It’s Alive! Frankenstein and Bioethical Disputes
By: Bakersfield College
Topics: Bakersfield College, Frankenstein, Allitt, bioethics, Religion
Posted by amberc Tue Oct 28, 2008 13:16:21 PDT
Viewed 842 times
0 responses 0 comments Location: 1801 Panorama Drive, Bakersfield, CA 93305
Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein has long been regarded as the most disturbing case of bioethics in literature. The fear of creating life that Shelly insinuated among readers has become a longstanding battle between natural birth and the development of unnatural “monsters.”
Frankenstein was born out of a literary competition between Percy Shelly (Mary Shelly’s husband) and Lord Byron, but nearly two centuries of sales records would indicate that Mary Shelly herself won. After some struggle for inspiration, Shelley decided to draw on her personal experiences. A year earlier, Shelly lost her first child shortly after giving birth. In her diary, she wrote, “I dreamt that my little baby came to life again; that it had only been cold, and that we rubbed it before the fire, and it lived. Awake and find no baby.” Shelly, who eloped to the already married Percy at a young age, spent much of her life traveling, and faced the loss of a number of children. In her body of works, she focused on the themes of loss and abandonment.
Frankenstein is more relevant today in the context of contemporary ethical and social issues such as human cloning, stem cell research and genetically-designed foods than when originally written in 1818. It is these disputed religion versus science issues that are discussed in a special lecture coming to Bakersfield College on November 6.
Patrick Allitt, professor of History at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, will be visiting Bakersfield College on November 6 to present his lecture Monsters Have Feelings Too: Frankenstein and the Early History of Bioethical Disputes. The lecture will be held in Bakersfield College’s Fireside Room at 7 p.m. and is free to the public.
Professor Allitt is the author of many books, including Religion in America Since 1945: A History and I’m the Teacher, You’re the Student: A Semester in the University Classroom.
Monsters Have Feelings Too will begin with a discussion of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein and whether it is morally permissible to make a new person. Allitt will then explain some of the ethical and scientific issues that caused bioethical disputes in the Victorian era, such as whether to use anesthetics, whether it was possible to be a good doctor and a Darwinian, and whether abortion ought to be legal. He will discuss the role religion played in all those debates – which can be a surprising one.
“Professor Allitt will make a point of including issues relevant to nurses, philosophers and those in the study of history and religion,” noted Jack Hernandez, director of the Norman Levan Center for the Humanities, which is a co-sponsor of this event.
The lecture is free to the public and reservations are not needed. For more information, please call Jack Hernandez at 395-4339.
The lecture is presented by the Bakersfield College Norman Levan Center for the Humanities and the Kegley Institute of Ethics, with the assistance of Dr. Irene Spinello, director of the Intensive Care Unit at Kern Medical Center.
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