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The Speculative Singularity: Representations of Race, Sex, Gender, and Sexuality from Machine Learning to Sentient Droids
Despite numerous post-apocalyptic storylines, many science fiction texts are a celebration of life and seek ways of making the most of it. Such an interest has informed a broad literary fascination with immortality and rebirth, particularly in nineteenth and early twentieth century fantasy and science fiction, with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Oscar Wilde’s Picture of Dorian…
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Poetry and the Gothic
Poetry has been an integral part of the Gothic mode since its inception. However, the connection between poetry and the Gothic seems a less explored area of critical inquiry, in comparison to fiction. While the Graveyard Poets and other Anglophone poetry movements are already considered foundational to the Gothic mode, our edited collection seeks to…
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The Cursed Archive: Dangerous Texts, Deadly Communications, and Gothic Media
Edited by Elana Gomel and Simon Bacon A popular trope in horror and speculative fiction is a cursed archive: a textual communication that is dangerous, forbidden, or contagious. Medieval grimoires and alchemist treatises were early examples of such cursed or forbidden texts. However, in the age before widespread literacy, the cursed archive was limited to…
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Rotting Corpses
Edited Collection: Rotting Corpses: Ecocritical Approaches to Death and Decomposition Editors: Sara Crosby, Carter Soles, and Ashley Kniss In Julia Kristeva’s seminal work, The Powers of Horror, she describes decay as the “contamination of life by death” (149). She goes on to write that “a decaying body, lifeless, completely turned into dejection, blurred between the…