Building off of Chera Kee’s recent post on the Internet Ghost Collective website, I too decided to write a short reflection on the workshop we just had, in anticipation of the Internet Ghost Collective’s special issue of Gothic Studies. We’re interested in ‘Gothic Practice’ and all that entails.
Monsters
Gothic Practice (CfP)
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?
Cardiff BookTalk: Her Body and Other Parties (online, 15 November 2022)
Want to geek out about Carmen Maria Machado? Want to see four literary professionals geek out about Carmen Maria Machado? Or are you just in the mood for a good book or for some good old fashioned spooky stories? Whatever the reason, join us at Cardiff BookTalk on 15 November, 19:00 – 20:30 GMT, for an online talk about Her Body and Other Parties, Machado’s debut short story collection. The event is free and open to all. Book your place via Eventbrite.
Today, the 26th of October, 2-4pm (UK time) I’ll be giving a talk / workshop for Winchester School of Art PhD Researchers on #HauntedTikTok. This will be in the WSA PGR room, but also on Microsoft Teams (link Gothic Remixed: The Playlist
Happy spooky month! To celebrate the season and the paperback edition of Gothic Remixed, I’ve made a playlist of 21 songs that mash up or remix Gothic literature in different ways, available on Spotify and Apple Music. I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoyed making it—and let me know if you have any recommendations to add to the list.
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).
WAKE ISLAND podcast on Monster Mashups and Frankenfictions
Looking for a listen that’s spooky but casual, a slow burn for your morning commute? Then you might be interested in the newest episode from WAKE ISLAND, a bi-weekly podcast hosted by Paul K and David Leo Rice. In it, we have a lovely and wide-ranging chat about the public domain as both an unmarked grave and as a place of rebirth, the tentacular, mashups/remix studies, Twilight, and our current undead state.
Scrapbooking the Wasteland—A Posthumanist Terror Management Theory Toolkit
Are you interested in critical posthumanism and the creative arts? Did you see images from our zine-making workshop and wish you’d been able to join us? Now is your chance! Our next Creative Posthumanism workshop will be on Wednesday, 1st June 2022, from 2-4pm at Winchester School of Art. This week, our theme (and the focus of our collaborative making project) is ‘Scrapbooking the Wasteland—A Posthumanist Terror Management Theory Toolkit’.
Do the Monster Mash: Universal’s “Classic Monsters” and the Industrialization of the Gothic Transmedia Franchise
Almost two years after I announced I was writing it, my chapter in Gothic Mash-Ups: Hybridity, Appropriation, and Intertextuality in Gothic Storytelling is now out with Rowman & Littlefield (EU) / Lexington Books (USA)!
My chapter, ‘Do the Monster Mash: Universal’s “Classic Monsters” and the Industrialization of the Gothic Transmedia Franchise’, takes the Universal Monsters as a prime case of early Gothic transmedia and mashup, as well as highlighting the importance of unoriginality to Gothic storytelling more broadly.
Monster Theory 2.0: Remix, the Digital Humanities, and the Limits of Transgression
‘Is remix a monster, and digital humanities the means through which it is destined to bring down the old-fashioned, exclusionary, and hierarchical modes of humanities past?’
This is the question I ask at the beginning of my chapter in the new Routledge Handbook of Remix Studies and Digital Humanities, edited by Eduardo Navas, Owen Gallagher, and xtine burrough, and the answer is not as simple as it may seem. There are lots of great chapters in the book, divided into sections on ‘Epistemology and Theory’, ‘Accessibility and Pedagogy’, ‘Modularity and Ontology’, and ‘Aurality and Visuality’. My own chapter, on ‘Remix, the Digital Humanities, and the Limits of Transgression’, uses the metaphor of Frankenstein and his creature to suggest that the transgressive potential of remix and the digital humanities lies less in the form of these disciplines, and more in their practice: How they are allowed to intersect, evolve, and escape their traditional (anti)humanist foundations.