“Our Bodies as Monsters: Reflecting on Mortality” w/ Professor Sara Crosby

Professor Sara Crosby will lead an interactive conversation about monstrous depictions of illness and aging across literature and film. This event is part of Spirit & Dust, an exhibition on death and dying curated by Diane Callahan and Michelle Burdine. It’s not easy to be a body. Most of us go about our day and don’t really think about it too much. But illness forces us to consider it. And when we do, what do we make of it? How do we cope with embodiment? With mortality? With mental illness? With disordered appetite and desire? One genre that helps is horror, which has allowed us to represent and theorize illness and embodiment throughout human history. Ohio State Marion Professor Sara Crosby will lead an interactive conversation about monstrous depictions of illness and aging across literature and film, where our own bodies are a source of horror. From Frankenstein and the stories of Edgar Allan Poe to movies like The Substance and The Fly, we will consider how we’ve externalized our fear of death. Part of the Buckeye Talks on Tap series on The Ohio State University's Marion campus.