Dr Surekha Davies, Historical Monster Consultant (she/her)
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drsurekhadavies.bsky.social
Dr Surekha Davies, Historical Monster Consultant (she/her)
@drsurekhadavies.bsky.social
17K followers 2.8K following 8.3K posts
Historian of science, art & ideas.
Words: Smithsonian, LA Times, TLS, Aeon, Nature, Science, Reactor.
Buy HUMANS: A MONSTROUS HISTORY now: https://www.surekhadavies.org/humans-a-monstrous-history
Newsletter: https://buttondown.com/surekhadavies?tag=bluesky
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drsurekhadavies.bsky.social
And there’s an automaton! By operating a wheel you could make the figure move its limbs, move around, and pick things up. The figure’s spear and costume suggest that it was meant to represent an Indigenous person from a cooler climate.

6/
Cabinet detail with an automaton holding a spear in the background. Shelves with small items – specimen trays for minerals; human-made objects – are on the right. Winter clothing and large animal bones are on the left.
November 16, 2025 at 7:53 PM
drsurekhadavies.bsky.social
It took luck and skill to preserve and transport, over long distances, fleshy body parts. One hack was to display an animal using only its more durable parts. Along the upper right-hand wall are the bill of a saw shark lined up between the giant turtle shells and the penguin.

5/
Right-hand wall with rows of shelves. Upper shelf is for enormous things: turtle shells, alligators/crocs, a spotted snakeskin, and weird crustean things.
November 16, 2025 at 7:50 PM
drsurekhadavies.bsky.social
The things on the ceiling all had a relationship with water: aquatic birds that lived by the ocean, a polar bear cub, the kayak, and (of course) fish.

4/
Ceiling with fish, a kayak, and a baby polar bear skin. The fish look slightly ominous; one has its enormous mouth wide open.
November 16, 2025 at 7:49 PM
drsurekhadavies.bsky.social
Check out the upper half of the rear wall for tools for surviving and harnessing nature: bows and arrows, skis, a two-bladed oar (for the kayak hanging above it, perhaps), and items of winter clothing.

3/
Cabinet detail with long, narrow objects on a wall. Smaller objects rest on a. shelf underneath; the head of an automaton is visible to the side.
November 16, 2025 at 7:48 PM
drsurekhadavies.bsky.social
What do you give someone who has everything? A purpose-built room in which to put their stuff?

A while back I wrote about Ole Worm's 17th-century curiosity cabinet for @smarthistory.bsky.social. 1/n

🗃 #medieval #earlymodern #histsci #arthistory #materialculture

smarthistory.org/ole-worm-mus...
An engraving of a curiosity cabinet: four walls and floor. Every surface is covered in stuffed animals, animal bones, boxes of specimens, or human-made artefacts. The floor is mostly empty, with a large tablet in the centre reading: Musei Wormiani Historia.
November 16, 2025 at 7:45 PM
drsurekhadavies.bsky.social
And if you're gift-shopping in the coming weeks, know that the hardback is GORGEOUS!
4/4
Row of copies of Humans: A Monstrous History, a red hardback with yellow lettering visible on the spine. One copy in the centre faces outwards. The red cover shows an oval, silver-coloured mirror with a black frame comprised of sci-fi and fantasy monsters, with "Humans" in yellow lettering in a stylized font with details that resemble whale-tails and bats’ wings at the top, curving around the mirror. Just inside the top curve is the subtitle: A Monstrous History. Along the bottom curve of the mirror: Surekha Davies. Bright red book on a bookchair, with back cover facing camera. Black design like cracked mirror pieces divide up the four blurbs printed on it. Hardback book open to colour plates, with one large plate on each page. The plates show richly coloured scenes of people. Left: Seven African-descended people and one Indigenous American (dressed in feather garments and with a bow and arrow) are arranged in three tiers. All but one figure is in fine European clothing; most are short and stocky, or proportioned like children. Right: Turbaned soldiers, some on horseback, watch a naked woman scaling a wall between two cliffs; a male figure, naked from the waist up, rises out of a river. Book open to a page with a black-and-white illustration on the left hand page. The illustration depicts a naked figure with a long, almost elephantine nose and eyelashes; monkeys’ heads at the armpits, dogs’ heads at the elbows and knees; claws for fingers and toes; and a tail. A stream, a tree, and a city appear in the background. Behind the open book are spines of the same book; the main title HUMANS is prominent in yellow. Book spines and back cover in the background.
November 13, 2025 at 7:51 PM
drsurekhadavies.bsky.social
Free book talk on HUMANS: A MONSTROUS HISTORY, hosted by the Linda Hall Library:
Thurs Dec 4th, 7-8pm CST (8-9pm EST)

Register at link below.
1/

💙📚 🧪 🗃 #ancient #medieval #earlymodern #histsci #histmed #18thC #HAMH

events.lindahall.org/humansamonst...
A deep green square with white writing announcing date, time, title and speaker of an event. In the top left corner is the Linda Hall Library logo. In the background, in shaded greens, is a detail from a painting with alarming details of the punishments in hell.
November 13, 2025 at 7:42 PM
drsurekhadavies.bsky.social
In that case I have just the thing for you: HUMANS: A MONSTROUS HISTORY, out earlier this year from the University of California Press (links in bio):
Bright red book cover showing: an oval, silver-coloured mirror with a black frame comprised of sci-fi and fantasy monsters, with yellow lettering for the title, “HUMANS”, around the top of the mirror, in a stylized font with details that resemble whale-tails and bats’ wings. Subtitle just inside the mirror: A Monstrous History. Inside the bottom curve of the mirror: Surekha Davies. Along the left-hand edge of the cover crawls a xenomorph: a humanoid creature with an insect-like head and a long, sinuous, menacing, pointy tail.
November 10, 2025 at 6:17 PM
drsurekhadavies.bsky.social
Couldn't help thinking about trips to NOLA and meals! a fave dish from my spring book tour was apple hand pies. The alligator is from a swamp tour on an earlier visit as is the street scene with historic buildings on which skeletons are a-lounging in "Skull Paradise."

4/4
A plate with two semi-circular pies next to a scoop of ice cream on a bed of crumbs on a table with white tablecloth. Two glasses and a spoon at the edge of the photo. A copy of HUMANS: A Monstrous History is to the left of the plate. An alligator, partly submerged, in the green waters of the Louisiana swamps. Three-storey buildings on a historic New Orleans street, with shutters and balconies. Balloons hang here and there. In the middle are a bunch of white skeletons lounging on a balcony titled “SKULL PARADISE.”
November 5, 2025 at 1:26 PM
drsurekhadavies.bsky.social
Hung out with NYT best-selling author @danielkraus.com before a masterclass around one of his novels!

This was PAY THE PIPER, Daniel's alchemical rendering of horror director & writer the late George A. Romero’s notes into a lyrical, atmospheric novel.
1/
💙📚 #horror #NOLA #zombies #monsters
Me and Daniel Kraus, both in charcoal sweaters, indoors, smiling. A book, Pay the Piper, on a red and blue striped book chair next to a mug of coffee with a scary gremlin on it. Bookcase in the background. Daniel perched on a chair, thinking. To his right is a small table with a Yeti microphone and a copy of PAY Pay the Piper on it. A black boot photo-bombs just under the mic. Slide with a quotation from Pay the Piper: “If New Orleans had any magic at all, it was its knack for taking the world’s oddments of augury, conjury, devilry, wizardry, astrology, alchemy, necromancy, prophecy, witchery, and trickery, and stirring them into a gumbo that tasted better than any of those ingredients alone.” / George A. Romero and Daniel Kraus, Pay the Piper, p. 59.
November 5, 2025 at 1:21 PM
drsurekhadavies.bsky.social
I talked with @bethbarany.bsky.social about how curating an exhibition got me into monsters; on what makes a good #SFF monster; #StarTrek’s Borg Collective; and lessons from Monsters, Inc. Listen wherever you get your podcasts! 1/
💙📚 🗃 #histsci #politics #HAMH
writersfunzone.com/blog/2025/11...
Podcast icon in mauve, with dark lettering: How to Write the Future: Tips for fiction writers. With Beth Barany.
November 4, 2025 at 3:22 PM
drsurekhadavies.bsky.social
This disturbing 16th-century painting of hell linked Satan and his demons with the New World beyond Europe:

4/
www.smithsonianmag.com/history/this...
A painting detail showing a green, winged demon with a shaved head, beard, wings, and breasts with wind instruments sticking out of them force-feeds a coin into someone’s mouth. A three-eyed demon peers over their shoulder. A painting detail showing a horned, winged demon has an animal skin wineskin over their shoulder, and is force-feeding someone at their feet. A painting detail showing a dark-skinned, horned demon with a hairy face and breasts, with armour on their shoulders, prods someone with a long pole. A cauldron of people boiling is in the background.
October 31, 2025 at 7:27 PM
drsurekhadavies.bsky.social
Delighted that HUMANS: A MONSTROUS HISTORY is on sale at the @folger.edu (Folger Shakespeare Library) on Capitol Hill in #DC! If you're heading that way for #renaissance, #earlymodern, or #Shakespeare books, free exhibition galleries, or the terrific theatre this spooky season, check it out!
A brightly lit, stylishly tidy bookcase. On the left-hand end of the second row is the distinctive red cover of HUMANS: A MONSTROUS HISTORY, with its yellow lettering at the top curving around an oval, silvery mirro with an elaborate black frame.
October 28, 2025 at 1:13 PM
drsurekhadavies.bsky.social
What to expect in Hell: an early sixteenth-century painting that's so striking that it's setting off all the content filters on here! Here are some details; essay in @smithsonianmag.bsky.social.
#Monstertober #Spookyseason 🗃
A painting detail showing a winged figure with a skull-like face, dressed in full-body feather costume and headdress, sits on a chair in front of the edge of a cauldron, a long horn in one hand, inkpot and paper by their side. Two heads of people bobbing in cauldron at bottom-right. A painting detail showing a green, winged demon with a shaved head, beard, wings. A three-eyed demon peers over their shoulder. A painting detail showing a horned, winged demon has an animal skin wineskin over their shoulder A painting detail showing a dark-skinned, horned demon with a hairy chin and upper lip, with armour on their shoulder. A cauldron of people boiling is in the background.
October 27, 2025 at 5:35 PM
drsurekhadavies.bsky.social
"Hell appeared at a turning point in world history.[It] offers an example of how the events of the day could feed anxieties on earth that were, in turn, believed to portend what awaited viewers in the afterlife."
For more like this, read HUMANS: A MONSTROUS HISTORY, @ucpress.bsky.social (in bio).4/4
Alt: Screenshot of a web homepage banner. Top-left, in a row: the University of California Press name and red logo followed by menu options. Main image: a bright, crimson-red background with a spiderwebby or cracked-mirror pattern in thin black lines. A white square on the left, with text: Humans: A Monstrous History. A History Through Monsters. A history of how humans have created monsters… and what these monsters tell us about humanities present and future. Learn more -> 1/3 On the right, a book cover design: an oval, silver-coloured mirror with a black frame comprised of sci-fi and fantasy monsters, with yellow lettering for the title, “HUMANS”, curved around the top of the mirror, in a stylized font with details that resemble whale-tails and bats’ wings. Subtitle just inside the mirror: A Monstrous History. Inside the bottom curve of the mirror: Surekha Davies.
October 27, 2025 at 11:55 AM
drsurekhadavies.bsky.social
“I spent my childhood watching too much Star Trek and have been searching for monsters and aliens ever since." Opening lines of HUMANS: A MONSTROUS HISTORY, and how this historian of science realized that monsters are how we define categories.

Paragraph and TOC in the alt-text. #StarTrek #SFF 💙📚 🗃
Book on book chair open to first page of Introduction. Opening lines: “I spent my childhood watching too much Star Trek and have been searching for monsters and aliens ever since. They led me through grad school. They sustained me through adventures on the road: being locked into a vault in the Vatican Library and balancing on a ladder in a Parisian basement while wrangling giant maps and directing the beam of a hot lamp, trying not to burn anything. Monsters climbed into my syllabi when I…” Red books with black and yellow spine-text visible next to open book on a book chair: Title-page and TOC. Chapters: Introduction 1. On the Ecology of Monsters 2. Human or animal? 3. Race-nations I 4. Race-nations II 5. Gender, Sex, and Monstrous Births 6. Monstrous Performance and Display 7. Gods, Magic, and the Supernatural 8. Machines 9. Extraterrestrials 10. Monstrofuturism Epilogue Front and back covers of HUMANS: A MONSTROUS HISTORY, a bright red book with an oval, silvery mirror with a black frame made up of monsters. Back cover has shattered mirror effect with black webbing separating four blurbs. Book lettering is bright yellow (for HUMANS) and black on the spine.
October 26, 2025 at 5:47 AM
drsurekhadavies.bsky.social
Image: Program for The Tempest, Shakespeare Tercentenary Celebration, New York, 1916. The cover shows Caliban. Program Collection, Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC. 4/
A humanlike figure viewed from behind wears a skin and looks over his shoulder. The caption, in an angular, jazz-age font, reads, “Caliban Shakespeare Tercentenary Celebration.”
October 25, 2025 at 5:09 PM
drsurekhadavies.bsky.social
Grendel and Grendel’s mother from the Beowulf poem. Here’s the Old English Beowulf manuscript in The British Library, dated to the end of the 10th century. 2/
Two leaves of a medieval manuscript, mounted on modern paper, bound in a large volume, in a glass case.
October 25, 2025 at 5:07 PM
drsurekhadavies.bsky.social
Spring 2026 catalog for @ucpress.bsky.social has dropped! Check out their fabulous trade, academic trade, and scholarly books for all of you nerds with a conscience.

And HUMANS: A MONSTROUS HISTORY will be out in paperback in March! Page 38 (p. 40 of the pdf) for more.

💙📚 🧪 🗃 #sociology
Dramatic evening skyline by the water with a huge starry skyscape above, and mysterious ruins in the background. Small letters across the top: University of California Press. Larger letters below: Spring 2026.
October 23, 2025 at 6:06 PM
drsurekhadavies.bsky.social
IKR?! The press did a fabulous job of production, cover, the whole jacket, and the interior.
Hardback book open to colour plates, with one large plate on each page. The plates show richly coloured scenes of people. Left: Seven African-descended people and one Indigenous American (dressed in feather garments and with a bow and arrow) are arranged in three tiers. All but one figure is in fine European clothing; most are short and stocky, or proportioned like children. Right: Turbaned soldiers, some on horseback, watch a naked woman scaling a wall between two cliffs; a male figure, naked from the waist up, rises out of a river. Book on a bookchair open to title-page. Several copies of a red book with yellow and black lettering, HUMANS: A MONSTROUS HISTORY, are to its right. The Title-page and TOC. Chapters: Introduction 1. On the Ecology of Monsters 2. Human or animal? 3. Race-nations I 4. Race-nations II 5. Gender, Sex, and Monstrous Births 6. Monstrous Performance and Display 7. Gods, Magic, and the Supernatural 8. Machines 9. Extraterrestrials 10. Monstrofuturism Book on bookchair open to red, right-hand, jacket flap. A mirror with a black frame decorated with monsters contains the smiling author’s headshot: masses of dark, curly, shoulder-length hair, author wearing a dark brown jacket and a bright, multi-coloured shirt with a busy pattern. Author bio in yellow and white follows, and cover design details in small black lettering. A few copies of HUMANS are off to the side. A copy of HUMANS in yellow lettering with black-framed, silvery, oval mirror. Next to it is another copy from the back: an orange-red hardback book with irregular black lines reminiscent of mineral strips in rock or spooky webbing sits . Four blurbs in white, with authors’ names in yellow capitals, are separated by the black lines. At the bottom are the name and website of the press Two copies of HUMANS: A Monstrous History, spines facing outwards, are at either end of the image.
October 22, 2025 at 6:27 PM
drsurekhadavies.bsky.social
Am writing about a 16th-century painting of Hell! Essay will be out next week.
Here's a visual snack to keep you going in the meantime: three details from one of Bosch’s magnificent depictions of hell. 1/2

#spookyseason #monsters #monstertober #medieval #renaissance #earlymodern #art #arthistory
A terrifying devil in black cloak with a furnace for a stomach, tale, and animals’ limbs, dressed in a rich green turban-like hat with trailing parts. The devil is in a doorway; various demons and their victims are on either side. A pit of black birds and snakes is in the foreground. A chaotic hell scene from a Bosch painting: naked bodies having various horrible things done to them like having limbs shopped off or being boiled in a saucepan; human-animal hybrids, and alarming machines of torture, one of which looks like a giant, bright blue meat-grinder. A chaotic hell scene from a Bosch painting: jumbled naked bodies in the centre, knives sticking out of things; and a weird hut from which demons peer.
October 21, 2025 at 5:11 PM
drsurekhadavies.bsky.social
I spoke with Kate on writing tech, writing habits, newsletters, getting a literary agent, and how I chose the shape and structure of my new book, HUMANS: A MONSTROUS HISTORY, out earlier this year from @ucpress.bsky.social.

2/2

draftingthepast.com/podcast-epis...
: Podcast episode graphic: smiling author (me) in pale pink stripy collared shirt on the left. Text on the right, dark blue slightly informal font on pale blue background: Drafting the Past: A podcast on the craft of history. Episode 63. Surekha Davies.
October 19, 2025 at 7:04 PM
drsurekhadavies.bsky.social
@cathfletcher.bsky.social and I are offering a webinar, Pitching a Nonfiction Book for General Readers, for @rsaorg.bsky.social's Professional Development webinar series.

Thurs, Nov 6, 2025, at 12-1pm. EST / 5-6pm GMT (& recorded)

#renaissance #earlymodern #histsci #writingcommunity 💙📚 🗃
1/
Screenshot of a Renaissance woodcut/engraving of a scholar writing at a desk and looking serious. Text above: Pitching a Nonfiction Book for General Readers. Tuesday, October 7, 2025. Text below: New professional development webinar.
October 16, 2025 at 6:17 PM
drsurekhadavies.bsky.social
Thanks, Allyson! Re: my monstery writing, I've published 2 books on the history of monsters and monster making, most recently HUMANS: A MONSTROUS HISTORY from @ucpress.bsky.social.
Sign up for my free mailing-list to receive an excerpt & occasional monster musings!

Links in bio.
Bright red book cover showing: an oval, silver-coloured mirror with a black frame comprised of sci-fi and fantasy monsters, with yellow lettering for the title, “HUMANS”, around the top of the mirror, in a stylized font with details that resemble whale-tails and bats’ wings. Subtitle just inside the mirror: A Monstrous History. Inside the bottom curve of the mirror: Surekha Davies. Along the left-hand edge of the cover crawls a xenomorph: a humanoid creature with an insect-like head and a long, sinuous, menacing, pointy tail.
October 15, 2025 at 8:45 AM
drsurekhadavies.bsky.social
Nice! Wish I were going; this historian of monsters is there in spirit - and yes, that's a xenomorph climbing up the cover of my new book out from @ucpress.bsky.social, HUMANS: A MONSTROUS HISTORY (link in bio).
Bright red book cover showing: an oval, silver-coloured mirror with a black frame comprised of sci-fi and fantasy monsters, with yellow lettering for the title, “HUMANS”, around the top of the mirror, in a stylized font with details that resemble whale-tails and bats’ wings. Subtitle just inside the mirror: A Monstrous History. Inside the bottom curve of the mirror: Surekha Davies. Along the left-hand edge of the cover crawls a xenomorph: a humanoid creature with an insect-like head and a long, sinuous, menacing, pointy tail.
October 13, 2025 at 2:08 PM