Monthly Archives: January 2015

Wolf Packs and Feral Children

A couple of tweets caught my eye this week. I have the uncanny ability to pick out the word ‘wolf’ from a page of text. Not sure if this is something that should go on my CV but it is … Continue reading

Posted in Critical thoughts | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Generation Dead: Teaching the new High School Gothic

‘All over the country’ (in the world of young adult fiction) ‘teenagers who die aren’t staying dead’ (blurb for Generation Dead). This module will interrogate the new high school Gothic, exploring the representation of the undead or living dead in dark … Continue reading

Posted in Generation Dead: YA Fiction and the Gothic news | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Michael Dirda reviews five fairy-tale books

A review of new books on the fairy tale by Marina Warner and Jack Zipes (including the first translation into English of the first edition of Grimm’s Tales), but also of two books from Princeton University Press’s Oddly Modern Fairy … Continue reading

Posted in Books and Articles, Reading Lists, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

‘The Terror of London’: Spring-heeled Jack and the Victorian Metropolitan Press, 29 January 2015, The Vaults Bar, Dirty Dicks, London

Karl Bell gives a talk on Spring-heeled Jack, the monster of Victorian urban legend who was further disseminated by melodramas and penny dreadful, and perhaps fuelled the development of vampire fiction (through Varney and other figures). For more information, the … Continue reading

Posted in Events | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Demon Lovers: Embracing the Monster in Paranormal Romance (slideshow)

Posted in Critical thoughts | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Bill Hughes, ‘Demon Lovers: Embracing the Monster in Paranormal Romance’

This is rather late, I know, but I just wanted to give a brief account of the Halloween 2014 Spectral Visions event at the University of Sunderland, where I was honoured to be invited to give a keynote talk on … Continue reading

Posted in Critical thoughts | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

monsters: the experimental association for the research of cryptozoology through scholarly theory and practical application

MEARCSTAPA–A useful site relating to the discussion of monsters and monstrosity and their cultural significance

Posted in Resources | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Suzanne Burdon, ‘Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and the birth of modern science’

A stimulating discussion of the attitude towards science in Mary Shelley’s Fankenstein: Mary Shelley wrote ‘Frankenstein’ when she was just 18, and it is often read as a gothic horror story and prophetic warning about the dangers of taking science … Continue reading

Posted in Critical thoughts | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Owen Williams, ‘A History of British Folk Horror’

A useful summary of the genre of Folk Horror in film.

Posted in Resources | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Tessa Farmer, ‘In Fairyland’, Leeds College of Art, 30 January – 26 February 2015

This exhibition at Leeds College of Art looks enticing: The Cottingley Fairies fly home in the forthcoming exhibition ‘In Fairyland’. It is now almost a century since the infamous fairy photographs were taken in a small village a few miles … Continue reading

Posted in Events | Tagged , | Leave a comment