research

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?

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