Readers of TheoFantastique are encouraged to browse through the links included here. They are listed under two categories, the first being Enjoying the Fantastic that includes a number of websites that fans will enjoy. The second category is Exploring the Fantastic. This category is for those who want to go more deeply in understanding why various facets of the fantastic are so enjoyable for many people, and what such things tell us about ourselves. One of the resources in this latter category is GOLEM: Journal of Religion and Monsters. This is a fine, peer-reviewed Internet publication that is highly recommended by TheoFantastique. Its Founding Editor is Frances Flannery-Dailey of James Madison University who took some time over the Fourth of July holiday to talk about GOLEM.

TheoFantastique: Dr. Flannery, thank you for your willingness to discuss GOLEM journal. What was the inspiration behind the beginning of the journal?

Frances Flannery: My research specialty is in ancient Jewish and Christian apocalyptic literature, such as Daniel and the Book of Revelation. Monsters are everywhere in this literature, and I was really intrigued to discover their function and meaning. When I examined anthropological sources across an extremely broad band of cultures, both ancient and modern, I found monsters in every single culture I ran across, whether ancient Greece or modern Polynesia and Canada! I literally could not find a culture that did not have some being that was identified by the culture as a monster. Since I didn’t believe that all of these monsters actually existed, (although some probably did or do), it was obvious that societies have a great need to create monsters.

As I continued to research what Big Foot, Dracula, Frankenstein, Nessie, and the Dragon of Revelation have in common, I came across definitions of monsters by scholars from numerous fields, including anthropology, religion, aesthetics, and psychology. I finally settled on this definition: monsters are those socially constructed entities that either blur existing categories or that must exist between categories, where nothing else fits. For instance, Frankenstein is both living and dead, and Big Foot is only scary if he is both human-like and ape-like. A giant lowland gorilla species would not gather the attention that Sasquatch has attracted! In turn, this definition implies that the function of monsters is exactly, then, to allow a given society to express 1) the category formations that are important to it, 2) the boundaries that are being challenged in that culture, and 3) the very potent societal fears that exist about these boundary crossings. Monsters thus show us what a culture both cares about and fears, and the expression of those fears is usually a catharsis. Godzilla is an ancient creature awakened by atomic energy, which expressed the fears of Post WWII Japan and America in the nuclear age. Monsters are thus vital to the mental health of a culture, and they tell others what a culture values. I’d encourage readers to think hard about what monsters their culture currently finds fascinating, and why.

I started GOLEM out of a desire to create a forum for other scholars from a variety of disciplines to share their thoughts about monsters and religion. The remarkable diversity of approaches, topics and fields of interests of our contributors has affirmed my hunch that monsters are significant in a broad array of interdisciplinary areas, including religious studies, philosophy, psychology, anthropology, theology, and sociology. I would hasten to add that there is also a section for student publications in the journal, entitled “GREMLIN”.

TheoFantastique: I am pleased to see the focus of the journal as indicated in the subtitle with its look at “religion and monsters,” an interest that dovetails with part of the exploration of TheoFantastique. How did you arrive at this focus, and in what ways has the journal explored this topic?

Frances Flannery: Following sociologist Clifford Geertz, I consider religion to entail much more than just “beliefs,” but rather a whole cultural system: beliefs, symbols, ethics, worldview, rituals, and an entire construction of reality. Monsters are vital to the cracks and overlaps in the categories of cultural constructions of reality. Thus, they appear in the sacred literature or mythology of every traditional religion, whether Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, or indigenous religions, as well as of new religions, such as Scientology.

As I mentioned, from the outset GOLEM journal has been committed to interdisciplinary methodologies that result in a broad range of topics for investigation, and this is clearly reflected in the journal’s contents. So far GOLEM has generated articles, to name a few, on monsters and otherness, disability, the construction of normalcy, horror films, posthumanism, ecological devastation, class, ethnicity, the Ancient Near East, and Christian Evangelicalism and intelligent design. I find this variety so exciting!

I would like to add that beginning with Issue Three, Rubina Ramji of Cape Breton University has replaced me as Senior Editor. I cannot say enough to support her excellent work and the direction in which she has steered GOLEM, which is evident in the fine quality of that Issue. Currently, the journal is seeking to explore the connection between monsters and violence, and monsters and terrorism, and I can hardly think of anything more timely.

TheoFantastique: How does the academic study of monsters in popular culture help us to “shed light on the particular societies and cultures that imagine them” as your website states?

Frances Flannery: Monsters appear in “popular” culture as well as in “elite” culture, in the art, literature, film, histories and religion of a vast array of societies. As I mentioned, monsters show us what a society values, what cultural categories it creates, and what chaos and fear feel like to its members. But perhaps most of all, monsters are simply uncanny . . . and that makes them innately interesting. Thus, the phenomenon of monsters speaks to the universal human societal condition. No culture seems to be able to make every experience or person fit neatly into its categories. Something will always blur or bleed over. That’s a monster.

TheoFantastique: Frances, thanks again for your fine publication, and for talking about it with my readers.