IPP Workshop Series

Theorizing the (Contemporary) Gothic (Rahel Schmitz)

The Gothic, it seems, is everywhere today. While horrifying creatures may not be anything novel in popular culture, it is striking that many of these tropes have migrated beyond the realms of what is commonly regarded as "scary" fiction: to give two examples, both the comedy-drama TV show Desperate Housewives (2004-2012) and Lorna Gibb’s historical novel A Ghost’s Story (2015), neither of them particularly terrifying, are narrated by ghosts. Furthermore, even scholarly publications have become loaded with references to Gothic monsters: "specters" (Marx, later taken up by Derrida), "cannibals" (Appadurai), "zombies" (Beck), and so on. Observing this trend, Gothic scholar Glennis Byron comes to the conclusion that the entire globalization process has been Gothicized. In other words, the Gothic is a condition of today’s world.  

However, even though Gothic terms seem to be eerily omnipresent at the moment, and even though every scholar in the field of cultural studies will at some point come across such tropes, it oftentimes remains unclear what the Gothic mode actually is. Therefore, this workshop will introduce participants to definitions of and approaches to Gothic fiction. In order to narrow this vast and complex field down to a more concrete focus, the session will put an emphasis on 21^st-century Gothic, using the TV show Pretty Little Liars as an example. Thus, the workshop will not only provide participants with a clearer understanding of the Gothic, but will furthermore show that such knowledge pertains not only to "canonical" Gothic fictions from the 18^th-/19^th-century.

Suggested Viewing:

• "Pilot." Pretty Little Liars. ABC Family, 8. June 2010.