During the last few years, the concept of generic skills and competences has become widespread across universities. An introduction to generic competences is, as such, important because it enables redefinition of educational goals and may positively rearrange forms of interaction in classes. It also indicates that education should inspire students to develop and use critical and creative forms of thinking, feeling and doing. On the one hand, the need to promote generic skills can be seen as driven by neoliberal desire. On the other, however, generic competences can enable students to think, feel and act differently, but also respect and welcome various forms of life and ways of living. Responding to the growing need to reflect upon generic competences, this book contributes to the various ways of conceptualising generic skills and the methods in which they might be acquired. The volume engenders adventurous encounters between different theories, which predominantly come from the feminist conceptual framework, that result in appealing meanings of affect and concepts. It also experimentally explores and discusses ways in which theories of affect and concepts may complicate understanding of generic competences and inspire generic skills-oriented education. Consequently, this collection revitalizes the concept of generic skills, but also advocates daring pedagogical practices that invigorate the meaning of and approach to teaching and learning in present landscapes of higher education.

This open access handbook, the first of its kind, provides a comprehensive and carefully curated multidisciplinary and genre-spanning view of the state of the field of Critical Menstruation Studies, opening up new directions in research and advocacy. It is animated by the central question: ‘“what new lines of inquiry are possible when we center our attention on menstrual health and politics across the life course?” The chapters—diverse in content, form and perspective—establish Critical Menstruation Studies as a potent lens that reveals, complicates and unpacks inequalities across biological, social, cultural and historical dimensions. This handbook is an unmatched resource for researchers, policy makers, practitioners, and activists new to and already familiar with the field as it rapidly develops and expands.

Religion's great and powerful mystery fascinates us, but it also terrifies. So too the monsters that haunt the stories of the Judeo-Christian mythos and earlier traditions: Leviathan, Behemoth, dragons, and other beasts. In this unusual and provocative book, Timothy K. Beal writes about the monsters that lurk in our religious texts, and about how monsters and religion are deeply entwined. Horror and faith are inextricable. Ans as monsters are part of religious texts and traditions, so religion lurks in the modern horror genre, from its birth in Dante's Inferno to the contemporary spookiness of H.P. Lovecraft and the Hellraiser films. Religion and Its Monsters is essential reading for students of religion and popular culture, as well as any readers with an interest in horror.

A gothic horror story that imagines what happens to Frnkenstein's monster after the death of his creator, Victor. What becomes of a monster without its maker? At the end of Mary Shelley’s classic novel, the creator dies but his creation still lives, cursed to a life of isolation and hatred. Frankenstein’s Monster continues the creature’s story as he’s compelled to discover his humanity, to escape the ship captain who vowed to the dying Frankenstein to hunt him down—and to resist the woman who would destroy them all. This is a tale of passion, revenge, violence, and madness—and the desperate search for meaning in an often meaningless world.

While the presence of monsters in popular culture is ever-increasing, their use as an explicit or implicit category to frame, stigmatise, and demonise the other is seemingly on the rise. At the same time, academic interest for monsters is ever-growing. Usually, monstrosity is understood as a category that emerges to signal a transgression to a given order; this approach has led to the demystification of the insidious characterisations of the (racial, sexual, physical) other as monstrous. While this effort has been necessary, its collateral effects have reduced the monstrous to a mere (socio-cultural) construction of the other: a dialectical framing that de facto deprives monstrosity from any reality. 'Monstrous Ontologies: Politics, Ethics, Materiality' proffers the necessity of challenging these monstrous otherings and their perverse socio-political effects, whilst also asserting that the monstrous is not simply an epistemological construct, but that it has an ontological reality. There is a profound difference between monsters and monstrosity. While the former is an often sterile political and social simplification, the end-product of rhetorical and biopolitical apparatuses; the latter may be understood as a dimension that nurtures the un-definable, that is, that shows the limits of these apparatuses by embodying their material excess: not a 'cultural frame', but the limit to the very mechanism of 'framing'. The monstrous expresses the combining, hybridising, becoming, and creative potential of socio-natural life, albeit colouring this powerful vitalism with the dark hue of a fearful, disgusting, and ultimately indigestible reality that cannot simply be embraced with multicultural naivety. As such, it forces us towards radically changing not the categories, but the very mechanisms of categorisation through which reality is framed and acted upon. Here lies the profound ethical dimension that monstrosity forces us to acknowledge; here lies its profoundly political potential, one that cannot be unfolded by merely deconstructing monstrosity, and rather requires to engage with its uncomfortable, appalling, and revealing materiality. This book will appeal to postgraduate students, PostDocs, and academics alike in the fields of philosophy, critical theory, humanities, sociology and social theory, criminology, human geography, and critical legal theory.

Monsters have been spotted everywhere, not just hiding under a child’s bed, lurking in the closet, or springing forth from folkloric tales. For many people, monsters are nothing more than myth, folklore, and legend combined. For others—and particularly those who have encountered monstrous forms surfacing and emerging from shadowy caves, from the dark waters of ancient lakes, and from the vast jungles and forests of our worlds—monsters are all too terrifyingly real. Werewolves, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, the Chupacabra, Mothman, the Abominable Snowman, and sea serpents may represent the most famous monsters, but they are not alone. In fact, quite the opposite: monsters can be found all across the planet. Exploring the history, folklore, pop culture, and the world of the supernatural, The Monster Book: Creatures, Beasts, and Fiends of Nature is a comprehensive resource of the monster menagerie that exists on planet earth. This fascinating look at monsters has 120 photographs, drawings, and illustrations to bring the nearly 200 entries to life, including The Mongolian Death Worm; The Beast of Bray Road; The Owlman of England; The Yeren of China; Mokele Mbembe; Living Pterosaurs; The Flatwoods Monster; The Labynkyr Devil; Alien Big Cats; Lizard Man; Lake Worth Monster; The Beast of Gevaudan; Megalania, the Monstrous Monitor; South American Sasquatch; Nessie’s lesser known cousin; The Jersey Devil; Sea Serpents; Orang Pendek; and Phantom Black Dogs. Stories of these creatures are told around flickering campfires on chilly nights in the woods, before tucking excited kids into bed, on prime-time television documentaries, and on late-night radio talk shows. Tales of terrifying creatures that the world of science assures us don’t exist. But try telling that to the witnesses. This richly researched reference overflows with fascinating information to make readers think about—and reconsider—their next visit to the woods. This fascinating read also includes a helpful bibliography and an extensive index, adding to its usefulness.

Monsters have always rampant border crossers, from Dracula’s journey from Romania to Whitby, to the rampaging monsters of Godzilla movies across global cities. This volume studies how their transnationality reflects an era of global crisis. Monstrosity has long been explored in a number of ways that connect gender, sexuality, class, race, nationality and other forms of otherness with depictions of monsters or monstrosity. This book, however, explores cultural flow as it relates to the construction of a transnational genre, by both producers and audiences. It also examines the ramifications of representations of monstrosity in socio-political terms as they relate to a tumultuous era of global crises. This era has of course been amplified and altered by the Covid pandemic, which frames much of the content of this collection. This ongoing crisis imbues the discourses of monstrosity, global catastrophe and societal and human vulnerability with its significant expression in artistic terms.