This weekend, we have two fantastic classes on fairly widely differing subjects! It’s a bit of a rollercoaster of a week. Our book club is a slow burn historical romance between a vampire and his secretary, Saturday we’re moving onto body horror and Sunday we’re thinking about Star Wars and the Gothic! Never a dull moment with Romancing the Gothic. Sign up here.
This Saturday, join Jonathan Greenaway for the session: “Long Live The New Flesh: Body Horror, Politics and the Work of David Cronenberg”
Offering an overview of the historical development of body horror from the eighteenth century onward, this session will explore the Gothic obsession with viscera in all of its forms. Body horror in the contemporary finds one of its most innovative manifestations in the work of Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg who explores the contingency, fragility, and malleability of the flesh as technology and capitalism reshape existence down to the level of our cells. This session will consider how Cronenberg’s use of body horror aims not only to induce an affective response but a political one – challenging the viewer to rethink collective existence in bold new ways.
On Sunday, we’re joined by Shiri Sondheimer for Space Gothic: The Last Jedi
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/9835987/MV5BZDk4MGE0ZjAtNmE4Ny00ZWVhLWJjZGMtYjdhNjI5MWY3NTczXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNjUwNzk3NDc_._V1_.jpg)
A family curse. A shattered legacy. A murdered father. An orphaned girl destined for greatness. A mysterious (and slightly creepy) wise man. A prince who will never take his throne. Good. Evil. Dark. Light.
Is it a gothic novel?
No. It’s Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi.
Even long ago in a galaxy far, far away, their stories were haunted by the same specters that haunt The House of Otranto. After all, start destroyers have dark, shadowy corners too. And those helmets… seems we’ll never escape them.
