We are excited to announce a special issue of Gothic Studies, guest edited by the Internet Ghost Collective (Chera Kee, Erika Kvistad, Line Henriksen, and Megen de Bruin-Molé)
“As a habitus, the Gothic describes a way of writing, a way of reading, a way of thinking about stories, a way of imagining,” writes Timothy G. Jones. “Perhaps the Gothic is something that is done rather than something that simply is” (2009, p. 127). In this special issue, we propose to consider the Gothic as not only a subject of research, but as something that we as researchers might do – the Gothic as a research method, a creative practice, a habitus. What might it mean for academics, artists, and other thinkers and makers to work in Gothic ways, or to experience their own work as Gothic, with its associations of unsettling power dynamics, intellectual uncertainty, and the potentially dangerous search for knowledge? Drawing on Jones’s idea of the Gothic as “something between the ceremonial and the ludic” which “ought to be understood, not as a set form, nor as a static accumulation of texts and tropes, but as a historicised practice which is durable yet transposable” (2009, p. 127), we ask contributors to explore the Gothic mode/genre and critical and creative practice. Just as Gothic fictions often explore the dynamics between those with immense power and the most vulnerable, we are interested in work that explores similar power structures in academia and the wider world – how might Gothic practice help us examine, challenge, or even counteract these dynamics?
writing
Monstrous Words: Writing and Incoherence (27 July 2022)
If you enjoyed the last two workshops from the Creative Posthumanism project, or if you wanted to attend but couldn’t make it, we’d like to welcome you to our third and final event of the summer, ‘Monstrous Words: Writing and Incoherence’ (Wednesday 27 July 2022, 2-4pm BST)
Join artist Rebecca Jagoe in a play with language and writing incoherence. Incoherence can be expressed in writing on many levels, for instance in terms of narrative, in the sense of neologisms (for instance in the different spellings of Middle English), or in the transcription of nonverbal sound into roman or other characters. We will think together about how a language deficit or specific forms of speech have been used to deny access to the category of the human. This means we will also be writing in defiance of the idea of rationality and knowability—not only of subjects, but of the ability of language to catalogue and define them. We will work towards what Erin Manning (2020) calls a pragmatics of the useless; ‘the way the work’s work eludes us, escapes us, the way it delays the affirmation of its tenuous apparition, the way it touches us, in the lag’ (p. 15).
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
This week, I finally got a peek at the Spring syllabus for an undergraduate course I’m co-teaching. Sadly my students won’t be watching Blade Runner or reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? this year. I will be teaching a session on ‘the death of the book’, though, and science fiction plays an increasingly important part in this discussion. Several years ago, … Read more
The Feminist Politics of Star Wars
This week started off with some exciting news: I get to draft a chapter for Star Wars and the History of Transmedia Storytelling, a collection of academic essays on the franchise edited by Dan Hassler-Forest and Sean Guynes. This collection is scheduled for publication in 2017, to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the first film … Read more
10 Things You Learn While Writing a PhD
It’s a deadline week for me, meaning I’m quite fed up with writing in general, and writing about academic things especially. Fortunately, it also roughly marks the halfway part of my thesis funding, meaning that instead of writing about my research, I can write a bit about my research process and progress. In another 1.5 … Read more