When a college student says they have Saturday night plans, going to a lecture isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. When I filed into the Clopton Auditorium on Washington University’s Medical Campus just before 7 p.m. on Saturday, however, that’s exactly what I was doing.

For the last year, Wash. U. has been celebrating the bicentennial of Mary Shelley’s 1817 novel “Frankenstein.” With September almost over and Halloween just around the corner, the University organized The Curren(t)cy of Frankenstein, a three-day lecture series examining the implications of the novel and its relevance to modern medical practice.

With midterms approaching, I knew I could only attend the event on one of the three days. Given the choice between Friday’s “Shelley’s Frankenstein and Modern Medical Practice: A Family Story of Lobotomy,” Saturday’s “Frankenstein, the Homunculus, and the Long History of Artificial Life,” and Sunday’s “We Must Save Frankenstein’s Monster” and “We Must Kill Frankenstein,” I went for the weirdest option available—Saturday’s.

For the first 15 minutes of the event, the Performing Arts department presented a scene from Nick Dear’s “Frankenstein” in which the monster (Joshua Parrack) begs Frankenstein (Dwayne McCowan) to grant him love by building him a bride instead of killing him.

After the actors had taken their bows, event volunteers rolled out a table with beakers filled with various unidentified liquids, and William Newman, professor of history and philosophy at Indiana University, took the stage.

Even given the strange topic of the presentation, I wasn’t quite prepared to sit in a lecture hall mainly populated by senior citizens and hear Professor Newman say that some medieval alchemists believed that “The basilisk is the concentrated form of femininity,” and that its deadly gaze was a byproduct of the poisonous properties of the menstrual blood from which it is formed.

Professor Newman opened his lecture by reading a passage from “Frankenstein” in which Victor cites three alchemical manuscripts that greatly influenced his work: one posthumously (and most likely incorrectly) attributed to sixteenth-century philosopher and alchemist Paracelsus, a Renaissance tale of Albertus Magnus, and the legend of Cornelius Agrippa’s possible demonic connection.

Individually, each manuscript is disturbing and implausible; put together, they easily form the basis for “Frankenstein”’s warning against scientific hubris.

The pseudo-Paracelsus text, from which the basilisk idea is drawn, stated that, in Newman’s words, “Alchemists can do anything nature can, perhaps better than nature can.” It followed with the idea that the homunculus, or artificial man grown entirely from human semen and thus with no female involvement, achieves near perfection due to its method of creation.

The other texts are not as wild. That’s a relative term, however, as they respectively deal with the idea that Albertus Magnus created a talking, disembodied head, and that Agrippa could achieve necromancy through his occult connections.

Professor Newman demonstrated why alchemists might have thought such things were possible using the aforementioned suspicious beakers. He created a beautiful, growing tree of iron and “transformed” a drywall saw from iron to copper.

“To alchemists,” he said, “it must have seemed that the Biblical command to go forth and multiply had been realized.”

And if alchemists could grow metals, he asked, why couldn’t they grow people?

In “Frankenstein,” Shelley takes inspiration from all of these possible sources. “In reality, Shelley was very vague about the method of the monster’s animation,” Professor Newman said. “One thing is quite clear. Victor quite clearly thought his monster was demonic.”

Following Professor Newman’s talk, he was joined onstage by Dr. Jeffrey Bishop, Professor Amy Cislo, Dr. Brad Schlaggar and Provost Holden Thorp for their panel “Frankenstein’s Relevance to Medical Practice Today.”

Professor Cislo, a senior lecturer in the Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality studies at Wash. U., examined the idea of the homunculus that Professor Newman had discussed.
“There might be another reading of Frankenstein…I mean, what happens when men are in charge of reproduction?” She said, laughing.

All the panelists agreed, however, that the most important message “Frankenstein” can convey to modern audiences is one that has been widespread this year: inclusion.

“I think of ‘Frankenstein’ not just as a cautionary tale about hubris, but as a cautionary note about the importance of inclusion, not marginalizing, including all into personhood,” said Dr. Schlaggar, the President and CEO of Kennedy Krieger Institute, which works to provide education and medical assistance for disabled children.

Professor Cislo agreed, reading from a speech that related the monster’s exclusion from society to that of transgender individuals, whose bodies, like that of Frankenstein’s monster, are enhanced through science and who are often shunned for it.

This message of inclusion eerily echoes the scene performed at the beginning of the night and the monster’s desperate desire for acceptance, which he looks for in a bride as hideous as himself after society refuses to grant it to him.

“The monster actually is a reflection of the cruelty of the society that he is excluded from,” Dr. Schlaggar concluded. – Isabella Neubauer, Contributing Writer

Speaking of the importance of inclusion, I followed up with the Frankenstein Bicentennial’s final forum event on Sunday. Having heard such insightful revelations as that birds could be regrown from small pieces like plants and seeing the strange root-like patterns of natural silver veins on Saturday night, I was very excited to hear another angle on Mary Shelley’s novel.

Sunday’s event also kicked off with the scene from Nick Dear’s play; even knowing how the dialogue between Victor Frankenstein and his creation would turn out, I felt moved by the creature’s almost childlike pleas for Victor to build him a companion, and smiled bitterly as Victor’s ego and obsessive mind overpowered his values and lead him to acquiesce.

Contrary to yesterday, two complementary talks followed the performance (inspiring Isabella and I to create this joint article). Amy Pawl, a senior lecturer of English at Washington University, took the floor first to deliver “We Must Save Frankenstein’s Monster.” Pawl illustrated the power of the novel to stir human sympathy, specifically describing how “Pamela” by Samuel Richardson, narrated by a domestic servant who experiences repeated sexual assault at the hands of her master, led to public outrage and helped reform the behavior of actual men toward their servants. Pawl then proposed that both Victor and the creature fight for the reader’s sympathy throughout the novel, and she encouraged us to have the courage, unlike Victor, to listen to others’ stories and internalize them. “‘Frankenstein’ should be viewed as two tragic stories,” Pawl concluded, “not just that of the mad scientist.”

Following this call to action, University of Missouri-St. Louis history professor Minsoo Kang took the stage with what initially promised to be a far darker topic: “We Must Kill Frankenstein.” Kang first guided the audience through a brief history of the mad scientist trope in media, from “Frankenstein,” of course, through “Dr. Strangelove” and finally the current “Rick and Morty” and “Futurama.” Noting that our culture has no true definition for what a mad scientist is—“even workers on the Manhattan Project were called mad scientists”—Kang detailed what characterizes these figures and how they emerged in our stories. Finally, Kang argued that this trope has outgrown its cultural use. We must kill Frankenstein, then, because the cultural obsession with mad scientists has begun to negatively affect our relationship with research and progress.

The Frankenstein Bicentennial was organized to ask why it is still so important to read and discuss Mary Shelley’s masterwork, specifically in its relevance to medicine. Both lecturers contributed their insight to this subject. Amy Pawl challenged practitioners to strive for “medical practice with narrative competence,” developing a true understanding of the patient and their needs as they develop unique treatment plans. Minsoo Kang called out the entertainment industry for its own use of “science and technology without humanity,” and argued that the next generation needs to learn that science is an institutional, collaborative process. This becomes especially important in the case of “evil” schemes; rather than one mastermind or corrupt CEO, all science involves massive teams of people with multiple roles outside of the lab. In short, when it comes to human safety and wellbeing, all of us are responsible, both for listening to the stories of our fellow humans and for stopping others from neglecting their morality in pursuit of progress – Jonah Goldberg, Staff Writer