UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA GRADUATE COLLEGE MONSTROUS MISEDUCATION: FRANKENSTEIN AS EDUCATIONAL THOUGHT ON THE MODERN PROBLEM OF TERROR A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY By KRISTEN OGILVIE HOLZER Norman, Oklahoma 2016 MONSTROUS MISEDUCATION: FRANKENSTEIN AS EDUCATIONAL THOUGHT ON THE MODERN PROBLEM OF TERROR A DISSERTATION APPROVED FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP AND POLICY STUDIES BY _____________________________ Dr. Susan Laird, Chair _____________________________ Dr. John Covaleskie _____________________________ Dr. Angela Urick _____________________________ Dr. Michele Eodice _____________________________ Dr. Robert Con Davis-Undiano © Copyright by KRISTEN OGILVIE HOLZER 2016 All Rights Reserved. DEDICATION I dedicate this work to the children among whom I have had the privilege of learning, including my two children, Keely Pate Holzer and Liam Reed Holzer. My fondest hopes lie in their future and the possibility that this scholarship might contribute in some small way toward the “cultural wealth” they will inherit. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I thank my mother, Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie, who has supported and encouraged me as a scholar, a mentor, and a friend. Words are inadequate to account for the debt of gratitude this work, and all of my work, owes my mother. By her example and courage, my sister, Martha Kay Ogilvie, has always pushed me to realize my potential. My brother, William Woodworth Ogilvie, has never stopped teasing or believing in me and I thank him for his humor and faith. I am grateful to my spouse, Michael Reed Holzer, for the pride he has always taken in my little victories. That pride made me believe I could finish what I started. In her gentle, mindful way, my daughter, Keely Pate Holzer, has inspired me to envision a brighter future for women and girls. I thank my son, Liam Reed Holzer, for the electric conversations that reanimated my work. I am deeply grateful for the unfailing support, encouragement, and critical engagement of my educational studies professors, Dr. Susan Laird, Dr. John Covaleskie, and Dr. Joan K. Smith. Their influence and example has shaped who I am as a scholar, a teacher, and a citizen. I thank Dr. Michele Eodice for reminding that I had something to say and helping me carve out time in which to say it. I am grateful to Dr. Robert Con Davis-Undiano and Angela Urick for their willingness to serve on my committee and support my work despite myriad commitments. I am grateful to the administrators at the College of Education for reminding me of deadlines and forgiving me when I missed them. To the teachers and administrators in my professional life with whom I have shared my work, I am grateful for the discourse. I am forever in my students’ debt for helping me work through problems and think through literature. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................ iv ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................... vi INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................1 The Educational Landscape of Terror CHAPTER I .....................................................................................................................37 A Biographical Sketch of Mary Shelley’s Educational Metamorphoses CHAPTER II ...................................................................................................................76 Mary Shelley’s Lived Experience as Monstrous Miseducation CHAPTER III ................................................................................................................118 Exposition of Frankenstein as Educational Thought CHAPTER IV ................................................................................................................162 Influence of Frankenstein as Educational Thought CHAPTER V .................................................................................................................190 Contemporary Relevance of Frankenstein as Educational Thought CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................235 BIBLIOGRAPHY .........................................................................................................238 v ABSTRACT Seeking to understand terror as an under-theorized educational problem with critical implications for contemporary schools and societies, this dissertation is an inquiry into the life, work, and influence of Mary Shelley (1797-1851) (Seymour 2000, Marshall 2000, Sunstein 1989, Mellor 1988). It takes up Susan Laird’s proposition that as a “philosophical fiction of education,” Frankenstein “merits serious study” (Laird 2008, 158). The educational thought of her anarchist father William Godwin (1756- 1836) (McLaughlin 2007, St. Clair 1989) and feminist mother Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) (Laird 2008, Martin 1985) are formative for her as is her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley’s (1792-1822) literary milieu, English Romanticism. As its grounding premise, this study theorizes literature as a genre of educational thought in the vein of the cave myth and the Pygmalion myth (Martin 2011, 2006). It formulates monstrous miseducation, a species of “cultural miseducation” (Martin 2000) and its terror curriculum (the bildung and genius ideals) from Mary Shelley’s lived experience and her Frankenstein myth. It identifies the core features of monstrous miseducation as: Miltonic identity politics, Godwinian perfectibility, and abandonment to “multiple educational agency” (Martin 2002). This dissertation claims that the core features of monstrous miseducation are matched by critical absences of maternal teaching and teachings (Laird 2013, 1994, 1988) and cyborg affinity politics (Haraway 1991). Through the case studies of Columbine (Cullen 2009) and the Freedom Writers (Freedom Writers and Gruwell 1999) the study tests monstrous miseducation’s pragmatic utility toward understanding contemporary terror and terrorism. vi INTRODUCTION The Educational Landscape of Terror Amid suicide bombings, rampage shootings, and ecological disasters, few would dispute the characterization of this historical moment as a “time of terror.” But a convincing characterization of terror as an educational problem requires a great deal of theoretical work that has not yet been done. This theoretical work is worthwhile; indeed it is imperative, because when terror is theorized as an educational problem, one of human design, educational solutions become possible. Terror as an Educational Problem I define “terror” in the ordinary language sense as violence and/or intimidation in word and/or deed that involves a special way of being afraid and of causing fear, rational and irrational. It would seem that the special way of being afraid that might be called terror is “special” and distinct from some other kind of fear because it involves feeling afraid nearly constantly and at the same time feeling that there is little or nothing we can do to avoid calamity. Also, it seems we feel this special kind of generalized fear and dread in spite and because of empirically guaranteed threats like climate change and irrationally imagined threats like witchcraft in Salem, 1692. As an emotional response, terror surely involves a calculus of intentional and unintentional causes and consequences linked to the aesthetic branch of philosophical and educational thought. The violence and intimidation of terror also seems to be a special way of causing fear in order to bring about a certain outcome, often, but not always, political. Violence and intimidation that fall under the rubric of terror are special and distinct from other kinds of violence and intimidation because they are purposeful. Arguably, 1 the purposeful quality of terror suggests that this special way of causing fear aims to “educate” in the sense of raising awareness and compelling change. For example, the violence and intimidation around which a dispossessed people united in the 1789 French Revolution against an unjust monarchical system intended to teach both monarch and subject a bloody lesson toward the end of justice. To say that terror “teaches” implies an intentionality that neither teaching nor learning possess, but it would seem that a modern change in hearts and minds was brought about by “the Terror” that “devoured its own children.”1 The generational transmission of the terror’s violence and intimidation terror instituted a qualitative change of an educational variety. Terror, then, has had enduring “learning outcomes.” Nonetheless, acts and actors of terror also terrorize by presenting and representing themselves as unknown and unknowable threats. In these cases, the means and ends of terror often obscure rather than elucidate problems or solutions. Hence, their educational value – for better and for worse – is questionable. Violence like the 2012 mass shooting of movie-goers at a theater in Aurora, Colorado, or that perpetrated on the school children and personnel at Sandy Hook Elementary School in New Town, Connecticut defies comprehension. Other than possibly learning to feel the special kind of free-floating fear that might be called terror, what educational wisdom can we glean from acts of terror without a clear agenda? Most often, though, the targets of terror – violent words and/or