Surekha Davies
Linda Hall Library
Online via Zoom.
Presented virtually via Zoom webinar.
From ancient gods to generative AI, from Dracula to E.T., and from Hannibal Lecter to the Menendez brothers, monsters saturate our culture: on the big screen, in the pages of our books, in the news, and in our social media feeds. But what is it that defines a monster? What, exactly, makes something or someone so monstrous?
In her latest book, Humans: A Monstrous History (UC Press; February 2025), award-winning historian Dr. Surekha Davies seeks to answer these questions, taking readers on a fascinating journey through our extensive history of monster-making.
Blending science, history, and pop culture, in Humans, Davies tells the strange and compelling story of how our multi-millennial relationship with monsters has shaped the origins of the modern world. A profound and powerful retelling of the history of humanity, Humans offers a lens through which to view hidden assumptions about nature and society at large.
The Speaker:
Surekha Davies, PhD
2024-25 Linda Hall Library Fellow
Dr. Surekha Davies is a British author, speaker, and historian of science, art, and ideas. Her first book, Renaissance Ethnography and the Invention of the Human, won the Morris D. Forkosch Prize for the best first book in intellectual history from the Journal of the History of Ideas and the Roland H. Bainton Prize in History and Theology. She has published essays and book reviews about the histories of biology, anthropology, and monsters in the Los Angeles Times, Times Literary Supplement, Nature, Science, and Aeon.