Gothic Bodies Seminar: The Gothic Women Project
Gothic Bodies Seminar: The Gothic Women Project
Online Seminar: Gothic Bodies
Monday 17th January 2022, 5pm GMT
Gendered bodies, monstrous bodies, bodies in pain: our January seminar explores one of the Gothic’s key concerns
The Gothic uncovers, explores, and fosters terrors. The body often functions as the locus of such fear, being imagined as the site of both monstrosity and suffering. Pain, passion, sickness, contagion, incarceration, melancholy, madness – these fundamentally embodied experiences lie at the heart of the mode. In focusing on the corporeal, Gothic texts can also examine the operations of power on the individual, interrogating dynamics of gender, sexuality, race, dis/ability, nationality, and class. And, of course, Gothic writing also works on the reader’s body, aiming, as Mary Shelley put it, to “awaken thrilling horror […] curdle the blood, and quicken the beatings of the heart.”
Our first event of 2022 will explore the role of embodiment in women’s Gothic writing, examining the fascination and fear of Gothic bodies across different forms.
Speakers
Lucy Cogan (National University of Ireland, Maynooth), ‘The Female Alcoholic as Monstrous Grotesque in Maria Edgeworth’s The Lottery’
Laura Kremmel (Humanities Department, South Dakota School of Mines & Technology), ‘Unfeeling Bones: Charlotte Dacre, Melancholy, and Pain Management’
Franz Potter (National University, San Diego), ‘”A very delicate state of health”: The Diseased Body in Sarah Wilkinson’s Gothic Chapbooks’
