What is perhaps the world’s best known work of classic horror fiction is marking its 200th year, and the University of San Francisco English Department has scared up a fine – and free! – way to observe that milestone. “FrankenFest,” a campus-wide celebration of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” published in 1818 when the author was just 21, kicks off with an exhibit opening Oct. 18 in the Gleeson Library’s Donahue Rare Book Room and a “Dissecting the Modern Man” panel discussion with science and social science faculty members from 5 to 7 p.m. that day in the Berman Room in Fromm Hall. The exhibit, “On the Bicentenary of Frankenstein: Mary Shelley and Her Contemporaries,” continues through Dec. 14. The Arts and Humanities faculty members will weigh in with their take at a “From Fire to Film” panel discussion in the Berman Room at 5 p.m. on Oct. 25. And all the stops get pulled on Oct. 31, with a 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. (give or take a few minutes) live reading of the entire novel in the Kalmanovitz Amphitheater, with each faculty department reading a chapter in turn. It culminates that night in a “FrightNight! showing of Kenneth Branagh’s 1994 film “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein,” starring a seriously scary-looking Robert De Niro as the creature, at 5:30 p.m. in Fromm Hall’s Broad Room. What a great way to celebrate Halloween – and we hear there will be treats! Check usfca.edu for a campus map and call 415-422-6426 for more information.
Sue Gilmore, Correspondent
