The Gothic in Times of Crisis

The Gothic has always given fiery expression to times of crisis with its distinctive versions of major social, cultural and climatic upheavals. Forms of the Gothic are now as widely dispersed and flexible as the proliferation of troubles that beset us today from Fukushima and Chernobyl, to 9/11, growing autocracies, COVID with its threatening variants, and climate-driven storms and wildfires. In the seventeen chapters included in this collection, the Gothic's fantasias, uncanny technologies, and end-of-the world narratives are channelling the major troubles of our own, as well as earlier, times. This dynamic, especially in recent years, has brought about extensive revisions of the Gothic mode in a variety of media that, while they yet manifest haunting manifestation of past crises, now include a wide variety of today's global disruptions. This collection shows how these crises both inform today's Gothic modes and reshape the Gothic itself in literature, film, poetry, the graphic novel, television and other media.

John Whatley is a retired lecturer from the Simon Fraser University Department of English and a retired associate member of the School of Criminology at Simon Fraser University. He is currently managing editor of Simon Fraser University Publications.