Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus

The following materials bring books to life and support both individual and group literature study. Use these resources to draw real-world connections, plan interdisciplinary lessons, inspire unique research projects, create enrichment activities, and support differentiated instruction.

• Frankenstein in Baghdad

Set in Iraq during the aftermath of the 2003 US invasion, Ahmed Saadawi’s award-winning reimagining of Frankenstein features a junk dealer who creates a sentient creature out of the body parts of bombing victims.

• “Female Gothic”

In an essay taken from her 1976 book Literary Women: The Great Writers, feminist literary critic Ellen Moers characterizes Frankenstein as “a birth myth, and one that was lodged in the novelist’s imagination, I am convinced, by the fact that she was herself a mother.”

• “The Origins of the Species: Mary Shelley”

In the first essay of his 1973 book Billion Year Spree: The True History of Science Fiction, author Brian Aldiss explains why Mary Shelley, in writing Frankenstein, became “the first science fiction writer.”

• “The Strange and Twisted Life of Frankenstein”

On the book’s 200th anniversary, The New Yorker’s Jill Lepore explores how modern interpretations of Frankenstein have ignored its feminist subtext.

• “A Tale of Two Prometheuses in Many Parts”

New York University lecturer Anthony Galluzzo discusses why the Greek myth of Prometheus resonates so strongly in the works of Mary Shelley, her father William Godwin, and her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley.