Journal Issues

Volume 5, Issue 1 (Summer 2018)

Editors' Note, by Leah Richards and John R. Ziegler (7-8)

Spectra of Transcommunication: A Survival Study after Raudive and Derrida, by Luka Bekavac (9-32)

Abstract: The article analyzes instrumental transcommunication (ITC) as a widespread cultural practice of representing the afterlife. A brief introductory survey of the phenomenon focuses on its history, its conceptual and technological development, its impact on the world of art, and various types of criticism it provoked. Belief in the possibility of communicating with the dead is further explored from a cognitive and psychoanalytic angle: the “specters” of ITC are traceable to a specific interplay of apophenia or pareidolia and the work of mourning (as defined by Freud and critically developed by Abraham and Torok). In the concluding section, ITC’s ontological premises—“realism” of the photographic image and equating voice with life—are examined in the light of Derrida’s “hauntology” and Barthes’s theory of photography: if signifying processes are irreducible to the singularity of a living presence, then writing, photography, and sound recordings actually “spectralize” the living instead of reanimating or documenting the dead.

Keywords: instrumental transcommunication, spectrality, hauntology, text, mourning, photography, Derrida, Barthes

The Hunters and the Haunted: Blackwood’s Transformation of the Wendigo, by Kirk R. Swenson (33-49)

Abstract: A comparison of the wendigo described in ethnographic literature to the entity of Algernon Blackwood’s story “The Wendigo” reveals how the author adapted the monster of Algonquin lore for readers of popular fiction at the turn of the twentieth century. Aboriginal stories of the wendigo functioned within tribal societies where social cohesion and deference to community needs were preeminent; the monster embodied the horrors of privation where scarcity was the rule. Blackwood’s wendigo, in contrast, is a seductive entity that takes a victim’s life even as it offers consummation with primal beauty. This shift is integral to the story’s dialectic between a conventional masculinity characterized by scientific objectivity and a feminizing susceptibility to the allure of the aesthetic. Defago’s rendezvous with the wendigo is driven by an emotional vulnerability as emasculating as it is fatal. The result is a story that dramatizes key conflicts in early twentieth-century masculinity.

Keywords: apotheosis, phallic, transgression, Romantic, sacred, sublime

Into the Weird, Wild Woods: Folklore and the Supernatural in Lumberjanes and The Good Neighbors, by Kirsten Møllegaard (50-73)

Abstract: Young Adult (YA) fantasy fiction retells and repositions elements of traditional folklore in tales of the supernatural. The folklore and folktales retold in two YA graphic novel series, Lumberjanes and The Good Neighbors, form part of a larger trend in postmodern literature to question Otherness and humans' relation to nature. In these two comics series, nature is presented as a supernatural place full of monstrous creatures and mysterious powers. This paper examines the narrative strategies facilitated by the comics medium's combination of images and text. Like traditional folklore, the folkloresque is argued to be a dynamic ingredient in the production and consumption of cultural knowledge in YA literature.

Keywords: Folklore, folkloresque, fantasy fiction, Lumberjanes, The Good Neighbors, Otherness, comics

“Nothing alive here but us and the plant”: Ecological Terror and the Disruption of Order in Scott Smith’s The Ruins, by Jim Coby (74-95)

Abstract: In Scott Smith’s bestselling second novel, The Ruins, four American travelers head to a Mexican resort town to celebrate their final days before entering the “real world.” Circumstances take a turn for the worse when, at the behest of a newfound friend, the travelers venture to an abandoned archaeological dig site. They quickly discover that the site is inhabited by bloodthirsty and seemingly malevolent plant life. What should be a straightforward examination of colonial privilege and dissolution of societal bonds becomes complicated through Smith’s use of a fecund antagonist. As such, Smith deconstructs not only notions of Western privilege in the Global South, but, as I argue, also the upsetting of a supposedly axiomatic ontological order.

Keywords: Anthropocene, postcolonialism, Scott Smith, The Ruins, Timothy Morton

Philip Kaufman’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers: Mistrusting the Female Experience, by Julie Hugonny (96-120)

Abstract: In Philip Kaufman’s 1978 film Invasion of the Body Snatchers, women are presented as educated, sensible, independent, and sexually liberated. Yet, when they speak up, denouncing a sudden change of behavior in their companions, the men they confide in dismiss their concerns as emotional and irrational. This article highlights and analyzes the gender relations in the film, focusing on men’s silencing of women to prevent them from questioning the current relations of power and authority. Their knee-jerk reaction of discrediting women precipitates the threat to humanity, as their warnings go unheeded. More importantly, it reveals men’s own inadequacies, as they navigate a changing world in which women now have knowledge, self-awareness, expectations, and a voice to articulate them.

Keywords: science fiction, gender relations, body snatchers, desire, abuse, experience

Through the Cheval-Glass: The Doppelgänger and Temporal Modernist Terror in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Whitney S. May (121-135)

Abstract: This article investigates the function of the doppelgänger in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as a figure from the Gothic past resurrected and reengineered to navigate fin de siècle misgivings about the uncertainty of the modern future. The duality inherent to the doppelgänger figure makes it a superb case study of this modern impulse for reinvention, for its uncanniness precludes the modernist impulse to recode past forms in the interest of future invention. Thus reanimated, the doppelgänger in this tale typifies the anxieties of a period that found itself neither distinctly Victorian, nor definitively modern, but rather, as Dr. Jekyll mourns of his own schizophrenic situation, “radically both.” Viewing itself through a transformative modern mirror, Stevenson’s readership found itself face to face with a perfectly modern metropolitan monster in Edward Hyde, and even in his destruction, haunted by the social and technological upheaval that he represents.

Keywords: doppelgänger, dualism, modernism, monster, Robert Louis Stevenson

One of a Multiplicious Kind: Orphan Black, Performance and the Plurality of Female Experience. by Joseph Walderzak (136-158)

Abstract: This article argues that Orphan Black’s concentration of female characters, all performed by Tatiana Maslany, not only challenges and deconstructs salient stereotypes but exposes their triviality through establishing their mutability, accessibility, and diversity. Amanda Lotz’s work on television provides an entry point to analyzing the ramifications of Maslany’s performance. The diversity of characters from the same genetic source is in itself empowering, but the fact they can successfully portray one another and are all performed by a single actress shows the permeability and accessibility of various female personas. These scenes raise awareness of the performative aspects of identity, and, therefore, the thrust of this article is analogous to theories of gender performativity, particularly those which have built upon and challenged Judith Butler’s seminal works on the topic. Using this context of performativity, I here refine Lotz’s methodology in order to illuminate how performance is linked to archetypes.

Keywords: performance studies; performativity; television studies; Orphan Black; gender studies; feminist media

Volume 4, Issue 2 (Special Issue, 2018)

Special Issue: Black Mirror

Guest Editor: Bethany Holmstrom

Introduction, by Bethany Holmstrom (7-10)

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“We are Not in Control Anymore”: Technological Possessions Facilitated by Simulacrums in the Posthuman reality of “Hated in the Nation,” by Shastri Akella (11-26)

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Abstract: Acts of technological possession occur in "Hated in the Nation" at the point of intersection of two forms of surveillance: social media- and government-driven surveillance, each form producing a simulacrum. The work the simulacrums do together to facilitate the act of technological possession is symptomatic of a partially-realized posthuman reality, one in which honeybees have gone extinct and technologically-driven drones perform the task of pollination. Self-imposed limitations might create a more sustainable relationship between the technology that facilitates the posthuman state of being and the environment in which the posthuman subsists.

Keywords: Black Mirror, climate change, posthumanism, social media, surveillance, technology, Trans-humanism

Grain Ethics: Voyeurism, Violence, and Traumatic Memory in Black Mirror’s “The Entire History of You,” by Sarah Hildebrand (27-41)

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Abstract: This article analyzes how memory-enhancing technology may serve to perpetuate trauma and enable new forms of gender-based violence. By drawing on the fields of trauma theory and memory studies, it critiques the alleged objectivity of digitized vs. organic memories by exposing the power dynamics at play during acts of witnessing. This article conducts a close-reading of the Black Mirror episode "The Entire History of You" in order to reveal how biotechnology can increase the vulnerability of female bodies. In a society where memories can be digitally preserved and projected on-screen for both private and public viewing, instances of the male gaze are amplified and the conditions necessary for consent disappear, increasing the risk of physical and psychical violation.

Keywords: Black Mirror, gender, memory, technology, trauma, voyeurism, violence

Wired: "Men Against Fire" and Revolution in Military Affairs, by Kenn Watt (42-60)

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Abstract: The "Men Against Fire" episode of Black Mirror depicts an advanced military device, an implant called MASS, which enhances a soldier's capacity for surveillance and ferocity and blocks ethical reasoning. This article examines how MASS is merely the next stage in a revision of U.S. military strategy in place for decades, and is, in fact, already in various stages of development. This logical extension of the dehumanization of both the enemy and our own combatants makes killing easier because the Otherness of the opponent is drawn out to monstrous extremes. By examining the strained psychological effects of MASS, this article critiques the military vision of current tactical priorities as well as the loss of moral compass demanded of participants in contemporary conflicts around the globe.

Keywords: Black Mirror, combat, military technology, modern warfare, soldiers, war

How Do I Look? Data's Death Drive and Our Black Mirrored Reflections, by Chris Campanioni (61-76)

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Abstract: In a culture that has systematically abolished privacy, the pleasure we still most desire is the private experience. What is more private than connecting our bodies to the VR apparatus, individualizing our imagination so as to stay inside on the outside? This contribution uses logic and language theory (Wittgenstein), visual studies (Berger), and psychoanalysis (Freud) to frame an auto-theoretical inquiry into the many different ways art--and our experience of art--has changed as virtual reality becomes increasingly mainstreamed and normalized. "How Do I Look?" traces the history of VR as its starting point before exploring today's questions of digital intimacy, data accumulation, AI chatbots, and our culture's general fascination with and re-appropriation of death. Internet's exploitation of our inability to deal with death, by removing it from life, is re-contextualized through a reading of two of the most popular episodes of the television show Black Mirror.

Keywords: Black Mirror, data, death, digital intimacy, Internet studies, virtual reality

Teaching Notes (77-96)

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"Men Against Fire": The Uncanny Episode on Ideology, by Minerva Ahumada

Teaching Black Mirror and Popular Culture, by Bethany Holmstrom

Language, Identity, and "Be Right Back," by Rebekah Johnson

At the Limits of Relationality: Teaching "Be Right Back," by Christine Marks

The Pleasure of Terror in Black Mirror: "Be Right Back," "Playtest," and "Metalhead," by Claudia Moreno Parsons

"The National Anthem," Shut Up and Dance," and the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, by Leah Richards

Volume 4, Issue 1 (Summer 2017)

Editors' Note and Introduction, by Leah Richards and John R. Ziegler (7)

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A Supernatural Spectacle: Film Style Within the Prologue of Black Swan, by Derek M. Dubois (11-23) [Read/Download]

Abstract: Filmmaker Darren Aronofsky is well-known for a dynamic film style that showcases characters who self-destruct in visceral, kinetic ways. His Black Swan (2010) concerns a talented but infantilized ballet dancer whose quest for perfection in her renowned company's performance of Swan Lake leads her down a darkened path of self-mutilation. The film externalizes this threat through the introduction of supernatural elements—most specifically—through the emergence of the double. This essay argues that Aronofsky establishes his key themes and genre elements through the techniques of art cinema immediately within the film’s prologue.

Keywords: art cinema, the double/doppelgänger, film style, narrative

The girlie-wolf--good for nothing: Twilight and the Anti-Feminist She-Wolf, by Stephanie Gallon (24-37)

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Abstract: Stephenie Meyer's Twilight saga has been an international phenomenon, yielding much debate about the agency of the heroine. Though a minor character, Leah Clearwater is a character worth studying and an ideal lens through which to examine the series, as she occupies a unique space within the world and narrative: she is the only she-wolf in the Quileute pack. This essay argues that an analytical focus on Leah Clearwater reveals that the Twilight saga, by cultural and authorial definitions, fails as a feminist piece.

Keywords: Gothic, female werewolf, feminist post-colonialism, Twilight

"Keeping the Past Present": Time and the Shifting Bog in Bram Stoker's The Snake's Pass, by Nancy Marck Cantwell (38-50)

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Abstract: Bram Stoker’s Irish novel, The Snake’s Pass, interrogates the continuity of Irish history and national identity through a legend explaining a Connemara bog’s supernatural influence, a story that portrays the trauma of Ireland’s dispossession as indelible and timeless. This reading of the novel employs Julia Kristeva’s conceptualization of linear and monumental time to argue for the preeminence of the supernatural bog as a totem of Irish identity that persists in cultural memory to counter the forward momentum of the Anglo-Irish assimilation narrative.

Keywords: bog, Bram Stoker, dispossession, Ireland, Julia Kristeva

Cultural Human Sacrifice in Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street Films, by Brittany Caroline Speller (51-68)

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Abstract: Wes Craven’s films often feature veiled or outright commentaries on their cultural context. With this trait in mind, a reexamination of his initial two entries in the Elm Street series is warranted. By utilizing a theoretical lens of cultural human sacrifice, combined with traditional film criticism techniques, this essay argues that Craven’s films A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) and A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987) can be seen as inclusive of instances of human sacrifice that were deemed necessary in order to perpetuate the hegemonic societal norms of the 1980s.

Keywords: Elm Street series, horror genre, human sacrifice, slasher films, Wes Craven

Damsels, Dragons, and Death-girls: Married and Unmarried Foreign Women in The Book of John Mandeville, by Ellis Light (69-87)

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Abstract: This article examines the (re)presentations of foreign women in The Book of John Mandeville, arguing that foreign women’s marital status is central in determining their inclusion in the category of the human. Unmarried foreign women appear as dangerous figures whose bodies transform into monstrous forms such as dragons and human-animal hybrids, while married women are seen as commodities whose value depends on performances of status.

Keywords: abjection, gender studies, Mandeville, marriage, medieval, monstrosity, travel writing

Academia, Relativism, and the "Supernatural": What is True, What is Real, and What is Reasonable?, by Elizabeth Lowry (88-98)

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Abstract: Considering other people’s esoteric or “supernatural” experiences in a professional capacity can be challenging because, as academics, we are expected to reject such discourses. But while “critical thinking” presupposes a strictly rationalist and positivist standpoint, the act of thinking critically may sometimes require a more relativistic perspective on what is generally accepted as being true and real. Acknowledging the social and political dangers of accepting an overly relativistic view of “truth” and “reality,” this paper explores the plusses and pitfalls of relativism with regard to truth claims associated with the supernatural.

Keywords: esoteric, rational, reason, relativism, truth-claims

Volume 3, Issue 1 (Spring 2016)

Introduction, by Leah Richards (7).

Shantooe Jest: A Forgotten Nineteenth-Century Fairy Saga, by Simon Young (9-22). [Read/Download]

The Gothic Experience of Terror and Horror in Matthew Lewis's The Monk, by Erica McCrystal (23-32). [Read/Download]

Dark Shadows and Gothic Lights: Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, by Osmond Chien-ming Chang (33-41). [Read/Download]

The Moral Imagination and Sergeant James Hathaway in Inspector Lewis, by Heather Ostman (42-55). [Read/Download]

Monkey Drag: Gendering and Deconstructing the Sasquatch Masquerade, by James Keller (56-64). [Read/Download]

Teen Drama with a Bite: Human Animality in Teen Wolf, by Anastassiya Andrianova (65-84). [Read/Download]

"Sweetheart, this is Gender Studies": Jo Harvelle, Female Strength, and Fandom in Supernatural, by Victoria Farmer (85-98). [Read/Download]

Film Series Review Essay

Paranormal Found-Footage Fizzle: The Rise and Fall of the Paranormal Activity Franchise, by William D. Prystauk (99-108). [Read/Download]

Book Reviews [Read all/Download all]

Davidson, Jane P. Early Modern Supernatural: The Dark Side of the European Culture, 1400-1700. Review by Timothy Bernard Walsh.

Smith, Jay M. Monsters of the Gévaudan: The Making of a Beast. Review by Todd Spaulding.

Miller, Cynthia J., and Bowdoin Van Riper, eds. Undead in the West: Vampires, Zombies, Mummies, and Ghosts on the Cinematic Frontier. Review by Murray Leeder.

Wilson, Leah, ed. A Taste of True Blood: the Fangbanger's Guide and George Dunn and Rebecca Housel, eds. True Blood and Philosophy: We Wanna Think Bad Things with You. Review by Alysa Hornick.

Redding, Arthur. Haints: American Ghosts, Millenial Passions, and Contemporary Gothic Fictions. Review by Christopher K. Coffman.

Volume 2, Issue 2 (Summer 2015)

Special Issue: The Supernatural in the Long Nineteenth Century

Guest Editor: Janine Hatter

Introduction, by Janine Hatter (9-13). [Read/Download]

Banishing the Beast: The Role of the Wolf in "Dracula's Guest" and Its Omission from Dracula, by Kaja Franck and Matthew Beresford (14-28). [Read/Download]

Writing the Vampire: M.E. Braddon's "Good Lady Ducayne" and Bram Stoker's Dracula, by Janine Hatter (29-47). [Read/Download]

Bram Stoker's The Lair of the White Worm: Supernatural Representations and Nineteenth-Century Paleontology, by Carol Senf (48-58). [Read/Download]

Acting Monstrous: Staging the Creature in Presumption; Or, The Fate of Frankenstein, by Brittany Reid (59-72). [Read/Download]

Haunted Tomes, Haunted Canvases: Supernatural Realism in Nineteenth-Century Novels and Paintings, by Cameron Dodworth (73-92). [Read/Download]

"Land of the living that's thronged with the dead": Mary Kingsley and the Ghosts of West Africa, by Melissa Edmundson (93-107). [Article unavailable as open-access by request of the author.]

From Ouina to Black Hawk: The Role of Native American Spirit Controls in the Victorian-Era Séance, by Elizabeth Lowry (108-117). [Read/Download]

Mesmeric Clairvoyance in Mid-Victorian Literature: Eliot, Bulwer-Lytton, and MacDonald, by Helena Ifill (118-132). [Read/Download]

Anatomy of the Demons: The Demoniac Body Dealers of the Penny Bloods, by Anna Gasperini (133-147). [Read/Download]

Reincarnation, Rudyard Kipling, and Mortimer Collins, by Erin Louttit (148-160). [Read/Download]

William Carleton, Folklore, the Famine, and the Irish Supernatural, by Melissa Fegan (161-173). [Read/Download]

Ghostly Markings: Aesthetic Criminality, Acts, and Supernatural Identity in Wilde's "The Canterville Ghost," by Christie Cognevich (174-183). [Read/Download]

Book Reviews [Read/Download All]

Killeen, Jarlath, ed. Bram Stoker: Centenary Essays. Review by Joy Bracewell.

Budge, Gavin. Romanticism, Medicine, and the Natural Supernatural. Review by Emma Butcher.

Elbert, Monika, and Bridget M. Marshall, eds. Transnational Gothic: Literary and Social Exchanges in the Long Nineteenth Century. Review by Kevin Corstorphine.

Wynne, Catherine. Bram Stoker, Dracula, and the Victorian Gothic Stage. Review by Matthew Crofts.

Montillo, Roseanne. The Lady and Her Monsters: A Tale of Dissections, Real-Life Dr. Frankensteins, and the Creation of Mary Shelley's Masterpiece. Review by Michelle Gifford.

O'Briain, Helen Conrad, and Julie Anne Stevens, eds. The Ghost Story from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century. Review by Janine Hatter.

Makala, Melissa Edmundson. Women's Ghost Literature in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Review by Nicole Lobdell.

Gibson, Matthew. The Fantastic and European Gothic: History, Literature and the French Revolution. Review by Carol A. Senf.

Gimes, Hilary. The Late Victorian Gothic: Mental Science, the Uncanny and Scenes of Writing. Review by Victoria Samantha Dawson.

Volume 2, Issue 1 (Spring 2015)

Special Issue: Television and the Supernatural

Guest Editor: Marisa C. Hayes

Introduction, by Marisa C. Hayes (7-10).

Supernatural Potentialities and Household Technologies: Communication Devices Gone Wild in Tales of Tomorrow and The Twilight Zone, by Kylo-Patrick R. Hart (11-21).

Ghostwatch: Supernatural and Technological Presence in Early 1990s Britain, by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas (22-33).

Wandering Wesen: Immigration as Adaptation in Grimm, by Angela Tenga (34-46).

"Three days of the month I'm not much fun to be around either": Werewolves and the Gendered Body in Buffy, True Blood, and Grimm, by Rachael Johnstone (47-61).

Ghosts in the Machine: Fringe Bodies, by Lisa K. Perdigao (62-74).

Writing the Winchesters: Embodies Inscriptions and the Bleeding Text(s) of Supernatural, by Najwa Al-Tabaa and Katherine Shaeffer (75-88).

Television Series Review Essays

The Twilight Zone, rev. by Guillaume Lecomte.

Dark Shadows, rev. by Drew Beard.

Tales from the Dark Side, rev. by Drew Beard.

Twin Peaks, rev. by Franck Boulégue.

The X-Files, rev. by Angela Bayout.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, rev. by Andrew Howe.

Charmed, rev. by Laura Lott.

Lost, rev. by Kristine Larsen.

Being Human (UK), rev. by Laura Lott.

True Blood, rev. by Shara Clark.

The Walking Dead, rev. by M. Lee Brown.

American Horror Story, rev. by Shara Clark.

The Returned (Les Revenants), rev. by Emeline Morin.