{"id":683,"date":"2019-05-25T04:06:53","date_gmt":"2019-05-25T02:06:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogg.nord.no\/frankenreads\/2019\/05\/25\/post_\/"},"modified":"2021-12-23T12:01:35","modified_gmt":"2021-12-23T11:01:35","slug":"post_","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/site.nord.no\/frankenreads\/2019\/05\/25\/post_\/","title":{"rendered":"“In the university whither I was going I must form my own friends…”"},"content":{"rendered":"

While attending the American Literature Association conference in Boston, I could not resist the opportunity to visit a fellow Frankenreads project participant, Professor Deidre Lynch<\/a> of Harvard University, and deliver a copy of Litteraria Pragensia<\/a>. We had quite a lively chat about Frankenstein<\/em>, the international impact of Frankenreads, and the history of Harvard and the inherent “creepiness” of older universities. I learned, for example, that Harvard’s holdings include vintage scientific instruments of the exact sort that would have inspired Mary Shelley, which were used to great effect (sorry) in a Monstrous Electrical Show as a part of Harvard’s Frankenreads festivities. It was fun to share our memories of Frankenweek with each other, and we capped our visit, as a couple of Gothicists might, with a trip to the resting place of several Harvard presidents, dignitaries, their wives, and, significantly, those who had been enslaved to them. According to Deidre, it makes an impact on her students to take them on site to impress upon them the reality that in death, we are all the same, waiting, perhaps, for a young scientist to transcend the limits of humanity with our mortal remains as his or her laboratory materials…<\/p>\n