"How dare you sport thus with life ... "

- Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

IN THIS UNIT we continue our reading and examination of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, this time considering the novel as a commentary on science, technology, and industry. Written nearly 200 years ago, Frankenstein provided people living at the dawn of the industrial revolution with a searing look into the promises and perils of scientific advance. Yet even today Frankenstein is a science fiction best seller, and many of the issues it raises are more relevant than ever. Indeed, questions like "How much science is too much science?" and "Who has the right to control human life?" are still very much with us today. In this class we are going to examine the ways in which Mary Shelley's Frankenstein continues to inform debates over the proper role of science and technology in Western Civilization.

To begin this examination, you should first finish your reading Frankenstein, paying special attention to passages about the nature of scientific knowledge and its proper uses. Second, you should examine the National Library of Medicine's online exhibition Frankenstein: Penetrating the Secrets of Nature to help you place Shelley's book and its later interpreters within a broader context of the history of science. Next, you should read Michael Mulkay's essay "Frankenstein and the Debate Over Embryo Research" which examines how images from Frankenstein are being used in contemporary culture.

Finally, for this week's online exercise, you should go to library.gmu.edu, find the Lexis-Nexis periodicals database, and perform a keyword search for "frankenstein AND science". From the results of your search, select an article written in the past year that refers to Frankenstein to try to explain an issue in contemporary science and technology. Print the article, bring it to class (I will ask you to hand it in), and be prepared to discuss how the author has used images and ideas from Frankenstein to make his or her point and whether you think he or she understands the real meaning of the book.

Please remember that we will be meeting tomorrow night to watch Kenneth Branagh's 1994 film version of Frankenstein and then again on Saturday for our visit to the Holocaust Museum.