In support of The National Theatre of Scotland's (NTS) forthcoming adaptation of John Ajvide Lindqvist's Let The Right One In (June 5th-29th 2013: Dundee Rep Theatre) two creative projects are running from spring until summer in the city. The first - "Other Dundee" - is a creative learning project that,  according to the initiative's website, "will see the creation of a free smartphone app, which leads the user on an eerie, sound led journey through the other Dundee." The programme will reach its climax with a weekend of immersive street performances that lead spectators through some of th

The 'post-transitional' Gothic, like all gothic narratives, is animated by tensions occurring within a specific society, at a specific cultural moment. In South Africa these fears arise over the fault lines of global and local; at the seam between the multinational and the post-apartheid nation, where the anxieties of consumer culture – the fears of objectification, of commodification – are experienced as a return of the oppressions which characterise the past.

Malady and Mortality - Illness, Disease and Death in Literary and Visual Culture Conference, Falmouth University, Cornwall 19-20th September 2013 Keynote Speakers: Professor Tony Walter, Centre for Death, University of Bath Professor Alan Bleakley, Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry Papers are invited on the following topics: Health, Well Being and Environment History of Medicine Public Health and Medicine Disease and Subjectivity Disability and Agency The Body in Pain Palliative Care Illness and Digital Technologies Narrative, e-Narratives and Memory Medical Int

Special Issue of The South Carolina Review: The Spectral South contact email: slauro@clemson.edu & kmangan@clemson.edu Essay proposals are invited for a special themed issue of The South Carolina Review that examines the images of zombies, vampires, and other undead in the American South. We are particularly interested in how the narratives of these specters exorcise cultural guilt about slavery, fears of racial contamination, and the split personality of the state that once succeeded from the Union. We are also happy to consider contributions that take a broader view of what the “

FrightFest -- at the Glasgow Film Festival -- is currently capturing the popular imagination in the UK but that's not the only treat this year for horror/Gothic film fans. The British Film Institute will launch officially its own series of Gothic features in June to showcase classics of the genre. A number of the features are likely to be shown at BFI Southbank in London, but there will be events nationwide (including a potential screening in Derry/Londonderry - the 2013 City of Culture). Creative Director Heather Stewart, who did super work last year with the BFI's Hitchcock showcase,  has

Fiction written in the wake of the 1994 elections has been collected under the broad title of ‘transitional literature,’ and might further be linked together by a general concern with recent South African history, and, more specifically, with the un-burying of that which it became the purpose of the apartheid government to suppress. The Gothic too is intensely interested in this project of unearthing and constantly presents us with scenarios in which history refuses to remain anterior but resurfaces insistently, disturbing the present

The University of Costa Rica, San Pedro campus, Costa Rica will host a 2-day conference on the theme of 'Dark Latitudes: Mapping Gothic Sites and Mediums' on 10-11 December 2013. The conference website, as well as further details concerning the submission of abstracts, is to be found here.

If the original plaasroman presented the South African farm as a wholesome seat of natural order – the heartland of Afrikaner culture where the reign of the white paterfamilias is both just and benign – then Reza de Wet’s short play, while it draws on this pastoral tradition, is at the same time, deeply invested in its disruption. Her 1985 vision of the plaas is not idyllic but nightmarish, and reveals, in both a specific and a general, political sense, a South African institution in ruin

In the first of a semi-regular feature showcasing new authors, horror writer Dave Watson talks about his scariest influence of all: his big brothers' bedroom.  When not playing with the bounds of reality and scribbling down demented creepy tales about monsters, ghosts, beer and stoners, Dave Watson studies at the University of Glasgow and works as a freelance composer and music teacher. He lives in western Scotland with his wife and son. You can download his latest novel In the Devil’s Name from his Amazon author page. Kids hate brushing their teeth. It tastes weird, no matter

February is proving to be a promising month for celluloid horror. Listed below are February releases and while most have been widely advertised, there are a few less popular films that stand out amongst the “stock horror” of contemporary movie theatres. Antiviral and Chained are set for limited release, however, they are the most notable on this list. The first for the cinematic ingenuity of another Cronenberg, and the latter for its exploration of childhood exposure to gruesome violence. The trailers are linked below for your perusal: Antiviral A Cronenberg film through and through,