Guest Post: Gothic and the Human-Subject

"The House of Frankenstein" (1944)

This post is inspired by the many conferences which I attended last year. I have been playing about with these questions for a while and they have been inspired by discussions regarding post-humanism. In my work on lycanthropic literature, I consider how the character of the werewolf affects our ideas about animal/human relations and how humans Gothicise the natural world. In regards to animals, specifically wolves, much of this stems from a tendency to see animals as object which we can read our fears onto as opposed to subjects in their own right. This has led to me musing on Gothic engagement with the human-subject and trying to understand the never-quite-is of existence.

Announcement: Reimagining the Gothic: An Interdisciplinary Symposium

Many thanks to all Gothic Reading Group attendees over the past term for your contribution to meetings and the disccusions they've generated. We're already working on plans for the next set of meetings and for a range of other activities - including a trip to the Terror and Wonder exhibition, currently running at the British Library (more on that shortly). For now, though, here's GRG oganiser, Lauren Nixon, with some information on an outreach event planned for later in the year.

Foreshadowings: The Woman in Black and Reading Group Announcements

How quickly the year flies by!  This week will be our last Gothic Reading Group meeting of the 2014 academic year – we’ve covered all sorts of topics from post-colonialism to comic books, Alfred Hitchcock to Sleepy Hollow!  We’re going to wrap up our year with another film: The Woman in Black (2012) film starring Daniel Radcliffe and based (loosely) on the Susan Hill novel of the same name.  As ever, the question “But is it Gothic?” will surely pop up in our discussion, as well as such corkers as “is Daniel Radcliffe woefully miscast?” “Which is the best – the film, the play, or the novel?” and “what makes a Gothic ghost story?”  

Foreshadowings: Early American Gothic

Is it that time already? The Gothic Reading Group meets for its third session of 2014-15 on Wednesday and this time the subject is early American Gothic: a sub-genre of sorts that has generated plenty of critical discussion, but isn't always as central as it might be to the historical development of the Gothic  and its status as an international mode. Never fear though, the Gothic Reading Group is here to fix this in the only way we know how: with cake and death. As the compere of sorts for this session, Kathleen Hudson will take you through what to expect:

2014 Halloween Blog Series, Part Two

Halloween doesn't necessarily end on the morning of the 1st of November. Much like Christmas there's a hazy afterglow: a period in which the festivities seem to linger whilst the world slowly gets back to normal.

 Of course, in the case of Halloween, this is less likely to involve messing about with presents or spending a bit more time with treasured family and far more likely to involve not being able to get all the fake cobweb stuff off the windowsill, working out who to give all the leftover lollipops and haribo to and wondering what on Earth to do with the giant pumpkin that's slowly decomposing across several of your front steps. 

Do not despair, however. The good things about Halloween have also remained with us, including the next installment in our special series of blog posts. So sit back, forget about recycling the pumpkin, don't worry about getting the fake blood out of the tablecloth (you won't be able to)  and let Mary take you back to Sunnydale:

2014 Halloween Blog Series, Part One

As you'll no doubt be aware, today is October the 30th: a date known around the world as All Hallows Eve... Eve. It's when the witches are scrubbing their cauldrons, the vampires are checking their reflections (and swearing a bit), the werewolves are consulting lunar calendars and adjusting their costume accordingly and the giant helmets are being hoisted into the sky on big invisible cranes.

To celebrate, we've chosen All Hallows Eve... Eve as the starting point for a special series of blogs. If Halloween is about the annual influx of the Gothic into popular culture (with costumes, parties, and the odd dodgy cinematic cash-in) then there's no better time to think about the way in which modern popular media itself marks the occasion of Halloween.

So, in the first of a series of blogs, GRG regular and first year PhD student, Mary Going, is going to begin looking at how a classic of modern 'Gothic' television takes up the opportunities offered by the 'Halloween Episode'.

Foreshadowings: Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea

The new academic year  is still young, but the Gothic Reading Group is well underway. Our first meeting two weeks ago was a big success, with lots of new and old faces, including students and staff. This Wednesday we meet again for our first text: Jean Rhys's 1966 novel Wide Sargasso Sea. Famous as a re-imagining of the Jane Eyre story, this text invites us to reconsider the convergence of a set of motifs that have become a classic of Victorian Gothic and of post-colonial criticism. This means that our perennial inquiry 'is it Gothic?' can be accompanied by some more nuanced questions: What is it about the Gothic that lends itself to this kind of re-imagining? And how important is the cultural vocabulary of Gothic to a text that sets out to challenge an earlier figuring of 'monstrosity'?

It's also a good read. Here to introduce the text and the session on it is GRG organiser, Carly Stevenson.