The 1954 film Godzilla introduced the world to one of the most iconic monsters of all time: a gigantic, radioactive kaiju that trampled across Tokyo, leaving mass destruction in his wake. Although the history of the film is the stuff of legend, few people in the West know that the Godzilla story was written by one of Japan’s most famous mid-century science-fiction novelists, Kayama Shigeru, who conceived of the monster as a way of protesting the Cold War nuclear proliferation and environmental destruction. Dr. Angles, who has recently published a bestselling translation of Kayama’s Godzilla novels, will talk about the monster’s history and what messages the story has for us in the Anthropocene.

Jeffrey Angles is a poet, translator, and professor at Western Michigan University. His translations of socially engaged, feminist, and queer writers have won numerous awards.  His most recent translation is Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again (University of Minnesota Press, 2023), two novels originally published in 1955 by Kayama Shigeru, the same science fiction author who also wrote the first draft of the Godzilla screenplay for Tōhō Studios.  

You can register here: https://kansas.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_zicwohtVToayWgJBkdb6Og