures to make our activities more accessible. We are therefore happy to let you know that all of our Monster Talks podcasts are now transcribed! The transcriptions can be found here.

And that’s not all! As you might now, The Monster Network has a tradition of hosting/publishing a Halloween special, and there might be something special coming your way this Halloween, too. Stay tuned!

Monsters of the Anthropocene Spring Event on the 27th!

Don’t forget to register for our Monsters of the Anthropocene Spring Event!

Image credit: We are grateful to Tove Kjellmark for letting us use her artwork as part of the Monsters of the Anthropocene Collaboratory. The image is called ‘non-humans only’ (2011). Find out more about Tove Kjellmark’s work here. 

The Monsters of the Anthropocene collaboratory invites you all to our final event, where we gather a panel of artists and scholars to explore imaginaries of the Anthropocene, with a particular focus on othering, vulnerability and marginalization in our times. Which possibilities do the increased attention to human-nonhuman relationships in the Anthropocene offer for thinking and living with the monster? How can a range of non-human companions, like monsters, robots, animals, and land teach humans something about co-dependencies and shifting positionalities?

Our panel consists of artist Tove Kjellmark (S), Senior Lecturer Ildikó Limpár (Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Budapest, HU) and Professor Neel Ahuja (University of California, Santa Cruz, US). Kjellmark’s recent work The Robot, the Horse and the Immeasurable explores the connections between bodies, movement and agency. Limpár has worked extensively on the monster in her research, with her monograph The Truths of Monsters: Coming of Age with Fantastic Media (2021) addressing themes of climate crisis and science fiction. Ahuja’s work tackles the interstices between imperial expansion, human-animal relationships, and warfare, amongst other themes.

The Monsters of the Anthropocene is a collaboratory between the Monster Network and the Oslo School of Environmental Humanities (OSEH). Its aim is to negotiate the role of the monster as part of the ongoing decentring of the human and exploration of vulnerability and inclusion in feminist, posthumanist, critical disability and decolonial studies, and in environmental humanities. 

Read more on the event here!