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 a few banned or heretical books. The trope came into its own with the rise of popular literature when the issue of dangerous ideas disseminated through mass media became a cultural and political concern. Early examples of cursed archives centered on printed or written texts, as in H. P. Lovecraft’s imaginary Necronomicon or G. K. Chesterton’s story “The Blast of the Book” (1933). But with the explosion of media technologies, contemporary cursed archives encompass haunted websites, contagious cellphones, entrapping video games, monster infested TV sets, and killer movies. In this collection, we want to probe the implications of the cursed archive; its connection to the issues of censorship, book-banning, and freedom of expression; the notion of “contagious” ideas; the differences and similarities between the forbidden book and the dark web; and electronic media as a pandemic. The topics we want to address include, but are not limited to, the following:
- The history of the cursed archive (early examples of book-banning or book-burning by the Church or other religious institutions).
The cursed archive and the rise of mass media. - Demonic books in Gothic and horror literature (Lovecraft’s Necronomicon; James Blish’s Black Easter; and similar texts).
The cursed archive and censorship. - Horror at the movies (Clive Barker’s “Son of Celluloid”).
- Haunted media (such as video games in the Ring series; Stephen King’s Cell; dating apps in Jason Arnopp’s Ghoster).
- Social media as contagion (including use of social media in crime fiction, such as novels by Ruth Ware and Matt Wesolowski).
- The library as a gothic space (Borges’ “The Library of Babel”; Korner-Stace Archivist Wasp, Scott Hawkins’ The Library at Mount Char).
- Alien communications as transforming or erasing humanity (Arrival; Cixin Liu’s Three-Body Problem).
- Gendering the cursed archive.
- Cross-cultural examples.
- Cursed writing, languages, symbols.
- Cursed means of recording such as tape cassettes, video cassettes, photos, paintings, vinyl records, databases, performance, choreography, etc.
Please submit an abstract of no more than 300 words to Simon Bacon
([email protected]) and Elana Gomel ([email protected]) by June 30, 2024.