Blog

The North American Society for the Study of Romanticism (NASSR) is pleased to announce the theme of-and call for contributions to-their 2025 conference, which will be held online, accessibly, and hosted by Athabasca University, on August 14-16, 2025.

Sea changes: The fairytale Gothic of mermaids, selkies, and enchanted hybrids of ocean and river

Before I read Matthew Lewis’ The Monk, I had read many more ‘tame’ classics. Pride and Prejudice, A Tale of Two Cities, Gulliver’s Travels. Whilst these tales delighted me —and remain to this day some of my favourites— they in no way prepared me for my first encounter with the Gothic.

My first scholarly encounter with the Gothic was through my study of the 1999 independent VHS horror cult hit The Blair Witch Project, directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez. The basis for my intrigue concerned how the film “performed reality”, or how it presented itself as actual documentary evidence of strange occurrences in a forest in Burkittsville, Maryland.

It is a sense of the ineffable that keeps drawing me back to the Gothic, a mode that keeps challenging the limits of my rationality and understanding—whether as eschatological horrors played out on my TV screen, or in eighteenth-century graveyard poetry, or the revived memory of a song catching me, now a mid-mannered middle-aged academic, unawares as I drive to work.

The essay competition is open to postgraduate students or postdoctoral scholars who are currently in good standing as IGA members. A postgraduate may be a current or recent Masters’ student (within two years of graduation) or a PhD candidate; a postdoctoral scholar is defined as someone who holds a PhD but does not hold a permanent academic post – this includes independent scholars.

We are delighted to announce the short lists for this year’s two IGA Book Prizes: the Allan Lloyd Smith Prize for the monograph best advancing the field of Gothic studies and the inaugural Justin D. Edwards Prize for the edited collection best advancing the field of Gothic studies.

Are you attending the IGA Conference in Halifax this year? If you are an IGA member and a (post)graduate student (Masters or PhD) you are eligible to apply for a bursary to support your travel expenses! Simply fill in our application form by 15 June 2024.

Gothic Studies, the journal of the International Gothic Association, is currently inviting expressions of interest in the role of chief editor. Applicants should submit a CV and covering letter addressing the requirements in the job description to info@globalgoth.org by 15 June 2024. Please note this role is only open to current members of the International Gothic Association.

It is a pleasure to announce the final longlists of all the nominations received for the two IGA book Prizes.

I have always been drawn to the dark side. My parents are not into the Gothic, but they unwittingly provided plenty of paths that led me to a fascination with the weird and the wicked. Like Dr Henry Jekyll, I believe this capacity lies within us all – if (in)appropriately triggered in childhood. For those of us lucky enough to be given this early training in terror, the Gothic can take on a darkly delicious nostalgia later in life; a feeling of being at home, a reassuringly unheimlich home.

I remember quite correctly the first time I saw a goth person. It was on TV. In the west part of Québec, the city where I grew up, non-conventional looking people were — and still are — a rare sight. Plus, my family was never really fond of gothic literature, let alone goth rock or horror movies. The forbidden attracts, I guess.