This BBC Radio 4 programme might of interest (especially to our MLitt students): http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0054792 'Horace Walpole and then Anne Radcliffe appeared to have triggered an anti-enlightenment movement: the Gothic that swept in Coleridge, two Shelleys, Byron, the Brontés, Walter Scott and Dickens, innumerable painters and architects, and even designed the Palace of Westminster itself. In 1765 Horace Walpole bewitched an unprepared public with the first ever Gothic novel The Castle of Ottranto. The poet Thomas Gray complained the novel made him “afraid to go to bed

The University of Edinburgh Sensualising Deformity: Communication and Construction of Monstrous Embodiment June 15-16, 2012 Confirmed Plenary Speakers: Prof. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA Dr. Peter Hutchings Northumbria University, Newcastle, UK “Although he was already repellent enough, there arose from the fungous skin-growth with which he was almost covered a very sickening stench which was hard to tolerate... with the use of the [daily] bath the unpleasant odour... ceased to be noticeable” ~ Sir Frederick Treves The prominent surgeo

While I might not argue that the Discworld is Gothic, it undeniably uses Gothic: from vampires, zombies, werewolves, and Igors to sublime landscapes and indescribable monsters, Terry Pratchett’s best-selling series of comic novels is riddled with familiar Gothic tropes and characters.

Call for Papers: ‘Horror After Psychoanalysis’, A Special Issue of Horror Studies, edited by Dale Townshend. Psychoanalysis, be it in its orthodox Freudian forms or via the revisionist theories of Lacan, Kristeva and Žižek, has become a dominant critical metalanguage in contemporary accounts of horror.  Notions of the unconscious, the uncanny and the abject are firmly entrenched within literary-critical discourse, while much film theory continues to invoke Lacan in its accounts of the cinematic gaze.  But, to paraphrase Deleuze and Guattari, has psychoanalysis not caught horror in t

Universal Studios are hosting their usual spectacular run-up to Halloween by turning their Florida studios into a ghastly theme-park between 23 September and 31 October.  Similar events are planned in Hollywood.  For more information about this exciting event, see here.

Here's a great article in the New York Times from this past weekend: modern celebrities as Gothic heroines and fame as a crumbling castle. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/magazine/tabloid-trainwrecks-reinventing-gothic-literature.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2&ref=magazine

Well, Jonathon Ross has just published his first graphic novel.  Turf is set in Prohibition-era New York, where corrupt cops turn a blind eye to the bootlegging gangs who have established an uneasy truce over their particular territories.  Until, that is, a new gang shows up wanting blood – literally.  Yes, the Dragonmir family are vampires!  Not content with this, Ross also throws in an alien with futuristic levels of firepower (it is a comic, after all) who, after crash-landing on Earth, sides with the humans against the vampires in order to win his ticket home. Unfortunately this d