An urgent volume of essays engages the Gothic to advance important perspectives on our geological era

 

What can the Gothic teach us about our current geological era? More than just spooky, moonlit castles and morbid graveyards, the Gothic represents a vibrant, emergent perspective on the Anthropocene. In this volume, more than a dozen scholars move beyond longstanding perspectives on the Anthropocene—such as science fiction and apocalyptic narratives—to show that the Gothic offers a unique (and dark) interpretation of events like climate change, diminished ecosystems, and mass extinction.

Embracing pop cultural phenomena like True Detective, Jaws, and Twin Peaks, as well as topics from the New Weird and prehistoric shark fiction to ruin porn and the “monstroscene,” Dark Scenes from Damaged Earth demonstrates the continuing vitality of the Gothic while opening important new paths of inquiry. These essays map a genealogy of the Gothic while providing fresh perspectives on the ongoing climate chaos, the North/South divide, issues of racialization, dark ecology, questions surrounding environmental justice, and much more.

Contributors: Fred Botting, Kingston U; Timothy Clark, U of Durham; Rebecca Duncan, Linnaeus U; Michael Fuchs, U of Oldenburg, Germany; Esthie Hugo, U of Warwick; Dawn Keetley, Lehigh U; Laura R. Kremmel, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology; Timothy Morton, Rice U; Barry Murnane, U of Oxford; Jennifer Schell, U of Alaska Fairbanks; Lisa M. Vetere, Monmouth U; Sara Wasson, Lancaster U; Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, Central Michigan U.

Justin D. Edwards is professor of English and chair in Gothic studies at the University of Stirling. He is author of, most recently, Tropical Gothic in Literature and Culture: The Americas and coeditor of B-Movie Gothic: International Perspectives.

Rune Graulund is associate professor in American literature and culture at the Center for American Studies and director of the research cluster Anthropocene Aesthetics at the University of Southern Denmark. He is coauthor of Grotesque and Mobility at Large: Globalization, Textuality, and Innovative Travel Writing.

Johan Höglund is professor of English at Linnaeus University. He is coeditor of B-Movie Gothic: International Perspectives and Nordic Gothic. 

"All of the essays connect the subjective potency of the texts under discussion — the affects and moods that they inspire in the reader or viewer — to the ways that such works also give us a deeper understanding of the ongoing ecological transactions that are putting our very existence at risk. Dark Scenes from Damaged Earth both reclaims the gothic as an urgently relevant mode of fiction-making and suggests that aesthetic approaches are able to bring us a kind of understanding that scientific studies on their own could not."—Los Angeles Review of Books

"It is impossible for me to do complete justice to this book in a review, but I will say that the sixteen essays included in it are all illuminating, thoughtful, and interesting."—Gothic Wanderer