Editor’s Note: This is part of a series called UChicago Class Visitshighlighting the transformative classroom experiences and unique learning opportunities offered at UChicago.

A full moon rises. A howl pierces the air. At the University of Chicago, a new course explores how scary stories of wolf transformations can arise from our deepest anxieties about being human.

In “The Werewolf in Literature and Film,” a new university course offered by the Department of Comparative Literature, students explore the blurred lines between animal and human across time and media. The course is taught by seventh-year doctoral student David Delbar, who describes himself as an “amateur lycanthropologist.”

“Werewolves often end up being a metaphor for how humans relate to their own worldview,” said Delbar, who has been fascinated by these mythical creatures since childhood. “What does it mean to be human and not animal?” Or can we make this distinction? The werewolf often disputes this.

Delbar’s course focuses specifically on late 20th century cinema and literature. Each week, students trace the trope across cultures to understand how different eras and circumstances create different werewolf narratives. Some stories focus on sexual desire and gender norms, others on life on the margins of society. Many struggle with their identity and our capacity for violence.

“There are amazing differences and similarities over time between humans and their human activities,” Delbar said. “That’s what’s exciting about being able to read literature on a very wide range of topics.”

Transformative stories

For as long as humans have been telling stories, there have been stories about them becoming animals. In addition to exploring humanity’s relationship with the natural world, these stories can illuminate our most primal desires (or fears of having such desires) and entrenched social hierarchies.

“What a lot of werewolf authors have done is say: Hey, we have this pack dynamic and these mythical creatures. Why not use it as a storytelling vehicle, as a sort of displaced society, so that we can sort of better negotiate these issues? Delbar said.

Each week, students examined a film or piece of literature, often using Freudian analysis, film theory, or historical context to dissect the work’s themes.

For example, students read The Bastards (2016) From Blackfeet author Stephen Graham Jones, a coming-of-age story about a Native American boy growing up in a family of shapeshifters struggling to survive on the outskirts of society. The novel blends elements of traditional oral storytelling with werewolf lore to explore indigenous identity, mixed heritage, and survival in a hostile world.

Another course reading, The Wolf’s Bride (1928) by Finnish-Estonian author Aino Kallas, tells the story of a woman who runs away from her husband to run free into the forest and become a werewolf in an act of sexual liberation. Both trial and folk tale, this innovative work reflects national events. In 1918, Estonia declared independence from Russia and Germany and, according to Delbar, the play was “an attempt to consciously create a modern Estonian national identity through the story of the werewolf”.

Monster movies

The monstrous makeup worn by Lon Chaney Jr. in Universal Picture’s The Wolf Man (1941) helped solidify our modern conception of the werewolf, which then took the film industry by storm. During the course, students analyzed everything from macabre slashers to campy satires, often through the lens of gender and sexuality.

The movie The Howl (1981)follows a television presenter to a secluded retreat after a traumatic experience with a serial killer… but the inhabitants of “The Colony” turn out to be more than they first appear.

In class, the group discussed the film’s relationship to what Delbar calls the “crisis of masculinity.” In the 1980s, men left manufacturing jobs to work in offices and women entered the workforce in droves, reaching a new level of independence.

“We talked about how these anxieties around masculinity ended up turning into this sexual predator movie about werewolves,” said Delbar, whose research outside of werewolves focuses on masculinity. at Homer’s. “You have this kind of modern man who is more sensitive and vegetarian, but then gets bitten by a werewolf and suddenly craves meat.”

In the cult classic Ginger Cookies (2000)two teenage sisters obsessed with death are attacked by creatures one night while one sister, Ginger, begins her period. The ginger soon begins to transform.

“That one is kind of a metaphor for women going through this transformation, coming into sexuality and dealing with body hair,” Delbar said. “It’s this combination of what is traditionally considered very feminine and very unfeminine.”

Ultimately, Delbar says that werewolf stories – and horror stories in general – are a way to express, even heighten, our fears in a relatively safe space.

Similarly, Delbar uses the relative safety of a college classroom to encourage his students to physically and emotionally embody the themes of werewolf stories in an effort to distance them from expected ways of seeing the world. In addition to traditional papers, students wrote biweekly “experiment reports,” selecting from a list of wolf activities such as crawling on all fours or examining their own hair and documenting their experiences.

“We have been telling stories about werewolves for thousands of years. People like Freud, Goethe, Derrida, these very serious thinkers and philosophers look to the werewolf in their stories and their analyses,” Delbar said. “So it’s this part of human history and the human experience that isn’t usually studied, but I think it’s valid and it’s a lot of fun.”