Bodies without Borders investigates classical Hollywood cinema concerning the mutated and mutating body in the 1930s and 1940s to show how body horror allows us to confront and transcend the constraints of socially constructed notions of normalcy. This lecture focuses on Cat People Jacques Tourneur, 1942, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Rouben Mamoulian, 1931 and Freaks Tod Browning, 1932, which depict very different representations of the mutating body, and explores the way these films encourage different kinds of identifications between the onscreen characters and the spectator.

Specifically, Bodies without Borders examines the shifting relationship between the mutated body as symbolic, as performative, and as an actual confrontation with the body as Other.