We live in a time of monsters. Monsters sans Frontières (MSF) is a panel-discussion-cum-mini-workshop at SFRA 2022 that seeks to bring together distinct nodes of Scandinavian/Nordic, South Asian/Indian, and Arabic/Islamicate speculative traditions of monstrousness (Fafnir in Delhi, Bhoots in Oslo). MSF hopes to identify epistemes of monstrosity that connect – and separate – localized monsters with the times in which they are produced and consumed. MSF comprises a panel discussion on monsters in different national/cultural/linguistic contexts, and a mini-workshop on creating/critiquing the aforementioned monsters. The event will feature the following resource persons:
Nordic/Scandinavian Monsters: Margrét Helgadóttir
South Asian/Indian Monsters: Indra Das
Arabic/Islamicate Monsters: Nat Muller
Moderator: Sami Ahmad Khan
Format
The panelists will share their experiences of creating/critiquing monsters (45 mins). The participants will then examine “familiar” monsters in their own cultures (15 mins) and explore how these monsters negotiate with themes such as politics, demographic change, climate change, technological change etc. (15 mins). Subsequently, participants will, as individuals or groups, build a “monster” of their own on googledocs (15 mins). This will be followed by an open discussion and review, and subsequent reworking/fine-tuning of the monster (30 mins).
Registration/sign-up
Please email s.a.khan@ikos.uio.no to convey your willingness to participate in the workshop latest by Jun. 15, 2022. Limited slots, filled on a first-come-first-serve basis.
