Critical Mystery Studies (CMS) examines the role of mystery in the long traditions, histories of resistance, and cultural expressions of BIPOC communities, and at the same time, it explores how mysteries are entangled with racism, sexism, coloniality, and other systems of oppression. CMS is the critical and interdisciplinary study of mysteries, including monster sightings, ghost hauntings, alien encounters, among many more. Studies within CMS explore the nature and meaning of mysteries, the discourses surrounding them in their specific geographical and cultural contexts, their representation in fiction and film, and how mysteries have been reclaimed, reinterpreted, and reappropriated by cultural creators. By combining attention to the strange and fantastic with a critical analysis of systems of oppression, CMS provides a powerful source of illumination of our cultural landscape.

CMS enters what Gloria Anzaldúa calls the “nepantla” region, the in-between realm, “la tierra entre medio,” as not only are the typical experiences examined in CMS best described as liminal, but the field itself is a bridging and adjoining of fields, an academic field that is an “always-in-transition space lacking clear boundaries.” CMS combines the analysis of mysteries with critical discourses such as Critical Race Theory and Feminist Philosophy, and, in this way, the field has mapped out new territory. Key texts in the field include essays such as Rudolfo Anaya’s “La Llorona, El Kookoóee, and Sexuality” and Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s “Monster Culture (Seven Theses),” and monographs such as Tiya Miles’ Tales from the Haunted South: Dark Tourism and Memories of Slavery from the Civil War Era. Nevertheless, CMS is also in dialogue with the whole range of what we can call “Mystery Studies,” which includes early texts regarding the epistemology of mysteries such as Immanuel Kant’s Dreams of a Spirit-Seer as well as more recent works from religious studies such as Diana Walsh Pasulka’s American Cosmic. We can find CMS scholarship scattered throughout the traditional academic fields, such as Medieval Studies, Literature, History, and Philosophy as well as the smaller fields that have significant overlap with CMS, such as Hauntology and Monster Studies, but we are most concerned at the moment with developing new theories and methods for this new field.

This panel seeks papers that fit within Critical Mystery Studies to continue to build a field that takes seriously the role of the unknown in shaping humanity, our literature and art, as well as the wide range of popular cultures from our distant past and into the present.