Salem witches, frontier wilderness beasts, freak show oddities, alien invasions, Freddie Krueger. From our colonial past to the present, the monster in all its various forms has been a staple of American culture. A masterful survey of our grim and often disturbing past, Monsters in America uniquely brings together history and culture studies to expose the dark obsessions that have helped create our national identity.
Monsters are not just fears of the individual psyche, historian Scott Poole explains, but are concoctions of the public imagination, reactions to cultural influences, social change, and historical events. Conflicting anxieties about race, class, gender, sexuality, religious beliefs, science, and politics manifest as haunting beings among the populace. From Victorian-era mad scientists to modern-day serial killers new monsters appear as American society evolves, paralleling fluctuating challenges to the cultural status quo. Consulting newspaper accounts, archival materials, personal papers, comic books, films, and oral histories, Poole adroitly illustrates how the creation of the monstrous "other" not only reflects society's fears but shapes actual historical behavior and becomes a cultural reminder of inhuman acts.
W. Scott Poole is the author of numerous books and articles on race, religion and popular culture in America.
His latest is _Monsters in America_ from Baylor University Press, forthcoming in October of 2011._Monsters_ explores the American fascination with vampires, zombies, serial killers and even sea serpents, showing how these creatures of our dark obsessions help us to understand the dark and forboding places in American history.
In 2009, Poole published _Satan in America: The Devil We Know__ (Rowman and Littlefield), a cultural history of the image of Satan in American religion, history and popular culture. This exciting work blends the study of horror films, comic books, religious texts and newspaper accounts of "satanic panics" into a highly readable analysis of the concept of the devil in American cultural history. Penn State folklorist Bill Ellis called the book "required reading for anyone who wants to understand the dark roots of America culture." In 2010, the book became available in paperback and in a Kindle edition.
Poole regularly writes book and film reviews for PopMatters.com, an international magazine of cultural criticism. He is currently writing a book about 1950s horror host and Ed Wood star "Vampira" that explores the history of American sexuality, gender relations and the rebirth of the gothic in post-WW2 America. Its a story that begins with the history of the dark lady of late night horror and branches out into a discussion of the Beats, Bebop Jazz, the birth of rock and roll and the social protest movements of the 1960s.
Poole is also an associate professor of History at the College of Charleston where he teaches courses on monsters in American history, Satan in folk belief and pop culture and the history of religion and race in American life .
