This course aims to inaugurate a cultural and theoretical analysis on the topic of monster and monstrosity. Monsters have been haunting human civilization almost since its inception: monsters are things that we are not. In this sense, monsters help define what human is and territorializes body boundary, order of knowledge, and subjectivity. Another function that monster serves is its metaphorical suggestiveness: monster may refer to the mob, or, conversely, the corrupt politician and greedy capitalist. In this sense, monsters function not as the Other against which human beings define themselves but as representations of the human condition. These two main functions of the monster (Other and representation), however, fail to address the potentiality that monster possesses in its immanence: namely, monsters do not simply wreak havoc with the human world; they pose questions, or more precisely, riddles, to the human condition, and they defy any easy rationalist solutions. This course would like to start with this preliminary problematic of monster-as-riddle and takes monster and monstrosity as the main topics of analysis: the first section provides a theoretical overview on Monster Studies; the second section looks into the historical and cross cultural background of monster.; and the last section focuses on the theoretical assemblage between critical theories and monster-as-potentiality.