This introductory volume offers an elegant analysis of the enduring appeal of the cinematic vampire. From Georges Méliès' early cinematic experiments to Twilight and Let the Right One In, the history of vampires in cinema can be organised by a handful of governing principles that help make sense of this movie monster's remarkable fecundity. Among these principles are that the cinematic vampire is invariably about sex and the vexed human relationship with technology, and that the vampire is...

Considering the composition classroom as a mad scientist’s laboratory, The Mad Scientist’s Guide to Composition introduces different kinds of writing as experiments. Writing an essay is a task that can strike fear into a student’s heart, but performing an experiment licenses creativity and doesn’t presume that one knows the outcome from the start.The Mad Scientist’s Guide covers the kinds of writing most often required on college campuses, while also addressing im...

Scare Tactics identifies an important but overlooked tradition of supernatural writing by American women. Jeffrey Weinstock analyzes this tradition as an essentially feminist attempt to imagine alternatives to a world of limited possibilities. In the process, he recovers the lives and works of authors who were important during their lifetimes and in the development of the American literary tradition, but who are not recognized today for their contributions.Between the end of the Ci...

Fantasy author Neil Gaiman’s 1996 novel Neverwhere is not just a marvelous self-contained novel, but a terrifically useful text for introducing students to fantasy as a genre and issues of adaptation. Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock’s briskly written A Critical Companion to Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere offers an introduction to the work; situates it in relation to the fantasy genre, with attention in particular to the Hero’s Journey, urban fantasy, word play, social critique, and co...

Considering the composition classroom as a mad scientist’s laboratory, The Mad Scientist’s Guide to Composition introduces different kinds of writing as experiments. Writing an essay is a task that can strike fear into a student’s heart, but performing an experiment licenses creativity and doesn’t presume that one knows the outcome from the start.The Mad Scientist’s Guide covers the kinds of writing most often required on college campuses, while also addressing im...

SHORTLISTED, THE ALLAN LLOYD SMITH PRIZE FOR BEST MONOGRAPHOffering an innovative approach to the Gothic, Gothic Things: Dark Enchantment and Anthropocene Anxiety breaks ground with a new materialist analysis of the genre, highlighting the ways that, since its origins in the eighteenth century, the Gothic has been intensely focused on “ominous matter” and “thing power.” In chapters attending to gothic bodies, spaces, books, and other objects, Gothic Th...

Critical Approaches to the Films of M. Night Shyamalan represents the first serious academic engagement with auteur director M. Night Shyamalan and his work. The essays, including contributions from established film scholars David Sterritt, Murray Pomerance, Emmanuel Burdeau, R. Barton Palmer, Matt Hills, and Katherine Fowkes, explore the Hollywood blockbusters from The Sixth Sense to The Happening in terms of their themes, aesthetics, and marketing. Taken together, the collection recogniz...

A comprehensive guide to the timeless, paradoxical appeal of horrorWhy do we enjoy horror? The emotional responses the genre provokes—fear, dread, and disgust—are ones we typically seek to avoid, so what is the appeal of narratives and artistic representations that seek to scare, startle, shock, and repulse? In The Horror Theory Reader, Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock assembles theorizations of the genre’s appeal from antiquity to the present day to explore the “...

The Cambridge Companion to American Gothic offers an accessible overview to both the breadth and depth of the American Gothic tradition. This subgenre features works from many of America's best-known authors: Edgar Allan Poe, Toni Morrison, Stephen King, Anne Rice, Henry James, Edith Wharton, William Faulkner, and Flannery O'Connor. Authored by leading experts in the field, the introduction and sixteen chapters explore the American Gothic chronologically, in relation to different social gr...

With well over one-hundred episodes, the podcast Welcome to Night Vale has spawned several international live tours, two novels set in the Night Vale universe, and an extensive volume of fan fiction and commentary. However, despite its immense popularity, Welcome to Night Vale has received almost no academic scrutiny. This edited collection of scholarly essays—the very first of its kind on a podcast—attempts to redress this lack of attention to Night Vale

From vampires and demons to ghosts and zombies, interest in monsters in literature, film, and popular culture has never been stronger. This concise Encyclopedia provides scholars and students with a comprehensive and authoritative A-Z of monsters throughout the ages. It is the first major reference book on monsters for the scholarly market. Over 200 entries written by experts in the field are accompanied by an overview introduction by the editor. Generic entries such as 'ghost' and 'vampir...

A collection of scholarship on monsters and their meaning—across genres, disciplines, methodologies, and time—from foundational texts to the most recent contributionsZombies and vampires, banshees and basilisks, demons and wendigos, goblins, gorgons, golems, and ghosts. From the mythical monstrous races of the ancient world to the murderous cyborgs of our day, monsters have haunted the human imagination, giving shape to the fears and desires of their time. And as l...