Module Author(s)
- Matthew Humphries (Isothermal Community College)
Course Description
The official course description reads: “This course provides an in-depth study of myths and legends. Topics include the varied sources of myths and their influence on the individual and society within diverse cultural contexts. Upon completion, students should be able to demonstrate a general familiarity with myths and a broad-based understanding of the influence of myths and legends on modern culture.”
My specific version of this course focuses on the role of monsters in mythology. We spend time at the beginning of the semester attempting to define those two terms, and then the bulk of the class is spent looking at case studies. In each of those sections, I attempt to consider a few similar questions (How does those definitions apply to this subject? What role does this monster play in this myth? What do these monsters reveal about the cultures that birth them?) as well as the unique aspects of each subject.
Student Global Learning Outcomes
1. Develop an understanding of the role of death in the mythologies of Latin America
2. Learn about the rituals and customs related to death in a specific Latin American nation
3. Provide an analysis of a specific type of monster and its cultural context
Module Description and Activities
Description of the Module
The focus of this module is the role of undead monsters in mythology. We consider things like ghost stories, as well as other type of culture-specific monsters that seem to challenge the norms related to death. In the section, we have small sections on death as expressed in different cultures, liminality as a concept, and death taboos. The students also look briefly at a Sprearfinger lesson put together by one of my colleagues.
For this section, the students will ultimately create an 8–10 minute narrated presentation on an undead monster. In their presentation, they need to do two things: 1. Complete an informative section where they provide a thorough overview of their subject. And 2. Complete an analytic section where they position their subject in its specific time and culture. These two sections will obviously overlap.
This project is limited to Latin America. Even though there is nothing about the subject that is unique to those parts of the world (meaning that monsters who defy death don’t only exist only in those cultures), I feel other sections emphasize different parts of the world. For example, I have a section on vampire mythology, and while that type of monster is not limited solely to Europe, enough authors situate the vampire in the context of European Christianity that I feel that region is still somewhat covered. By focusing on Latin America, students are better able to explore how monsters interact with the norms and taboos created by centuries of religious influence, mass migration, imperialism, and other transporters of culture.
Global Learning Activities:
Activity 1: What is “Latin America”?
Objective: To get students started with this assignment, I am assigning them a short “What is ‘Latin America’?” assignment.
Procedure: Much of this course revolves around definitions. What is a “myth”? What is a “monster”? For this part of the assignment, I am asking students to pin down what is meant by “Latin America.” This is a term I imagine students believe they have a general understanding of, but I want them to work on fleshing out the term. In a short (1-2 pg.) written response, I will ask them to define “Latin America.” To help with that I will pose them some guiding questions: What countries are typically considered part of “Latin America”? Beyond geography, what unites these countries? When was the term first used? Etc.
In their response, I will also expect them to incorporate some of what we have done in the course up to this point. Namely, I want to them to situate the role of mythology in these cultures. This will require some understanding of Latin America in relation to imperialism, which I will also hope will help when they begin their study of a particular country’s monsters.
Follow-up Assignment and Assessment: The grading for this assignment will be based on the Critical Thinking Skills Rubric developed by ICC’s Arts & Sciences Department. With this assignment, I will look for students’ ability to synthesize the historical and cultural information covered by multiple sources.
Resources:
- Chasteen, John Charles. Born in Blood and Fire: A Concise History of Latin America. W.W. Norton & Co., 2016.
- Hardy, Toro Alfredo. Understanding Latin America: A Decoding Guide. World Scientific, 2018.
- Turner-Trujillo, Emma. “An Overview of Latino and Latin American Identity.” Getty, 13 Sept. 2017, https://www.getty.edu/news/an-overview-of-latino-and-latin-american-identity/.
Activity 2: Identify your monster and situate it within a Latin America context
Objective: For this assignment, students submit a 1-2 paragraph proposal for their project. The objective for this is assignment is to ensure that students have a subject worthy of the final project. Students will be asked to situate their project within a Latin America context.
Procedure: A proposal helps begin a conversation between myself and the student where I can use my feedback to narrow down their topic, offer alternative or more specific suggestions, direct them to resources, or in some other way help them in the development process. In this proposal, students will identify both the country and the monster they hope to analyze. Because they are so early in their research process, I do not require that they fully outline their argument, but I do ask that they provide some of the analysis they hope to include. This is understood to be in the beginning stages, so, again, I am more making sure that students seem to fully understand the project.
Follow-up Assignment and Assessment: The feedback for this assignment will be personalized for each student. Because this assignment is understood to be somewhat informal, my written feedback will consist mostly of suggestions and source recommendations. I may also ask for further clarification, which will then require a follow-up submission from the student.
Resources:
I provide two sources that are not specifically related to Latin America:
- Groom, Nick. The Vampire: A New History. Yale University Press, 2020.
- Moreman, Christopher M. Beyond the Threshold: Afterlife Beliefs and Experiences in World Religions. Rowman & Littlefield, 2018.
I encourage students to read part of the Groom work as I think he does a great job of demonstrating how historical forces work to create monsters, as well as how monsters often reveal a culture’s attitudes towards death. I have students read a chapter from the Moreman book as it will help them understand the role of death and dying in this assignment.
I also direct students to The Latin American Readers published by Duke University Press. Each entry in this series covers a single country and will be very helpful for this project. Many of these are in the ICC Library. Those that are not are still easily accessible.
Activity 3: Annotated Bibliography
Objective: The third assignment for this module is a working annotated bibliography. This assignment helps ensure that students are identifying relevant and useful sources.
Procedure: This assignment calls for at least one source that essentially gives the story of their chosen monster. This can be a primary source or a modern retelling involving their chosen monster. The assignment also calls for an identification of academic sources that provide necessary context for the culture, interpret the monster, etc. The assessment is based on current MLA guidelines.
Follow-up Assignment and Assessment: The grading for this assignment will be based on current MLA guidelines. Because this assignment should help with the presentation, students will be given a chance to revise it before the final grade is recorded.
Resources:
For this part of the assignment, I will begin personalizing resources for each student. They will have current MLA guidelines, and I will continue to offer The Latin America Readers as a resource. I will also personalize resources for students, based on the nature of their subject. For example, if a student wanted to write on La Llorona I would recommend:
- Barakat, Robert A. “Wailing Women of Folklore.” The Journal of American Folklore, vol. 82, no. 325, 1969, pp. 270–72. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/538716. Accessed 20 Feb. 2023.
- Kearney, Michael. “La Llorona as a Social Symbol.” Western Folklore, vol. 28, no. 3, 1969, pp. 199–206. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1499265. Accessed 20 Feb. 2023.
Activity 4: Monster Presentation
Objective: Students create and record an 8-10 minute narrated presentation on their chosen monster and culture. They will detail the story of that monster, as well as offer analysis of its role within their selected country.
Procedure: The goal of this assignment is to situate a monster within a particular cultural context. At the beginning of the semester, I lay out the basic argument of the course: To understand a culture, you must understand its myths, and to understand those myths, you have to understand the monsters within them. Using Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s “Monster Culture (Seven Theses)” and a few other foundational definitions as a framework for the class, I want students to consider monsters as both specific types of cultural objects and more general representations of near universal human fears (i.e. anxieties related to dying). By focusing on undead monsters in Latin America, students are able to narrow their focus to one particular culture and time. I am not putting a framework on the time, so students could take an older monster as their subject or use something like the more modern zombie iterations in contemporary Latin American cinema.
This is the largest part of the module, and it is also the one where the students will explore the specifics of their chosen monster and country. Given the nature of the module, I want them to address something related to the attitudes regarding death in their country, but they will also have the unique questions and concerns of their chosen subject. For example, does this ghost story reveal anything about attitudes towards gender roles in this country? Do we see in this monster an example of multiple cultures or religions coming into conflict?
Because this is a visual presentation, students will be expected to take a multimedia approach. ICC has access to a few different visual recording programs, including Screencast-O-Matic, and I offer help to anyone who needs assistance creating their presentation.
Follow-up Assignment and Assessment: For the assessment of the assignment, I use the Global Information and Presentation rubrics developed by our Arts & Sciences faculty. I also create feedback videos with Screencast-O-Matic for each presentation. The feedback videos tend to be roughly 5 minutes each.
Resources:
- The subject-specific resources are covered mostly in the previous assignments.
- For this assignment, I will provide online overviews for how to create visual presentations.
Resources and References Used in the Creation of the Module
See Activities.