We propose a panel to examine the expression and reception of fear-inducing genres, including but not limited to the Gothic, in various regions of the Americas. We invite interested participants to explore at least some of the following questions:

What draws authors, filmmakers, readers and audiences to genres that deliberately provoke fear, dread, and disgust?

Do fear-inducing genres confirm or critique social, political and religious prejudices. If so, how?

Are fear-inducing genres reflective of gender, racial or ethnic differences?

Not a few fear-inducing films and fiction combine horror with humor. To what effect?

In what ways do women authors of horror keep gender awareness in play even when gendered fears or conflicts are not the explicit focal point of a story?

What are some of the theories (philosophical, psychological, sociological, etc.) that help us think through these questions?

We aim for a panel whose geographic diversity will generate a strong intercultural component. Its transnational scope invites comparative analysis of how horror both responds to and articulates local and regional histories of violence. Alongside the works themselves, we invite presentations and critiques of sociological, anthropological, and philosophical studies of horror, abjection, terror, and specific subgenres of horror.

This panel invites presentations on Horror and the Gothic in Fiction and Film across the Americas.  Writers and filmmakers who work in this world aim to expose fears and anxieties grounded in real social problems. Among these are gender and ethnic exclusion, class inequality, dysfunctional families and communities, political oppression, religious intolerance, sexual abuse, and environmental catastrophe. While in some of its more popular and profitable forms the horror genre aims almost exclusively at visceral thrills, the literary and cinematic texts we will study encourage—and often demand—reflection and self-reflection even as they provoke strong negative emotions such as fear, repulsion, and terror.