Your Monster Autobiography

To begin this assignment, I want you to watch a short video of a Ted Talk about monsters. In this talk the visual artist Louise Zhang makes an argument about the role of monsters in modern society, but she also shares her own experience with imaginary monsters from film and television. Zhang’s talk is an excellent introduction to our own course exploration, which will focus on zombies. Her willingness to discuss what monsters have meant to her in her own life is especially useful, as your first short assignment will ask you to write a short history of your own experience with monsters. It’s a way for me to get to know you, and it will also help you orient yourself to the course material. Please watch this video carefully, noting how Zhang connects the cultural significance of monsters to her own personal life. It may prove helpful to you when you submit your first short assignment, and to work that we do later in the semester as well. Here’s the link below:

Description: For this first short assignment, you should write a brief history of your own experience with monsters. I’m not talking about actual monsters–hopefully you’ve never encountered one of those. I’m talking instead about the monsters from television, movies, stories that you remember as playing a significant role in your own life’s history. This short assignment should provide a brief overview of the way you were introduced to these fictional monsters, and an exploration of how they affected your thinking and your life. As you can probably tell, I included the Louise Zhang Ted Talk on how monsters have affected and shaped her life in order to give you an opportunity to “see” how someone might approach this kind of assignment firsthand. If you want to, you can refer to or quote from Zhang’s talk directly. It might give you inspiration. If not, that’s fine too.
Tips and Suggestions to get going: Be creative. You can start with a framing device, an anecdote or really any way to catch the reader’s attention. Don’t worry about that old boring introduction that says something like, “There have been monsters throughout the history of the world.” The reader already knows that–you don’t need to remind the reader of what they already know. Start with your OWN life, and with your own experience of monsters. Put that experience front and center–and see where it leads.
Requirements: MLA style, 350-500 words, at least three paragraphs. I’m looking for creativity here, and thoughtful arrangement of ideas and that’s what I’m going to pay the MOST attention to when I grade. But I’ll also be looking for your ability to follow the basic rules of MLA style. If you are not familiar with them, be SURE to read over the overview I’ve provided on the content page in this week’s module. You will be expected to write using MLA style capably throughout the semester. I prefer that you submit your work as a Microsoft Word document, but if you do not have Word available, you may manually enter it using the text entry tool provided.

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