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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.

We are reopening very briefly for nominations until 12 noon UK time on Tuesday 26th March 2024.

An ONLINE conference on 24th and 25th August 2024 marking the 200th anniversary of James Hogg’s Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner REVISED SUBMISSION DATE: 31st MARCH 2024

Edited Collection Title: Rotting Corpses: Ecocritical Approaches to Death and Decomposition Editors: Sara Crosby, Carter Soles, and Ashley Kniss

One of my favourite quotes about Gothic is by David Punter’s legend, from the Literature of Terror. “Gothic was chaotic … ornate and convoluted; where the classics offered a set of cultural models to be followed, Gothic represented excess and exaggeration, the product of the wild and the uncivilised”. What he implies here is what most of us might agree with. What he meant with this quote is that it (Gothic) embraces chaos, complexity, excess, and elements considered wild and uncivilised. This implies that most of our wild and uncivilised dreams lead to encounters with the gothic.

Call for nominations by February 29th

I cannot remember a time when I was not fascinated by the uncanny and the supernatural. Since childhood the macabre has had a strong pull over me. This was most firmly expressed when I was just seven years old and had my first encounter the Gothic.