Date: November 4
Time: 7pm Eastern
Admission: FREE - Participants must RSVP through this page.
This event is scheduled to be hosted on Zoom. Participants will receive the event link via email on the morning of the event day. Should you encounter any issues accessing the link, please do not hesitate to reach out to us at info@arcane17.co for assistance. Additionally, we are pleased to inform our Members that a recording of this event will be available on our Patreon page.
For as long as human societies have been telling stories, the patriarchy has felt threatened by powerful women. In MONSTROUS BITCH: A History of Terrifying Women (Princeton UP: October 6, 2026), Eleanor Johnson provides a wide-ranging cultural history of an enduring misogynistic trope in Western culture. Johnson identifies the ancient Mesopotamian demoness Lamashtu as the Ur-example of female monstrosity. From there, the infanticidal and sexually voracious Lamashtu manifests as the Furies in classical Greece; the Whore of Babylon in the Book of Revelations; a witch in early modern Europe; a vampiress of Gothic literature; Regan in The Exorcist (1973); and countless other guises.
An irreverent look at a pervasive trope that runs through four thousand years of Western culture, MONSTROUS BITCH reveals that while representations of the powerful woman have evolved over time, the fear and demonization of her remains the same.
Eleanor Johnson is professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University. Her books include Scream with Me: Horror Films and the Rise of American Feminism (1968–1980); Waste and the Wasters: Poetry and Ecosystemic Thought in Medieval England; Staging Contemplation: Participatory Theology in Middle English Prose, Verse, and Drama; and Practicing Literary Theory in the Middle Ages: Ethics and the Mixed Form in Chaucer, Gower, Usk, and Hoccleve.
Date: November 4
Time: 7pm Eastern
Admission: FREE - Participants must RSVP through this page.
This event is scheduled to be hosted on Zoom. Participants will receive the event link via email on the morning of the event day. Should you encounter any issues accessing the link, please do not hesitate to reach out to us at info@arcane17.co for assistance. Additionally, we are pleased to inform our Members that a recording of this event will be available on our Patreon page.
For as long as human societies have been telling stories, the patriarchy has felt threatened by powerful women. In MONSTROUS BITCH: A History of Terrifying Women (Princeton UP: October 6, 2026), Eleanor Johnson provides a wide-ranging cultural history of an enduring misogynistic trope in Western culture. Johnson identifies the ancient Mesopotamian demoness Lamashtu as the Ur-example of female monstrosity. From there, the infanticidal and sexually voracious Lamashtu manifests as the Furies in classical Greece; the Whore of Babylon in the Book of Revelations; a witch in early modern Europe; a vampiress of Gothic literature; Regan in The Exorcist (1973); and countless other guises.
An irreverent look at a pervasive trope that runs through four thousand years of Western culture, MONSTROUS BITCH reveals that while representations of the powerful woman have evolved over time, the fear and demonization of her remains the same.
Eleanor Johnson is professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University. Her books include Scream with Me: Horror Films and the Rise of American Feminism (1968–1980); Waste and the Wasters: Poetry and Ecosystemic Thought in Medieval England; Staging Contemplation: Participatory Theology in Middle English Prose, Verse, and Drama; and Practicing Literary Theory in the Middle Ages: Ethics and the Mixed Form in Chaucer, Gower, Usk, and Hoccleve.
