The New Queer Gothic

Reading Queer Girls and Women in Contemporary Fiction and Film

Author(s) Robyn Ollett

Language: English

Genre(s): Literary Criticism, Gender Studies, Media, Film and Theatre

Series: Gothic Literary Studies

  • April 2024 · 256 pages ·216x138mm

  • · Hardback - 9781837721382
  • · eBook - pdf - 9781837721399
  • · eBook - epub - 9781837721405

About The Book

Queer theory, queer literary criticism and queer cultural criticism often focus on western, white, cis men. This book provides the first in-depth analysis of contemporary queer and Gothic texts that focus on the subjectivity, characterisation and representation of queer girls and women. The New Queer Gothic applies interdisciplinary theory to offer a new mode and method of reading literary and film fiction. From monstrous femininity in tales of girlhood, to paranoid negativity and transformation in young womanhood, through to postcolonial doubles, hybrid assimilation, corporeal possession, and final girls at the end of everything – this book takes as its canon works from the past fifteen years concerning queer and questioning girls and women in Gothic settings and narratives, to elucidate upon questions of queer feminist ethics, biopower and global identity politics.

Endorsements

‘There is not enough focus on girls and women in Gothic – specifically where Queer Gothic is concerned. I love the focus on that here. It is queer; it is feminist.’

Dr Ardel Haefele-Thomas, LGBTQ+ Studies, City College of San Francisco

Contents

Introduction
Part One
Chapter One: “She herself is a haunted house”: The Origins of The New Queer Gothic in work of Twentieth Century Women Writers: Shirley Jackson, Angela Carter, Maryse Condé, Anne Rice, Jewel Gomez, and Sarah Waters
Chapter Two: Miles away from Screwing? The Queer Gothic Child in John Harding’s Florence and Giles (2010)
Part Two
Chapter Three: “What happened to my sweet girl?”: Conventions of The New Queer Gothic and Queer Subjectivity in Black Swan (2010) and Jack and Diane (2012)
Chapter Four: “The Saviour who came to tear my life apart”: The Queer Postcolonial Gothic of Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden (2016)
Part Three
Chapter Five: Queering the Cannibal in Julia Ducournau’s Raw (2016)
Chapter Six: “She would never fall, because her friend was flying with her”: Gothic Hybridity, Queer Girls and Exceptional States in Helen Oyeyemi’s The Icarus Girl (2005) and M. R. Carey’s The Girl with all the Gifts (2014)
Conclusion: Queering Gender and Queers of Colour in The New Queer Gothic

About the Author(s)

Author(s): Robyn Ollett

Robyn Ollett is a lecturer of English Studies at Teesside University and a PGR Dissertation Supervisor for Gender Studies and Media at Stirling University.

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