Religion, Culture, and the Monstrous explores the intersection of monster theory and religious studies. Within these chapters lurk a gamut of strange and demonic creatures from the Bronze Age to contemporary popular culture, illuminating how monsters reflect cultural ways of seeing the world and exist in surplus of named categories.

Religion, Culture, and the Monstrous: Of Gods and Monsters explores the intersection of the emerging field of “monster theory” within religious studies. With case studies from ancient Mesopotamia to contemporary valleys of the Himalayas to ghost tours in Savannah, Georgia, the volume examines the variegated nature of the monstrous as well as the cultural functions of monsters in shaping how we see the world and ourselves. In this, the authors constructively assess the state of the two fields of monster theory and religious studies, and propose new directions in how these fields can inform each other. The case studies included illuminate the ways in which monsters reinforce the categories through which a given culture sees the world. At the same time, the volume points to how monsters appear to question, disrupt, or challenge those categories, creating an ‘unsettling’ or surplus of meaning.

Table of Contents

PART I: Thinking with Monsters

Chapter 1: Five Further Theses on Monster Theory and Religious Studies

Natasha L. Mikles and Joseph P. Laycock

Chapter 2: Re-Iterations: On Tellings, Variants, and Why Monsters Always Come Back

Doug Cowan

Chapter 3: Horror and Bible (Six Theses)

Brandon R. Grafius

Chapter 4: A Biological Model of Monster Flaps

Blake Smith

PART II: Monsters Guarding the Gates

Chapter 5: The Idea of Evil and Messianic Deliverance in the Satpanth Ismaili Tradition of South Asia

Wafi Momin

Chapter 6: Ghost stories from Tales of Retribution: Understanding elements of Seventeenth-century Japanese Ghost Stories

Frank Chu

Chapter 7: Of Monsters and Invisible Villages: Nags myi rgod Tales of the Tibetans of Gyalthang

Eric D. Mortensen

Chapter 8: Godly Aromas and Monstrous Stenches: An Analysis of Buddhist New Year Fumigation Rituals in an Indo-Himalayan Borderland

Rohit Singh

Chapter 9: Man, Yeti, And Mi-go: The Transgressive History of A Monstrous Word

Lee Weiss

Chapter 10: Mesopotamian Demon Lamashtu and the Monstrosity of Gender Transgression

Madadh Richey

Chapter 11: Topophilic Perversions: Spectral Blackface and Fetishizing Sites of Monstrosity in American Dark Tourism

Whitney May

PART III: Monsters Tearing Down the Gates

Chapter 12: Finding Bigfoot: The Anthropological Machine and the Generation of Monsters

Timothy Grieve-Carlson

Chapter 13: Thomas Jefferson: The First Cryptozoologist?

Justin Mullis

Chapter 14: Shapeshifters and Goddesses: Monstrosity and Otherness in the Mysticism of Gloria Anzaldúa

Stefan Sanchez

Chapter 15: The Monsters Within: Rape and Revenge in Genesis 34

Leland Merritt

Chapter 16: Monsters Among Us: The Cathartic Carnage of American Horror Story

Heidi Ippolito

Chapter 17: To Eat or To Be Eaten––CHEW: A New study Between the Beast and the Sovereign

Elena Pasquini