(Begins Oct. 25th) Mary Shelley’s classic tale Frankenstein is often called the first science fiction novel. The Frankenstein Project will explore from a number of angles one of English literature’s best-known and most culturally generative pieces of fiction, the tale of a brilliant scientist with overweening ambition and his misbegotten creation. The daughter of famous literary parents, both renowned philosophers and novelists, Mary Shelley was highly conversant with the intellectual debates of the day. This subject will examine some of the familial, literary, scientific and political contexts of Shelley’s novel. Reading Frankenstein in its editions of 1818 and 1831, we will also examine some of the many afterlives, adaptations, and remixes of the novel in fiction, film, and digital media, including H. G. Wells’s The Island of Doctor Moreau, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, and Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl.