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Organizing Committee
Laura Álvarez Trigo
Paula Barba Guerrero
Michael Fuchs
Anna Marta Marini
Alejandro Rivero Vadillo
Assistant organizer
Dina Pedro
Contact: popmec.darkness@gmail.com
Official website: https://www.popmec.com/darkness-conference/
Twitter: @popmec_darkness
PoPMeC Association for US Popular Culture Studies
PopMeC is an academic association fostering the study of US popular media and culture. We are interested in the articulation of
the numerous and heterogeneous representations which have been constructing images of the US. Our work is focused on how
the US—their history, society, and diverse cultures—have been represented in popular media and cultural products. The peculi-
arities of the American society can indeed be traced through the analysis of popular culture and multimodal cultural expressions,
conveyed by means such as film, comics and graphic novels, TV and web series, videogames, new media, music, books, and
whatnot. We believe in approaching these texts—as well as their publics and reception—from an intersectional, multidisciplinary
standpoint and a diverse range of perspectives.
The fundamental aim of our association is to build a stimulating academic environment, promoting the sharing of knowledge,
experience, and ideas, across disciplines and thematic fields. We are particularly supportive of early career and precarious schol-
ars, promoting their work and creating safe spaces for any scholar.
Thanks to all the scholars in our program for making it possible!
Zoom meeting link for the whole duration of the conference:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83684395680?pwd=WGxCRGFIdURLS1k5cncrL0RKUEFCUT09
Meeting ID: 836 8439 5680
Passcode: 557982
Please, make sure you join all the Zoom spaces with your camera and mic off to avoid disrupting your col-
leagues’ presentations. Likewise, do not share your screen unless you are presenting.
From the main Zoom meeting space, you can access panels by clicking on Breakout Rooms (at the bottom of
the Zoom window).
You can switch between panels without disconnecting: simply click again on Breakout Rooms and join the other
panel.
At the end of each panel’s presentations there will be a Q&A session. You can ask your questions to participants
by either raising your hand (if you wish to appear on camera / microphone and ask the question yourself) or
writing it in the chat (so that the panel chair can read it for you).
KEYNOTES
WEDNESDAY 6 SEPTEMBER | 19:30 CEST
NdN Popular Culture: Musings on Cultural Appropriation and Representation
Kyle T. Mays is an Assistant Professor of African American Studies, American Indian
Studies, and History at UCLA. He is a transdisciplinary scholar of urban history and
studies, Afro-Indigenous Studies, and contemporary popular culture. He is the au-
thor of Hip Hop Beats, Indigenous Rhymes: Modernity and Hip Hop in Indigenous North
America (SUNY Press, 2018), An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States (Beacon
Press, 2021), and City of Dispossessions: Indigenous Peoples, African Americans, and
the Creation of Modern Detroit (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022).
FRIDAY 8 SEPTEMBER | 19:45 CEST
La Nuit américaine: Artificial Darkness and Race in Recent American Art
Noam M. Elcott is Associate Professor for the history of modern art and director of
the Center for Comparative Media at Columbia University. He is also an editor of the
journal Grey Room. Elcott is the author of the award-winning book Artificial Darkness:
An Obscure History of Modern Art and Media (University of Chicago Press, 2016; pa-
perback 2018), as well as essays on art, film, and media published in leading jour-
nals, anthologies, and exhibition catalogues. His current book projects are ArtTM: A
History of Modern Art, Authenticity, and Trademarks and Photography, Identity, Status:
August Sander’s People of the Twentieth Century.
PROGRAM AT A GLANCE
MONDAY 4
15:00–16:15 CEST
9:00–10:15 EDT
14:00–15:15 GMT
16:00–17:15 EEST
SESSION 1
Panel A
Dark Locations
Chair: Ester Díaz Morillo (UNED)
Jarrod DePrado
Sacred Heart University
The Devil’s Triangle: C.S. Lewis and Joy Davidman’s Literary Journey Through the
Darkness of Shadowlands
Alwena Queillé
Sorbonne Nouvelle
“I am a part of the darkness”: The Vulnerable Art of Darkness in Ottessa Moshfegh’s
Novels
Monica A. Chifor
University of Alba–Iulia
Symbolical Ambiguity of Darkness in The Hunger Games
Panel B
Noir and Cyberpunk Ambiguities
Chair: Anna Marta Marini (Universidad de Alcalá)
Nick Davie
University of Nottingham
Ambiguity and Uncertainty through Darkness in Twin Peaks: The Return
Maxime McKenna
JFK Institute | Freie Universität
Berlin
Conspiracies of Infrastructure: Locating the Darkness in Technicolor Noir
André Francisco
ULICES–ULisboa
“Against the powers of this dark world”: Paul Schrader’s Haunted Men in First Reformed
(2017) and The Card Counter (2021)
SESSION 2
Panel A
16:30–17:30 CEST
9:30–10:30 CDT
10:30–11:30 EDT
Public Discourse and Rhetoric
Chair: Michael Fuchs (University of Innsbruck)
Panteleimon Tsiokos
Western University
Darkness and/in the US Racial Imagination: Applications of Transitional Justice as
(C)Overt Light-Shedding Process
Jo Ann Oravec
University of Wisconsin
Black Boxes and Dark Webs: Characterizing Indeterminacy and Inexplicability
Panel B
16:30–18:00 CEST
17:30–19:00 GMT+3
20:00–21:30 IST
Black Male Voices
Chair: Elizabeth Abele (Gulf University)
Vanesa Lado-Pazos
Universidade de Santiago de
Compostela
Of Black Boys and Haunted Houses: Spectrality in Randall Kenan’s Short Fiction
Lisa Seuberth
Friedrich-Alexander-University
Erlangen-Nürnberg
Stylometry, Collocate Analysis, and/or Close Reading: Evaluating Quantitative
Approaches to Racialized Darkness and Light
Firuze Güzel
Ege University
“Why you steal all the darkness?” Understanding “The Other” and “The Self” in Hell of a
Book
Prakash Kona
Independent scholar
Racism and American Foreign Policy in the Third World in the Works of James Baldwin
(1924–1987)
PROGRAM AT A GLANCE
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 5
SESSION 3
Panel A
14:00–15:30 CEST
17:30–19:00 IST
21:00–22:30 JST
Superheroes, Supervillains, and Darkness
Chair: Elizabeth Abele (Gulf University)
Anuradha Dosad
Adamas University
Unveiling the Depths: Exploring Darkness, Imagination, and Queerness in Batman
Comics
Nao Tomabechi
Shujitsu University
Looking Fit for the Dark Side?: The Othering Visuals of Supervillains in Mainstream
Superhero Comics
Xelo Forés Rossell
Independent scholar
Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Black Panther: Taking Blackness out of Darkness in the
Superheroes Comics’ Imaginary
Zvonimir Prtenjača
University of Osijek
Black Adam’s White Gaze: “Darkening” the Arab On-Screen and Beyond
Panel B
14:00–15:00 CEST
13:00–14:15 GMT
17:30–18:45 IST
Dark Origins and Continuities
Chair: Carla Abella Rodríguez (Universidad de Salamanca)
Vaishali Sharma
University of Delhi
The Aesthetics of Darkness: Exploring the Intersection of Horror and Empowerment
Kamil Pysz
University of Bielsko-Biała
American Weird Fiction and Darkness in the Origin
Susannah Mandel
Independent scholar
“Some Monstrous Thread of Secret Continuity”: Darkness, Foreignness, and Envisioned
Threat to US Culture in Lovecraft’s “Horror at Red Hook” —and Beyond
15:45–16:45 CEST
14:45–15:45 GMT
18:45–19:45 PKT
SESSION 4
Panel A
Mike Flanagan’s Hauntings
Chair: Alejandro River Vadillo (Universidad de Alcalá)
María de los Ángeles Gil
Mansilla
Universidad de Extremadura
“Hill House stood holding darkness within”—How Flanagan Reads Jackson’s The
Haunting of Hill House
Pauline Trotry
Newcastle University
“Darkness, numbness and alone”: Death, Water and Women in Mike Flanagan’s
Haunting series
Panel B
Race, Ethnicity, and Poetry
Chair: Paula Barba Guerrero (Universidad de Salamanca)
Samreen Rashid
Kinnaird College for Women
Reclamation of Darkness: Racial Subversion in Langston Hughes’ Poetry
Martín Praga
Universidade da Coruña
[from]: Paratextuality as Didacticism in the Poetry of Craig Santos Perez
17:00–18:15 CEST
16:00–17:15 GMT
20:30–21:45 IST
SESSION 5
Panel A
Darkness and/in Music Lyrics
Chair: Ester Díaz Morillo (UNED)
PROGRAM AT A GLANCE
María Hernández Rodríguez
Universidad de Valladolid
“It’s a goddam blaze in the dark”: Exploring the Metaphorical and Rhetorical Use of
Darkness in Taylor Swift's Lyrics for Expressing Intimacy and Intensity
Kavya Mitchi D
PSG College of Arts and Science
Of Lyrics and Liminal Spaces: Analysing “Darkness” in Billie Eilish’s Songs and Music
Videos
Sai Shashanka Ravi
Charles University
Anguish, Despair and Pure, Unfiltered Rage: The Nu Metal Story
Panel B
Cinematic Margins
Chair: Alejandro River Vadillo (Universidad de Alcalá)
Elena Canido Muiño
Universidade da Coruña
Darkness on the Edge of Town: Exploring Tim Burton's Gothic Fairytale Film Edward
Scissorhands
Sara Álvarez Díaz
Universidad de Oviedo
Darkness in the Tales of Immigration of the Irish Community in America:
Intergenerational and Unresolved Trauma as Shown in Brooklyn
Anne-Marie Scholz
University of Hamburg /
University of Bremen
Color, Darkness, & Homoerotic Passion: Stephen Boyd’s (1977–1931) iconic
performance as “Messala” in Ben Hur (Wyler 1959)
WEDNESDAY 6
16:15–17:30 CEST
8:15–9:30 MDT
10:15–11:30 EDT
15:15–16:30 GMT
SESSION 6
Panel A
Horrific Darkness
Chair: Inna Häkkinen (University of Helsinki/IASK Köszeg)
Heather Roberts
Queen’s University
Seeing in the Dark: Mediating Horror Through Night Vision in Found Footage Horror
Films
Cody Parish
University of Colorado
Lifting the Veil: Marriage as Monster in Ready or Not and The Invitation
A. Rose Johnson
Falmouth University
Confederate Ghosts and Queer Black Vampires: Balancing Metaphor and Reality
Panel B
Noir and Cyberpunk Aesthetics
Chair: Alejandro River Vadillo (Universidad de Alcalá)
Elif Kaymaz
Middle East Technical University
Violated Spaces: Film Noir, Bernard Tschumi and Designing Darkness
José Duarte
ULICES–ULisboa
Darkness Becomes a Theme
Sergio Salvador
Universidad de Zaragoza
Dark and Darkness as Key Motifs in Cyberpunk
17:45–19:00 CEST
SESSION 7
Panel A
17:45–19:00 CEST
Candyman and its Horrors
Chair: Laura Álvarez Trigo (Universidad de Valladolid)
PROGRAM AT A GLANCE
THURSDAY 7
15:00–16:15 CEST
9:00–10:15 EDT
14:00–15:15 GMT
SESSION 8
Panel A
TV Series and the Dark Fantastic
Chair: Laura Álvarez Trigo (Universidad de Valladolid)
Adrián Castro Cortés
Universidad de Granada
A Corpus-Stylistic Approach to Darkness (and Light) in Modern Fantasy as Popular
Culture
Sara Tabuyo-Santaclara
Universidade de Vigo
“And so I Step up, into the Darkness within; or Else the Light”: Ustopian Ambivalence in
the Protest Movement Inspired by The Handmaid’s Tale
Haleigh Hayes
Indiana University of
Pennsylvania
“Perception is a tool pointed at both ends”: NBC’s Hannibal as Dark Commentary on
American Perceptions of Mental Health and the “Monsters” They Create
Panel B
Cormac McCarthy
Chair: Paula Barba Guerrero (Universidad de Salamanca)
Simona Leone
Universitat de València
The Analysis of the Darkness Elements and Their Meaning in Outer Dark by Cormac
McCarthy
Sergio García Jiménez
Universidad de Oviedo
Darkness in America’s Westward Expansion: The Brutality of Western Territorial
Appropriation as Depicted in Blood Meridian
James Stannard
Independent scholar
Destruction and Design: Judge Holden and Thomas Sutpen
Irena Jurković
Marko Lukić
University of Zadar
The Trialectics of Darkness: Urban Legends, Ideology, and New Media
Victoria Santamaría Ibor
Universidad de Zaragoza
The Intersections between Darkness and Abjection in Nia Da Costa’s Candyman
Marta Miquel-Baldellou
Universitat de Lleida
Bernard Rose’s Candyman Shifting from Africanist Other to African American Gothic
Archetype: Revisiting and Updating Tropes from Plantation Horror
Panel B
17:45–18:45 CEST
21:15–22:15 IST
Humor and Subversion
Chair: Elizabeth Abele (Gulf University)
Ninge Engelen
Radboud University Nijmegen
Louise Erdrich and Her Shadow: The Jacklight Effect
Usha SK Raghupathula
Andhra University
Laughing through Darkness: An Exploration of Jewish Humor and Existential Dread in
Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint
19:15–20:15 CEST
10:15–11:15 PDT
KEYNOTE | KYLE T. MAYS
NdN Popular Culture: Musings on Cultural Appropriation and Representation
Chair: Paula Barba Guerrero (Universidad de Salamanca)
PROGRAM AT A GLANCE
16:30–17:45 CEST
10:30–11:45 EDT
17:30–18:45 EEST
20:00–21:15 IST
SESSION 9
Panel A
Racial Violence and the Black Experience
Chair: Carla Abella Rodríguez (Universidad de Salamanca)
Simon Cooper
Independent scholar
“Darkness Necessary”: Ghetto Aesthetics in John Edgar Wideman’s The Lynchers
Caleb Doan
Grand Valley State University
Bringing Light into Darkness: Novel Experimentation in Martin Delany’s Blake
Stephanie Polsky
Northeastern University
The Dark Posthumanism of Frederick Douglass’s Racial Imagination
Panel B
War, Madness, and Parody in Literature
Chair: Laura Álvarez Trigo (Universidad de Valladolid)
Elisa Fernández Rodríguez
Universidad Autónoma de
Madrid
Dark Vietnam: Trauma Memories of War in Tim O’Brien
K. Rama Tejaswini
Andhra University
Embracing Darkness: The Dualistic Nature of Darkness in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's
Nest and its Reflection on Post-World War II American Society
Helena Maragou
The American College of Greece
Darkness and Parodic Subversion of History in Melville’s Israel Potter
18:00–19:30 CEST
9:00–10:30 PDT
12:00–13:30 EDT
19:00–20:30 EEST
SESSION 10
Panel A
Darkness in Art and Visual Expressions
Chair: Anna Marta Marini (Universidad de Alcalá)
Lidia Kniaź-Hunek
Maria Curie-Skłodowska
University
Darkness and Black Body Horror in Grace Jones’s “Corporate Cannibal”
Chantal Meng
Goldsmiths, University of London
/ The New School for Social
Research (NSSR)
BLACK & WHITE: Images Created with Light
Rachel Birke
UCLA
Aubrey Beardlsey’s Racial Grotesque: Poe & Baudelaire in Black-and-White
Gustavo Alberto Garcia Vaca
California State University,
Northridge
Black Sea: Drexciya in Comics and Contemporary Art
Panel B
Haunted Environment
Chair: Ester Díaz Morillo (UNED)
Sofia Duarte
University of Valencia
“And let the darkness set us free”: The Role of the Wilderness in Yellowjackets
Inna Häkkinen
University of Helsinki /
iASK Köszeg
Nuclear Darkness within the Imagined Future: Nuclear Winter, Videogaming and “Slow
Hope” Synchronized
Colin Bancroft
Independent scholar
Lovely, Dark and Deep: The EcoGothic in the Poetry of Robert Frost
Michal Peprník
Palacký University
Dark Forest Not so Dark
PROGRAM AT A GLANCE
FRIDAY 8
14:00–15:00 CEST
13:00–14:00 GMT
15:00–16:00 EEST
22:00–23:00 AEST
SESSION 11
Panel A
Female Darkness
Chair: Laura Álvarez Trigo (Universidad de Valladolid)
Claudia García-Pajín
Universidad de Oviedo
The Darkness of Female Anger: Murder as a Manifestation of Female Rage in
Contemporary American Literature
Amie Caddy
Independent scholar
Literal and Psychological Darkness in Djuna Barnes’s The Book of Repulsive Women
Panel B
True Crime and Dark Histories
Chair: Anna Marta Marini (Universidad de Alcalá)
Raluca Andreescu
University of Bucharest
“A Senseless Act of Children, Wandering Around in the Dark”: The Leopold and Loeb
Trial in American Popular Culture
Merran Williams
La Trobe University
Dark Tourism Success: How a Fake Australian Convict Ship Captured the American
imagination
15:15–16:30 CEST
9:15–10:30 EDT
18:45–20:00 IST
SESSION 12
Panel A
Literary Darkness and Race
Chair: Michael Fuchs (University of Innsbruck)
Smiley R. Bessy
Andhra University
The Abject Encounter: Unveiling the Darkness in To Kill a Mockingbird
Simona Porro
Università di Firenze
Blackness, Trauma, and Enchantment in Toni Morrison’s God Help the Child
Klara Szmańko
University of Opole
Representation of Whiteness and Blackness in Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman
Warrior
Panel B
Queer Bodies
Chair: Beatriz Hermida Ramos (Universidad de Salamanca)
Sara Soler i Arjona
Universitat de Barcelona
“In the dark, our facts lit us up and our acts pinned us down”: Darkness, Queerness,
and Temporal Dislocation in Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (2019)
Elena Cortés Farrujia
Universitat de Barcelona
Some (Living) Things Are Left in the Dark: Basements and Homes Where the Forgotten
Dwell in Queer Indigenous Literatures
Wesley Cornwell
Columbia University
Losing the Form, Feeling the Heat
16:45–18:00 CEST
9:45–11:00 CDT
15:45–17:00 GMT
17:45–19:00 EEST
SESSION 13
Panel A
Women and Religion
Chair: Laura Álvarez Trigo (Universidad de Valladolid)
PROGRAM AT A GLANCE
Ann Beebe
University of Texas at Tyler
“For there shall be no darksome night”: Anne Bradstreet’s Sunshine and Shadows
Rita Filanti
Independent scholar
“Out of the Darkness”: Oppositional Metaphors in Voltairine de Cleyre’s Anarchist
Poetry
Inês Tadeu
Universidade da Madeira
Things of Darkness by Salem’s Nocturnal Agents: The Inversionary Behaviour of the
Woman-as-Witch in Nineteenth-Century Mnemonic (Re)Imaginations of the Salem
Witch Hunt of 1692
Panel B
Frontiers of Human Knowledge
Chair: John NA Brown (Robert Gordon University)
Roxana Oltean
University of Bucharest
“Sullen Darkness,” “Luminous Glare.” Cartographic Imaginations in Edgar Allan Poe’s
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym
Isaac Aday
UT Dallas
“Darkness [threatens] the light of reason with what it [does] not know”: The
Gothic/Horror as Re-Enchantment
Michael Fuchs
University of Innsbruck
The Deep Dark Ocean: Monsters and the Limits of Human Knowledge
18:15–19:30 CEST
9:15–10:30 PDT
12:15–13:30 EDT
17:15–18:30 GMT
SESSION 14
Panel A
Surveillance and the Dark
Chair: Paula Barba Guerrero (Universidad de Salamanca)
Laura Álvarez Trigo
Universidad de Valladolid
We’re Never in the Dark: Raising Children Under Constant Surveillance in
Contemporary Sci-Fi Asian-American Fiction
Carla Abella Rodríguez
Universidad de Salamanca
Surveilled Bodies in Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s Friday Black
Sarah Cullen
Trinity College Dublin
“There ain’t no watchman to be drugged—now there ought to be a watchman”:
Curfews and Race in Nineteenth-Century American Literature
Panel B
Dark Romanticism
Chair: Alejandro River Vadillo (Universidad de Alcalá)
Kristina Chavez
La Sierra University
Exploring Darkness in the American Imagination: A Study of Washington Irving's "The
Legend of Sleepy Hollow"
Gamze Ar
Ege University
Shades of Sin: The Darkness of Puritan Society in The Scarlet Letter
Samuel Suárez Murias
Universidad de Oviedo
From the Gaols to the Stake: How Religious Intolerance Took the Quakers from
England to Dark Times in New England
19:45–20:45 CEST
13:45–14:45 EDT
KEYNOTE | NOAM M. ELCOTT: La Nuit américaine: Artificial Darkness and Race in Recent
American Art
Chair: Anna Marta Marini (Universidad de Alcalá)
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 4
1A | Dark Locations
Chair: Ester Díaz Morillo (UNED)
Jarrod DePrado | Sacred Heart University
The Devil’s Triangle: C.S. Lewis and Joy Davidman’s Literary Journey Through the Darkness of Shadowlands
This paper looks to examine the concept of “darkness” as existential doubt and unhappiness through the lens of the relationship
between writer C. S. Lewis and poet Joy Davidman, following her separation from author William Lindsay Gresham. While from
different socio-religious backgrounds, all three authors utilized religious exploration through writing to help them navigate
personal and marital issues to varied success. First, these journeys of self-discovery are reflected in their written accounts of
their conversions to Christianity: Lewis’ The Problem with Pain (nonfiction) and The Screwtape Letters (fiction); the written
account of Davidman and Gresham’s conversion to Christianity to attempt to save their marriage in “These Found the Way:
Thirteen Converts to Protestant Christianity”; and even Gresham’s skepticism of spirituality in the novel Nightmare Alley. These
and other works reveal the thought process of all three authors as they verbalize their relationship with faith to escape the
darkness of uncertainty. When Gresham becomes alcoholic, unfaithful, and abusive, Davidman’s marriage becomes the darkness
she has to escape. Her journey out of her bad relationship and into an intellectual and ultimately romantic one with Lewis is once
again preserved in written form: poetry and letters between the two. Both his marriage to the divorced Davidman and her death
from cancer at 45 challenge Lewis’ faith directly. In A Grief Observed, he verbalizes his struggle with grief but does not dissolve
into darkness. Gresham, on the other hand, takes his own life after a terminal cancer diagnosis. As such, Lewis and Davidson’s
legacies are solidified in fictional interpretations, most notably William Nicholson’s Shadowlands or Mark St. German’s Freud's
Last Session, where their perseverance through the darkness of cyclical challenges to their faith is transformed into a source of
inspiration for others.
Alwena Queillé | Sorbonne Nouvelle
“I am a part of the darkness”: The Vulnerable Art of Darkness in Ottessa Moshfegh’s Novels
Oscillating between disgust and awakening, Ottessa Moshfegh’s fiction explores the territories of darkness, both physical and
metaphysical, in fables of ordinary characters whose sense of belonging is in crisis. Vesta, the protagonist of Death in Her Hands,
finds herself “a part of the darkness,” an existential position shared by many Moshfeghian characters. Her novels appear as
vestibules, thresholds between obscurity and clarity and investigate murky territories: Eileen (2015) and Death in Hands (2020)
respectively revisit noir and mystery fictions; My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018) could be regarded as a discomforting huis clos
which depicts the unnamed protagonist’s existential crisis, punctuated by blackouts, and whose only solution seems to reside in
the realm of hazy sleep. Lapvona (2022), written during the recent pandemic period of confinement and isolation, is set in a feudal
village where famine, death and spiritual crisis are part of the narrative’s main concerns, while darkness ceaselessly envelops the
whole community. In Moshfegh’s novels, darkness is associated with verbs such as “absorb by,” “adjust to,” “drift down into,”
“get lost in,” or with the adjectives “gleaming” and “illuminating.” Therefore, darkness implies a movement of contradictory forces
that rely on the potential of ambivalence. In her fiction, Moshfegh seems to perceive “the beam of darkness” coming from her
time, a capacity that Giorgio Agamben associates with the contemporary. The author conjures absurdity and humor in a fiction
that is concerned with the contemplation of death, discomfort, abuse, purposelessness, or alienation. Her characters are free to
sink into the dark meanders of their psyche, which leads to the exploration of liminal spaces, liminality being often associated
with death, invisibility, wilderness, or darkness (Turner, 1969). They become the representation of “ordinary monsters”
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 4
(Livingstone, 2017): encountering them engages the consideration of the reader and can eventually question the vulnerability of
existence and the relation between self and other (Shildrick, 2002) in a fiction of obliqueness that defies expectations.
Monica A Chifor | University of Alba–Iulia
Symbolical Ambiguity of Darkness in The Hunger Games
In Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games trilogy, darkness plays a significant role throughout the story, highlighting various themes
and evoking specific emotions. This paper explores the portrayal of darkness and its impact on the narrative. The story begins
with the annual reaping, a dark and uncertain event that selects two tributes from each district to participate in the Hunger Games.
The reaping symbolizes the looming darkness and grim fate that await the chosen tributes. During the Games, the tributes enter
a treacherous and metaphorically dark arena filled with traps and challenges. They must navigate through the literal and
metaphorical darkness as they fight for survival. The Capitol’s oppressive regime casts a figurative darkness over the districts,
exercising complete control and enforcing a strict divide between opulence and poverty. The capitol’s power is maintained through
fear and manipulation. The loss of innocence and the descent into darkness are recurring themes in the trilogy. The tributes are
forced to kill each other, succumbing to their darker instincts to survive. As the story continues, a spirit of rebellion emerges
among the districts, fueled by the injustices and darkness perpetuated by the Capitol. The rebellion represents hope amidst
darkness, as the districts strive to overthrow the oppressive regime. The imagery of darkness in The Hunger Games conveys the
oppressive nature of the Capitol, the challenges faced by the characters, and the underlying themes of survival, sacrifice, and the
fight against injustice. It adds depth and intensity to the story, creating a dystopian world that resonates with readers.
1B | Noir Ambiguities
Chair: Anna Marta Marini (Universidad de Alcalá)
Nick Davie | University of Nottingham
Ambiguity and Uncertainty through Darkness in Twin Peaks: The Return
David Lynch's 2017 series Twin Peaks: The Return represents a unique case study in the subversion of traditional storytelling
techniques through the use of light and darkness. This paper draws upon the theories of David Bordwell and Bruce Block to
examine the complex role of darkness in the show, and its implications for narrative structure and thematic exploration. By
applying the framework Bordwell’s Art Cinema Narration (Bordwell, 1985), this paper argues that Twin Peaks: The Return can be
understood as a prime example of arthouse cinema in a televisual format. The arthouse genre is characterized by its rejection of
conventional narrative structures and its embrace of ambiguity and open-endedness. In particular, the show's use of darkness
serves to disrupt traditional narrative expectations, creating a sense of disorientation and uncertainty. Furthermore, the paper
will apply Bruce Block's The Visual Story framework (Block, 2020) to analyse the show's use of lighting and colour, specifically in
relation to the use of darkness. The Visual Components Framework is a tool for analysing the visual elements of film and television
and their impact on storytelling and audience perception. Through the framework, this paper will examine how Lynch's use of
darkness contributes to the show's visual aesthetic and enhances its thematic exploration.
The paper analyses how Lynch uses darkness and shadows to create ambiguity and uncertainty in key scenes, challenging
viewers' expectations of narrative clarity and exploring deeper themes such as reality and consciousness. Darkness further serves
as a metaphor for traumatic memory by obscuring characters and scenes. This aligns with Block's visual design framework,
emphasizing the use of lighting and shadow to convey emotion. Overall, the paper demonstrates how Twin Peaks: The Return
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 4
employs darkness to subvert traditional storytelling tropes, creating an atmosphere that challenges viewers to engage with
complex themes in unexpected ways.
Maxime McKenna | JFK Institute–Freie Universität Berlin
Conspiracies of Infrastructure: Locating the Darkness in Technicolor Noir
To what extent does the descriptor noir apply to the technicolor postmodern hardboiled detective cinema of the ’70s and ’80s? In
the classic film noir of the ’30s-’50s, an expressive black-and-white contrast visualized an interest in exposing the underbellies,
subterfuges and other dark spaces lurking within, behind, and beneath mainstream American society. Meanwhile, the neo-noir
revival launched in the early seventies relishes in confronting the viewer with the sunshine, palm trees, and vividly painted villas
one finds in the preeminent city of American noir, Los Angeles. This short presentation takes an infrastructural and ecocritical
approach to locating the darkness in technicolor noir. In particular, I set out to test Timothy Morton’s claim that “[t]he darkness
of ecological awareness is the darkness of noir […]” Two films in particular, Chinatown (1974) and Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988),
explicitly associate classic noir’s affective darkness with an aesthetics of ecological awareness. Each is a full-color pastiche of the
detective subgenre of noir, and each centers on a fictional conspiracy involving a major infrastructure project that would come to
define the Southern California good life in the postwar period—waterworks and freeways, respectively. By “visually dragging
infrastructure out into the open,” these movies offer a visual vocabulary for representing the entwined, systemic, and massively
distributed problems of environmental desecration, municipal corruption, and privatization. Neo-noir cinema, I argue, provides a
compelling case study for theorizing the cleavage of darkness as an affect from darkness as an aesthetic in our present moment
of social and environmental crisis.
André Francisco | ULICES / ULisboa
“Against the powers of this dark world”: Paul Schrader’s Haunted Men in First Reformed (2017) and The Card
Counter (2021)
Tormented men are a recurring figure in Paul Schrader's cinematography, both as a writer and as a director. Consider, for instance,
the protagonists of Taxi Driver (1976), Hardcore (1979) or Light Sleeper (1992). The films portray alienated men who turn to crime
or violence as an outlet for their frustrations. This troubled figure is again central in two of his most recent works, First Reformed
(2017) and The Card Counter (2021). In the first film, a pastor with a faith crisis turns to alcohol to deal with the traumatic death
of his son in the Iraq war. His convictions are further challenged when confronted with the beliefs of a radical environmentalist.
In the second, a former military officer who tortured prisoners at Abu Ghraib turned poker player is haunted by the violence and
ghosts of his past decisions. In both films, Schrader makes what Peter Bradshaw (2021) refers to as films about: "obsessive
masculinity, fragile hope and potent despair competing for dominance in the heart of a man" in a world that is presented as dark
and decaying.
Considering this, the purpose of this paper is to analyze how the film thematically explores the symbolic / metaphorical meaning
of darkness in relation to the tormented protagonists. Both are overwhelmed by disturbing visions: in First Reformed, a society on
the verge of collapse due to the climate crisis, and in The Card Counter, the torture and abuse of prisoners. Consequently, the only
form of liberation is found by moving into darkness, in other words, violence. Furthermore, we aim to look at how Schrader,
through the transcendental style, uses a certain kind of cinematography to emphasize these themes.
2A | Public Discourse and Rhetorics
Chair: Michael Fuchs (University of Innsbruck)
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 4
Panteleimon Tsiokos | Western University
Darkness and/in the US Racial Imagination: Applications of Transitional Justice as (C)overt Light-Shedding
Process
When reflecting upon transitional justice applications across the globe most thinkers would be hard-pressed to acknowledge
transitions in settled, “just,” democracies of the Global North. The US, assuming a de facto role as global peacebuilding power,
has a long history of promoting human rights and democracy to overseas transitioning contexts, nonetheless this international
moral exceptionalism seems compromised in the US domestic affairs condoning the festering of racial “darkness” within the
American society. In the last few decades, the US has faced increased pressure demanding long-standing racial injustices to be
met. Transitional justice methodology, such as monetary reparations, truth commissions, or official apologies, is recently being
attempted domestically to address settler colonial harm such as in the cases of Indigenous and African American citizens as well
as discriminatory immigration practices relying on a pseudoscientific racial imaginary.
This paper will explore this very state of internal “darkness” relating to the conceptualization of race in the USA, its many
entailments, and recent attempts to repair past racial harm. In more detail, I will begin by arguing that the “transition” imbedded
in the American political culture, both existent and ongoing, has been employed as an excuse for diachronic large-scale human
rights violations evinced in US racist policies. I will, then, explore human rights violations such as slavery, segregation,
miscegenation, disenfranchisement, frontier expansion and land theft, as well as immigration laws as manifestations of dark,
racial imagination which aimed to systemically perpetuate white supremacy, racial othering, and normalize large-scale societal
exclusion of large parts of the American population. Lastly, my paper will attempt to present and critique US employed transitional
justice mechanisms as light-shedding practices into the darkness of US history while venture an explanation of why the US
abstains from acknowledging employed mechanisms as active processes of transitional justice.
Jo Ann Oravec | University of Wisconsin
Black Boxes and Dark Webs: Characterizing Indeterminacy and Inexplicability
This paper critically analyzes the ways that darkness is used in explanatory and rhetorical contexts when describing high tech
systems. For example, darkness has been used to characterize systems that have a level of indeterminacy in their operations,
including the notions of “black boxes” as well as the “dark web” (Ashby, 1961). The “dark side” of technologies has also become
a popular way of framing technical issues that have ethical and criminal dimensions (Oravec, 2022). The notion of the “black box”
has a long history in thinking about systems (Glanville 1982). Assertions by supposed experts about the complexity involved in
the technologies can add rhetorical dimensions to the “black” characterization. Ashby (1961) and some other researchers who
have developed black box notions have projected that black boxes are widespread phenomena rather than restricted or isolated
entities, with their numbers and varieties increasing with expansions in the societal utilization of technical systems. Developers
and implementers may provide the rationale that the systems are too intricate to be understood by certain audiences; in some
recent cases, “machine learning” algorithms and other artificial intelligence (AI) approaches have been considered too complex
for explanation to nontechnical audiences (Innerarity, 2021; Oravec, 2018). In another use of darkness in technical contexts, the
“dark web” is a relatively small portion of the Internet that has been characterized as a “sanctuary for cybercriminals and political
dissidents alike” (Chertoff, 2017, p. 27). Darkness has linkages with the opacity of some of the operations of dark web entities
as well as specific ethical and legal tangents (Mirea, Wang, & Jung, 2019).
As the complexities of many high-tech approaches increases, the inexplicability and thus lack of transparency of their operations
is also increasing, along with usages of “darkness” in their characterizations. The paper outlines some of the negative dimensions
of the emerging darkness imageries as they are utilized to excuse or shield problematic engineering endeavors. The paper draws
from systems theory and engineering literatures as well as provides linkages to relevant science fiction productions.
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 4
2B | Black Male Authors
Chair: Elizabeth Abele (Gulf University)
Vanesa Lado-Pazos | Universidade de Santiago de Compostela
Of Black Boys and Haunted Houses: Spectrality in Randall Kenan’s Short Fiction
Since the so-called spectral turn of the 1990s, the presence of ghosts in American literature, and more specifically, in the fiction
of ethnic minorities has occupied a central place in critical discussions. Closely connected to the subversive potential of the gothic
and magic realist fiction in which it is inscribed, this new understanding of the ghost as a conceptual metaphor transcends the
role of these figures as plot devices, to become an analytical tool of inquiry. Adopting the theoretical framework of spectrality
studies, this paper seeks to explore the function of the ghost in two short stories by African American author Randall Kenan: “Tell
Me, Tell Me” (1992) and “Resurrection Hardware, or Lard & Promises” (2018). Set in North Carolina, the narratives engage with
the historical memory of the region from two antithetical viewpoints. While the former is focalized through the perspective of the
white, middle-aged widow of a racist judge who is forced to reckon with the silences of her past, the latter revolves around a
black gay man who encounters a mysterious guest upon returning to his birthplace to set the foundations for a home. The
comparative analysis of these two stories aims to discuss haunting as a process developed in connection to the traumatic
oppression historically suffered by the black community in the U.S., and to focus on the condition of being haunted as an ethical
standpoint defined by personal responsibility and political awareness which presence or absence can be traced in the response
of each protagonist towards the spectral object. Furthermore, the subject position occupied by these two characters sheds light
on the multiplicity of anti-black violences which engenders a process of historical recuperation, revision and rewriting. These
stories, therefore, render an encounter with a literal and metaphorical darkness in which the ghost comes to embody the
categories of ontological and racial Otherness.
Lisa Seuberth | Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg
Stylometry Collocate Analysis, and/or Close Reading: Evaluating Quantitative Approaches to Racialized
Darkness and Light
As Toni Morrison shows in her publication Playing in the Dark, the association of darkness with danger and of light with hope in
many canonical US American novels reflects and has contributed to a racial imagination that connects blackness to evil and
whiteness to innocence – a discursive tradition Morrison calls ‘American Africanism.’ Racially literate novels of the 21st century
have tried to transcode this symbolically perpetuated racial hierarchy, by deconstructing or reversing the black-white binary in
their use of color symbolism. Paul Beatty’s award-winning novel The Sellout offers an unprecedented strategy to critically engage
with this binary. Rather than refuting the black-white separatism that American Africanism maintains, the social satire embraces
the reproduction of the racialized hierarchy between blackness and whiteness and appropriates it to promote black agency
instead of white superiority. Through a racially literate protagonist reintroducing slavery and segregation in his hometown and
offering racialized readings of shades in plants, a hierarchy between blackness and whiteness is upheld on story level but
simultaneously refuted on discourse level. This paper uses a combination of computational stylometry, collocate analysis, and
close reading to illustrate this specific use of darkness and light, as well as of blackness and whiteness in The Sellout compared to
a selection of other award-winning 21-st century novels. The three methods are critically evaluated and contrasted to each other
to discuss the effectiveness of computational analysis for the examination of racially coded color symbolism as Morrison
proposes it.
Firuze Güzel | Ege University
“Why you steal all the darkness?” Understanding “The Other” and “The Self” in Hell of a Book
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 4
Jason Mott’s Hell of a Book (2021), which became the 2021 National Book Award Winner, narrates the stories of two characters,
a black author on a book tour and a black kid called “Soot” who tries to be Unseen. The book touches upon several compelling
issues about racism, police violence, and the hardships of being black in America. However, when the daydreamer narrator with
overactive imagination begins interacting with a hallucinatory ten-year-old boy, The Kid, the narrative gains another layer of
meaning and interpretation. The “Black condition” that the novel refers to lays out the otherization and discrimination of African-
American people not only with the stories of the two main characters but also with the desire of The Kid to be seen, particularly
by the narrator. The “face-to-face” encounter between the author and the Kid forces him to confront with the Kid’s alterity; his
“impossibly dark-skin” nature creates a feeling of empathy within the narrator, particularly trying to imagine how it would be like
him as a child. As a reference and example to this question, Soot, on the other hand, experiences his own “face-to-face” encounter
with a white boy of his age on the school bus, yet his “impossibly dark-skin” does not create the same kind of empathy. On the
contrary, the white boy gives him the nickname “Soot” and asks him why he stole all the darkness. Such encounters with “the
other,” whether it is within the same or different racial descents, create reference points for the characters in terms of defining
their own identity and responsibility towards “the other” while at the same time questioning why some people choose to refuse
this responsibility. In this respect, this study aims to interpret Mott’s powerful novel Hell of a Book by examining the interaction
of “the other” and “the self,” particularly referring to the philosophy of Levinas, and to argue how the multiplicity of otherness
creates a net of responsibilities both on the individual and social levels in the US.
Prakash Kona
Racism and American Foreign Policy in the Third World in the Works of James Baldwin (1924–1987)
Some of James Baldwin’s insights into the nature of the race problem in the US are connected to how he also perceived the
destructive role of colonialism. Baldwin could see that racism at home translated into violence abroad. In the case of Europe, the
non-white colonized people were in their own countries. The average European did not have to confront the victims of colonial
oppression on a daily basis. In the case of the US, the black person was there for whites to encounter each and every day of their
lives. The connection between slavery and colonialism is something Baldwin intuitively figured out based on his experience of
racial discrimination. For Baldwin, the underlying principle, behind the racism and the dark history of America’s foreign policy in
the third world, was one and the same: economic exploitation and a refusal to recognize the humanity of the other person. The
price however is a collective one; while victims of discrimination, whether of racism or colonialism, suffered for being who they
were, the victimizers paid the price for the cruelty and double standards in their personal lives. In an interview to Paul S. Cowan,
Baldwin said, “No matter what the country has done to me, it has done something much worse to itself. By continuing to avoid
the reality of the black man, it has lost its grip on reality altogether” (1978). Likewise, in the non-western context, Baldwin
observes, “the principle illustrates the dilemma of all the civilizing, or colonizing powers…The greater the public power, the greater
the private, inadmissible despair…” (Collected Essays 541). My paper examines Baldwin’s understanding of racism in the context
of America’s foreign policy and its disastrous results in the third world.
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 5
3A | Superheroes, Supervillains, and Darkness
Chair: Elizabeth Abele (Gulf University)
Anuradha Dosad | Adamas University
Unveiling the Depths: Exploring Darkness, Imagination, and Queerness in Batman Comics
This paper explores the theme of darkness, imagination, and queerness in the context of Batman comics. The character of
Batman, created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger, has become an iconic figure in popular culture, known for his brooding nature,
complex psychology, and richly imaginative world. This abstract examines how the representation of darkness, imagination, and
queerness in Batman comics has evolved over time, reflecting cultural shifts and providing a platform for exploring diverse
identities. The early Batman comics, such as "Detective Comics #27" (1939), presented a dark and mysterious Gotham City,
highlighting Batman's role as a nocturnal vigilante. This darkness served as a backdrop for Batman's imaginative adventures,
allowing readers to escape into a world of crime-fighting and heroism. While queerness was not explicitly explored during this
era, Batman's close relationship with his ward, Robin, and the homoerotic undertones in their interactions have been analyzed by
scholars (Sedgwick, 1991). In the 1950s and 1960s, the comics underwent a shift toward a lighter and more campy tone, as seen
in "Batman #181" (1966) where the character of Batwoman was introduced. However, it wasn't until the 1980s that darkness
and complexity were reintroduced in works like "Batman: The Dark Knight Returns" (1986) by Frank Miller. This graphic novel
explored Batman's psychological struggles and showcased a more nuanced portrayal of darkness and the use of imagination as
a coping mechanism. Queerness began to be addressed more overtly in Batman comics in the late 20th century. In "Batman: A
Death in the Family" (1988-1989) by Jim Starlin and Marv Wolfman, the character of the Joker kidnaps and tortures Jason Todd,
the second Robin. This storyline has been interpreted as an allegory for queer trauma, drawing attention to the vulnerability and
violence faced by marginalized communities (Worley, 2007). In recent years, the representation of queerness has become more
explicit in Batman comics. The character of Batwoman, reintroduced in "52 #7" (2006), has been portrayed as a lesbian superhero,
providing visibility and representation for LGBTQ+ readers. Furthermore, the graphic novel "Batman: White Knight" (2017-2018)
by Sean Murphy explored the complex relationship between Batman and the Joker, presenting a queered interpretation of their
dynamic (Brenner, 2019).
In conclusion, the Batman comics have evolved over time, delving into themes of darkness, imagination, and queerness. From the
early days of Batman's adventures, the exploration of these themes has mirrored societal shifts, providing a platform for
escapism, psychological introspection, and representation of diverse identities. The inclusion of queerness in Batman comics has
contributed to a more inclusive and nuanced portrayal of characters, further diversifying the superhero genre.
Nao Tomabechi | Shujitsu University
Looking Fit for the Dark Side?: The Othering Visuals of Supervillains in Mainstream Superhero Comics
As a primarily visual medium, mainstream superhero comics rely greatly on the art to unfold their narratives. Yet the visuals do
more than assist the development of the storytelling. In fact, the figures in superhero comics, with their memorable character
designs, communicate to readers messages of ideals and beliefs. Their bodies thus become a place where the character’s morality
is engraved; to put it simply, the good looks good, and the bad looks bad. The superheroes, who are generally understood as
representing the light, hope, and heroism, are usually drawn (though with exaggeration) attractively. In contrast, the supervillains,
in order to connote visually their unmistakably evil and dark natures, are commonly rendered ugly. Their bodies are especially
designed to signify a displacement in society, or perhaps something even monstrous, the Other. Supervillains are seen to belong
to the dark side not only because they are morally inferior, but also because their ugliness physically indicates Otherness.
What is interesting is that the superhero genre seems to generally agree as to what kinds of Otherness can be incorporated
physically most successfully to suggest the villains’ depraved dark souls: disability and queerness. This corresponds with the
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hegemonic tendency of society to Other identities that do not meet its normative standards, or more specifically, able-bodiedness
and heteronormativity. But if supervillainy welcomes different types and forms of identities, values, and bodies displaced by
hegemonic standards, in superhero comics, it may be then that it is the dark side that actually allows spaces for those who have
been marginalized for possessing identities and bodies rejected as the Other. Furthermore, especially in the superhero genre,
where the villains have a stardom-status next to the heroes, it may exactly be their darkness that can challenge normative
boundaries of bodies.
Xelo Forés Rossell
Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Black Panther: Taking Blackness out of Darkness in the Superheroes Comics’ Imaginary
In 2016, the acclaimed African-American writer Ta-Nehisi Coates became the author of the script for Marvel´s comic Black Panther
with a series of episodes titled “A Nation Under Our Feet”. This would be the origin for the box-office hit film version and its
sequel, Black Panther and Wakanda Forever. Black Panther was created in the 1960´s as a minor character for Marvel comics,
inspired by the Pan-African movement and the fight for the civil rights. Finally, the success of the comic´s revision by Coates has
greatly contributed to take blackness out of darkness in the superheroes genre´s imaginary. Coates´ narrative background and
his poetic style have brought to the superhero complexity and literary density, while loading of political charge the whole serial
comic. King T´Challa is the young heir of the Black Panther dynasty to the throne of Wakanda. This afrofuturistic kingdom is a rich
and technologically advanced nation in the heart of Africa, which defies the colonial vision of the continent as wild and primitive.
The menaces from foreign countries and inner conspirators who want to dethrone the King and the actions the monarch has to
take in order to protect the nation will bring a deep conflict between the two sides of his personality: the king and the hero. That
complex personality, which debates about the responsibilities and the consequences of his decisions over the kingdom, shows
T´Challa as a Hamletian character full of Shakespearean shades. Thus, Coates has transformed Black Panther into a piece of
popular culture which blends Shakespearean references with African culture to create a superhero for the times of Black Lives
Matter. The analysis of both aspects literary and aesthetic will show how Coates´ revision has definitely contributed to make
Black Panther an icon of blackness and black culture activism for the 21st century.
Zvonimir Prtenjača | University of Osijek
Black Adam’s White Gaze: “Darkening” the Arab On-Screen and Beyond
Ever since their rapid development in the 1920s, Hollywood’s silver screens have been reducing the Arab people and their native
countries to a series of unjustified discriminatory images, locking them away in the public thought as something factual and
universally accepted. This paper argues that Black Adam (2022), the 11th cinematic entry in the DC Extended Universe, is implicit
in such a project of ‘darkening’ the Arabs and their homelands through a White gaze that Dina AlAwadhi, following Frantz Fanon,
Edward Said, and Ella Shohat, reworks into what she terms “the Occidental gaze” (2021). Under this fixed look, Black Adam is both
visually and textually “converted into a colonial fantasy” which positions its audience as “the Occident” (the West) gazing at and
objectifying “the oriental body” (AlAwadhi 2021) (the East). The titular superhero film initially achieves this by utilizing xenophobic
color grading clichés, such as the yellow and desaturating filters, with the aim to aesthetically impose the “binary oppositions of
good vs. evil, white vs. black, beauty vs. ugliness” (AlAwadhi 2021) between its Western and colonial landscapes, diegetically
situated in the United States and Kahndaq. The film then proceeds to narratively center its superheroic characters (the Justice
Society) as Westernized White saviors, “a hegemonic and propagandic tool in a highly Manichean system” wherein the “non-
White,” Kahndaqi characters (Adrianna and Amon Tomaz, Karim, Ishmael Gregor) and, by proxy, their performers of Arab descent,
become “othered: stereotypical and tokenistic, exotified, and even villainized” (AlAwadhi 2021). The paper concludes that Black
Adam ultimately perpetuates “a self/other dialectic” (AlAwadhi 2021) which leaves the Arab people divorced from positions of
agency and their homes from credible depictions.
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 5
3B | Dark Origins and Continuities
Chair: Carla Abella Rodríguez (Universidad de Salamanca)
Vaishali Sharma | University of Delhi
The Aesthetics of Darkness: Exploring the Intersection of Horror and Empowerment
This paper explores the intersection of horror and empowerment in the context of literal and figurative darkness. It considers how
horror can be harnessed to scare and subvert oppressive power structures and promote empowerment among marginalized
communities. Through close readings of literary and cinematic works, the paper argues that the aesthetics of the horror genre—
its use of darkness, its engagement with the uncanny, and its focus on bodily violations—can produce complex and ambivalent
effects, simultaneously inducing fear and creating opportunities for empowerment. Taking its cue from feminist horror and
related critical movements, this paper interrogates horror's "dark" side, which is often seen as transgressive and resistant but
can also reproduce or reinforce dominant ideologies. It examines the aesthetic qualities of horror that allow it to embody and
challenge oppressive forces, with specific attention to the paradoxical, double-edged nature of darkness as a source of horror,
violence and power, as well as its potential for safety and shelter. In discussing critical works of literature and cinema, ranging
from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to contemporary Gothic horror films such as The Babadook, Raw, and Get Out, the paper
highlights how horror can provide a space for resistance and solidarity both by exposing and critiquing oppressive structures and
by creating areas of solidarity and empowerment. By analyzing the aesthetics of darkness in these works, this paper elucidates
how horror can promote an ethic of resilience and resistance rooted in both the aesthetic and the political dimensions of darkness.
Kamil Pysz | University of Bielsko-Biała
American Weird Fiction and Darkness in the Origin
Darkness is a prevalent theme in American weird fiction and serves various purposes – it can fill the antagonistic role synonymous
with the monstrous or serve as a force obstructing the mysterious nature of the world – dark corners of the Earth, the void of
outer space or the distant past covered in a dark veil of mystery and unknown. However, since the genre is only loosely defined,
it depicts darkness in various diverse ways. Two weird tales: The Repairer of Reputations by Robert W. Chambers and The Case
of Charles Dexter Ward by H.P. Lovecraft can serve as a great example of this phenomenon. Both stories contain a theme of a
dark past affecting their central characters. However, whereas Chambers’ story utilizes darkness as an internal force in an
ambiguous tale told by an unreliable narrator, Lovecraft’s novella presents darkness as an external and undeniably real force. The
presentation is divided into three parts: an outline of the weird fiction genre and how it typically uses darkness, a brief overview
of the two authors, and an analysis of the two texts. The conclusion highlights not only how the concepts of darkness and past
(or: origin) changed in American weird fiction over the years but also illustrates the transition the genre went through from a dark
psychological narrative akin to the works of Edgar Allan Poe to a supernatural-centred tale defined by Lovecraft.
Susannah Mandel
“Some Monstrous Thread of Secret Continuity”: Darkness, Foreignness, and Envisioned Threat to U.S.
Culture in Lovecraft’s “Horror at Red Hook”—and Beyond
As aficionados of Anglophone weird fiction know, H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) has been undergoing a renaissance. Fans’
enthusiasm has been tempered by contemporary attention to Lovecraft’s racism, anti-miscegenationism (obsession with “race
mixing”), and supremacist framing of race and culture as hierarchies in which, “naturally,” white Europeans and Americans stood
at the top. “The Horror at Red Hook” (1927), set in Brooklyn and a product of Lovecraft’s New York years, unabashedly equates
people of “darker” ethnicities—"Syrian, Spanish, Italian, and negro elements [sic]”—with dirt, sin, and decay. “Hybrid squalor,”
“spiritual putrescence,” and “the blasphemies of an hundred languages [sic]” derogate this multiethnic neighborhood, while
“swarthy, sin-pitted faces” link dark complexion with moral depravity. Within it, I find the ways Lovecraft signals his fear and
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distaste discursively interesting—and suggestively inconsistent. Apparently unconsciously, he conflates related but distinct ideas
and thus provokes questions: Is the source of Lovecraft’s antipathy the locals’ “swarth[iness]” itself, or their “foreign”
strangeness? When he refers to “decay,” are we to understand that he finds this to be inherent in immigrants’ physical bodies;
their imported cultures; or their too-near “hybridity” with white neighbors? Surely Lovecraft—and Americans more broadly—
don’t view these distinct concepts as identical? Rooting my exploration in “Red Hook’s” text, I pick through Lovecraft’s tangled
conflation of these concepts, and show how, in recognizable if less direct forms, it resonates disturbingly with similar discourse
notes—i.e., cognate derogatory, conflative image-and-concept bundling—common in American popular writing before
Lovecraft’s time; in the work of other writers contemporary with his career; and, unnervingly enough, in the contemporary popular
and political discourse heard in the U.S. today.
4A | Mike Flanagan’s Hauntings
Chair: Alejandro River Vadillo (Universidad de Alcalá)
María de los Ángeles Gil Mansilla | Universidad de Extremadura
“Hill House stood holding darkness within” – How Flanagan reads Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House
The adaptation of classic literature to the visual medium of television provides a unique opportunity for creative exploration and
reimagining. This paper analyses Mike Flanagan’s homonymous adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, with a
particular focus on the portrayal and use of darkness as a thematic and visual element, and its use on atmospheric descriptions,
ambiguity, and psychological manipulation. The paper focuses on the changes made by the director to portray Hill House’s
atmosphere of mystery and unease and how Flanagan (re)interprets the story and expands it, leveraging the episodic format to
delve deeper into darkness and its impact on the characters’ psychological states. Furthermore, the research investigates the
thematic and symbolic significance of darkness in both the novel and the series, it explores darkness as a metaphor for hidden
truths, and repressed emotions. The use of unseen ghosts in the series enhances the perception of darkness, shaping the
narrative and contributing significantly to the emotional impact of the adaptation. By juxtaposing Shirley Jackson’s novel and the
Netflix’s series adaptation (2018), this research provides a comprehensive analysis of darkness in The Haunting of Hill House. The
comparative analysis conducted in the presentation explores the similarities and differences in how darkness is portrayed and its
impact on the narrative and audience experience. Through an exploration of narrative techniques, visual aesthetics, thematic
exploration, and comparison of textual descriptions and visual representations, this study contributes to a deeper understanding
of how darkness can be effectively employed across different mediums to create a haunting and immersive storytelling
experience.
Pauline Trotry | Newcastle University
“Darkness, numbness and alone”: Death, Water and Women in Mike Flanagan’s Haunting Series
Mike Flanagan’s The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor constitute exemplary instances of darkness in horror,
through the literal darkness of the spaces or the metaphorical darkness of the antagonists. This paper focuses on a specific trope
associated with darkness and death in Mike Flanagan’s imagination, namely, water. Mentioned in Hill House when Theo explains
that, after touching her sister, she started “floating in this ocean of nothing” wondering “if this is what death is, just out there in
the darkness, just darkness and numbness and alone” (episode 8). This vision of death is literalised in Bly Manor, where the
manor’s lake constitutes a body of dark water in which characters, and especially women, find their death. Using Bachelard’s
psychoanalytical concept of “the death of water” defined in L’Eau et les Rêves as a still, dark and trouble(d) water, this paper argues
that water in Flanagan’s imagination is a place for female death and loss. This conception thus calls for the motif of the woman
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in the substance-space, a dark underwater space, similar to the Deleuzian any-space-whatever developed in Cinema 1, which
eliminates notions of time and space, of here and there, of touch and gravity, and becomes a non-space, where the body and time
exist in suspension in this “ocean of nothing.” While dark water relates to notions of polluted waters often treated in eco-horror
studies, an area which has gained attention over the last decade, the substance-space more specifically engulfs women defying
the sexual or social expectations of a genre traditionally focused on white, heteronormative and/or upper-class characters. This
paper thus demonstrates that dark water comes for insurgent women trying (and failing) to reach toward a bright future.
4B | Race, Ethnicity, and Poetry
Chair: Paula Barba Guerrero (Universidad de Salamanca)
Samreen Rashid | Kinnaird College for Women
Reclamation of Darkness: Racial Subversion in Langston Hughes’ Poetry
Langston Hughes’ poetry is influenced by the memories of racial trauma and cultural segregation experienced by African
Americans in America. He employed jazz aesthetics in his poetry to challenge the black-white dichotomies and subvert the
stereotypes associated with blackness and Afro-American’s identity. The aim of this research is to highlight the role art can play
in changing the dynamics of social visibility, identity and ideological opposition between blackness and whiteness in American
society. This paper will employ critical race theory and Althusser’s theory of Ideological State Apparatuses to analyze the role
ideology and linguistic association with blackness, play in perpetuating and legitimizing the white cultural privilege, racial
segregation, erasure and oppression in the society. This research will analyze Langston Hughes’ poetry to explore the thematic
concern with racial prejudices, hegemony, segregation and “othering” experienced by Afro-Americans as discussed in his poetry.
According to Langston Hughes, “Why should I want to be white? I am Negro and beautiful.” As part of Harlem Renaissance and
Black Aesthetic movement in America, Hughes employed his creative expression to show, question and subvert the black-white
dichotomies, racial discrimination and marginalization experienced by Afro-Americans in the American society. The
categorizations based on binary oppositions are always oppressive, where blackness is associated with primitive traits, to be
feared and tamed while whiteness is associated with beauty, control and purity. This research is significant in drawing attention
to the need to deconstruct these oppressive binaries and to subvert or change the cultural narratives about racial identity and
blackness through narratives of black dialectic. The implication of this research lies in exposing the role ideology and language
plays in creating narratives of identity that are not fixed or natural and hence can be changed by writing new narratives through
art and creativity.
Martín Praga | Universidade da Coruña
[from]: Paratextuality as Didacticism in the Poetry of Craig Santos Perez
Contemporary socially engaged poets have been for over a decade challenging the notion that either experimental form is
detrimental to a poem’s political message or that a transparent agenda forecloses its chances of being considered high art. The
work of Chamorro poet Craig Santos Perez rebuts this dated conception of the ties between avantgarde art and social
commitment. In his ongoing epic from UNINCORPORATED TERRITORY, Santos Perez gathers the fragments he founds in local oral
history, court cases, songs, myths, and more, to recover the land, culture, and language of his native Guam from the hands of the
islands’ historical colonizers. Indeed, the pieces collected by Santos Perez can be regarded as the by-product of Guam’s colonial
history which the poet repurposes to create a new Chamorro identity. However, the numerous components that conform it
account for the poems’ complex and cryptic form, too. If Michael Dowdy is right when he claims that “if the political content of a
poem is obscured or inaccessible, it will likely fail as a political figure of voice,” there must be something in Santos Perez’s poems
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that brings their meaning and message to light. Revising Gérard Genette’s classic notion of ‘paratext,’ I claim that such an
enlightening factor is found in the numerous paratextual elements that feature in the series like prefaces, graphs, footnotes and
endnotes, and, most notably, the books’ epigraphs. Understanding these elements as part of the poems proper would mean that
Santos Perez manages to successfully convey his political message without shedding the aestheticism of experimental form.
5A | Darkness and/in Music Lyrics
Chair: Ester Díaz Morillo (UNED)
María Hernández Rodríguez | Universidad de Valladolid
“It’s a goddam blaze in the dark”: Exploring the Metaphorical and Rhetorical Use of Darkness in Taylor
Swift's Lyrics for Expressing Intimacy and Intensity
This paper proposes to analyze the metaphorical and rhetorical use of the semantic field of darkness in Taylor Swift's lyrics,
specifically focusing on its ability to convey themes of intimacy and intensity. By examining selected songs from Swift's
discography, this study seeks to unravel the profound symbolism and rhetorical strategies employed within the concept of
darkness, shedding light on its role in expressing emotional depth and power within her music. Taylor Swift's ability to convey
complex emotions through her lyrics is undeniable. A recurring theme that permeates her work is the metaphorical use of
darkness, which has changed in recent years. Now, this semantic field no longer appears in her music as something negative and
necessarily opposed to light, as it was in her firsts and less mature albums (Yuliasari & Virtianti, 2023), but as a way to express
intimacy and secrecy. Through a comprehensive analysis of Taylor Swift's songs, including "Willow," "Ivy," and "I think he knows"
among others, this study will employ Rhetorical Studies (Albaladejo, 1989; Lausberg, 1966) and figurative language analysis
(Diyanni, 2004; Kurniawati, 2018) to see how darkness is employed metaphorically in her compositions. The lyrics will be
examined for recurring motifs, symbolic associations and rhetorical devices that contribute to the expression of secrecy and
emotion. Through the analysis of specific examples, this communication aims to elucidate how darkness enhances the lyrical
narrative, evokes emotional depth, and resonates with listeners on both a personal and social level. By exploring the metaphorical
and rhetorical use of darkness in Taylor Swift's lyrics, this paper seeks to contribute to the existing body of knowledge on popular
music analysis and cultural studies. The findings of this research have the potential to enhance our understanding of the complex
interplay between language, symbolism, and emotional expression in contemporary popular music.
Kavya Mitchi D | PSG College of Arts and Science
Of Lyrics and Liminal Spaces: Analysing “Darkness” Billie Eilish’s Songs and Music Videos
Darkness as it exists in one’s imagination and in the tangible realm is inextricably linked with a confusion of boundaries, a period
of uncertainty and transition. The recent trends in popular culture, especially in the genre of ‘goth’, ‘emo’ and ‘dark’ pop, make use
of ‘darkness’ as a trope to approach one’s internal conflicts. This trope combines the metaphorical darkness implied by lyrics of a
song with the actual portrayal of darkness in music videos to create what can be termed as a liminal space. By blurring the
boundaries between familiar and unfamiliar, liminal spaces are safe yet, intimidating. The paper analyses the lyrics and the music
videos of “Everything I wanted” and “Bury a Friend” from Billie Eilish’s first studio album When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?
(2019) and “Happier Than Ever” and “NDA” from her second studio album, Happier Than Ever (2021) to trace the configuration of
liminal spaces with the employment of darkness as a device. Billie Eilish is an American singer and songwriter who occupies a
dominant space in the arena of American popular culture. The dark visuals of flooded rooms, narrow corridors, tar roads and cars
with closed doors in the above-mentioned songs with lyrics that hint at fear, hatred and death, act as liminal spaces where the
numerous conflicts arising from separation, nightmares, violation of privacy and intrusive thoughts are addressed, if not fully
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resolved. The darkness contributes to the evaluation of personal beliefs, aspirations and challenges in surreal or uncanny settings.
Engaging with Eilish’s lyrics and music videos through an academic lens, thereby facilitates an investigation into the
conceptualization of darkness in the popular American imagination.
Sai Shashanka Ravi | Charles University
Anguish, Despair and Pure, Unfiltered Rage: The Nu Metal Story
This paper looks at how the evolution in metal music in the 1980s paved the way for a brand new sub-genre, one which took its
influences not only from the metal bands that came before, but also other artists coming in from the rap/hip-hop community as
well as DJs. This sub-genre, which came to be known as nu metal and was primarily an American phenomenon, started off on the
heels of Nirvana and Pearl Jam which more or less headlined the grunge scene. The content of the compositions shifted from
being more about technical proficiency involving fast-paced guitar solos and drums, to something that was much simpler in
structure, as well as lyric content shifting to the realm of the personal. The music from these upstarts like Slipknot, KoRn,
Deftones and Linkin Park would comprise the despair, angst and resentments from their own, troubled childhoods where they
might have experienced traumatic events or actual abuse. This outpouring of emotion might in a sense, be a form of therapy in
its own right where they deal with the darkness and the demons residing within them through music compositions. The work will
focus on the nu metal albums from ten of the major bands that were released since the sub-genre originated in the mid-1990s
until 2005 and analyse the content of the lyrics, to observe how much of the music coming out of this genre focused on the dark
aspects of the human psyche like depression, rage and despair. For those of the bands which have multiple releases in the time
frame selected, the work will also look at how the song content might have changed between album releases.
5B | Cinematic Margins
Chair: Alejandro River Vadillo (Universidad de Alcalá)
Elena Canido Muiño | Universidade da Coruña
Darkness on the Edge of Town: Exploring Tim Burton's Gothic Fairytale Film Edward Scissorhands
Released in 1990, Edward Scissorhands, the fourth movie by American artist and director Tim Burton, is a modern gothic fable
about an unfinished, misunderstood creation that is rejected by society because of its differences. The story revolves around
Edward, a humanoid who has a heart, a brain, and skin but has been left with no hands at all, because his creator, an old inventor,
died right before finishing him. Edward is then left alone in a world that he does not understand and in a society where he
seemingly cannot belong. Thus, Burton brings forth an uprooted creature whose humanity is undone, marked by darkness and
death from the very beginning. When he is eventually removed from his lonely existence in a hilltop castle, Edward becomes the
pastel-colored neighborhood's source of fantasy and curiosity first, and of gossip and even resentment immediately after. The
story, therefore, has several meanings, since key issues such as "misperception" and "otherness" are dealt with throughout. It
also communicates the perspective that forcing others to conform to societal norms is negative, especially in a society whose
ultimate goal is to act permanently happy and carefree, and when the focus is on someone who is marginalized by no fault of
their own. This presentation will not only further explore these concepts within the movie, but also how Burton's point of view is
accepted by the audience through symbolic film code and techniques, which resulted in this film being both one of his most
personal and critically acclaimed works ever. Finally, this paper aims to show that the protagonist's experiences, his identity crises
and feelings of frustration at being misunderstood and rejected, transcend, indeed, any borders between light and dark, and
ultimately, between fantasy and so-called reality.
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Sara Álvarez Díaz | Universidad de Oviedo
Darkness in the Tales of Immigration of the Irish Community in America: Intergenerational and Unresolved
Trauma as Shown in Brooklyn
Trauma has surrounded the Irish community for centuries at this point. From a country whose colonial history is closely related
to that of exploitation, trauma and darkness, to the famine that destroyed millions of lives and families in the mid nineteenth
century to the terror of the war between the IRA and the UK military, the history of those coming from this island has been nothing
but easy. This can be seen in the tales of immigration of those who decided to leave their homeland and move across the Atlantic
to America. Using the film Brooklyn, released in 2015, starring Irish American actress Saoirse Ronan and based on Colm Tóíbín’s
best seller, this paper will analyze how intergenerational trauma is passed from generation to generation and the way it is deeply
engrained in the American imaginary, affecting the lives of Irish descendants even to this day. Set in the 1950s Eilis Lacey (played
by Ronan) leaves dark, damp, and gloomy County Wexford in hopes to find a new life in New York City, away from those she loves.
There can be seen a clear juxtaposition between the light and welcoming American city (full of life and people) and the darkness
that the protagonist leaves behind in Ireland where hunger, unemployment and no opportunities for the young arise. However,
the deeply dark and rooted trauma that the protagonist carries with her extends and contaminates all areas of her life, from the
way in which she carries herself in public (following extreme catholic rules), to the way in which she eats (scarcely due to the
shared trauma of the famine). Her story is that of most Irish immigrants who arrived through Ellis Island in the post-war period
hoping to find a new beginning.
Anne-Marie Scholz | University of Hamburg / University of Bremen
Color, Darkness, & Homoerotic Passion: Stephen Boyd’s (1977-1931) iconic performance as “Messala” in
Ben Hur (Wyler 1959)
In this paper I would like to explore the relationship between the cinematic functions of color and darkness and subtextual plotting
in one of the most popular and influential “sword and sandal” epics in cinema history: William Wyler’s 1959 production Ben Hur.
The film won eleven Academy Awards—more than any other until the 1990s—in practically every category except for the one
performance that would secure its cultural significance at least as much as its influential action sequences of chariot racing:
Stephen Boyd’s portrayal of the Roman tribune, Messala and his homoerotic passion for Ben Hur (Charlton Heston). Despite its
notoriety as a “gay subtext” since the 1990s after the publication of Gore Vidal’s memoirs, Palimpsest and the release of the
influential documentary film, The Celluloid Closet, the subplot has been largely ignored as a structural aspect of the film because
of the controversy surrounding its origin as an “inside joke” shared by the uncredited author of the plot, screenwriter Gore Vidal,
director William Wyler, and the Irish-American actor Stephen Boyd-- but unknown to and unacknowledged by the politically
influential star of the film, Charlton Heston, who would outlive all the major players directly involved in the subplot’s production.
A closer look at the production history, and more systematic viewing of the film itself, however, reveals not only the consistency
of the homoerotic dimension in every scene between Ben Hur and Messala, (not just in the “establishing” opening “look” at the
beginning of this nearly three and a half hour film) but also the importance of darkness & color in the visual as well as the audio
components of the subplot, thus lending to it emotional and aesthetic legitimacy as an actively and consciously developed
dimension of the film
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6A | Horrific Darkness
Chair: Inna Häkkinen (University of Helsinki/IASK Köszeg)
Heather Roberts | Queen’s University
Seeing in the Dark: Mediating Horror Through Night Vision in Found Footage Horror Films
Anxieties about dark spaces in horror films are twofold; physically, they connect to feelings of perception and vulnerability due to
the human eye’s inability to see in darkness, while symbolically, they link to broader fears of the unknown Other as a potential
threat to normativity. Within contemporary American found footage horror films, the use of night vision to conquer darkness is
tied to whiteness and the false belief that seeing, and by extension knowing, equals safety. As a genre that predominantly
features white, male directors and storylines, a common theme in found footage horror is white anxieties about the Other as a
threat to suburban life. Focusing on the films Paranormal Activity (2007) and Paranormal Activity 2 (2010), I argue that night vision
sequences demonstrate the fallacy of what Russell Meeuf describes as a distinctly white belief in technology, particularly
surveillance technology, as a means of understanding, and thereby controlling, the world (137). In both films, the white, male
protagonists install cameras with night vision capabilities in their homes, relying on the technological eye of the camera to
compensate for the shortcomings of the human eye and to protect their families from the monstrous Others that threaten their
suburban tranquility (Soltysik Monnet 127). Paradoxically, rather than ameliorating a fear of the dark, night vision shots that
illuminate dark spaces create new anxieties by revealing what the eye otherwise cannot see. Through the films’ final night vision
sequences, we see Katie murder her boyfriend and family members before kidnapping her nephew. These shots not only signify
a failure of surveillance technologies to protect the white nuclear family, but also challenge the vilification of the unknown Other
by exposing horrific acts committed by white characters.
Cody Parish | University of Colorado–Colorado Springs
Lifting the Veil: Marriage as Monster in Ready or Not and The Invitation
Wedding gowns, vows, and extended family: these comprise features not of recent American romance movies but of horror
cinema. As American politicians and cultural critics have declared a “marriage crisis” in response to declining rates of wedlock
among millennials, Ready or Not (2019) and The Invitation (2022) offer an intersectional interrogation of the dark monster behind
the white veil in their respective narratives, affirming millennial unease concerning marriage by framing it as an institution built
upon economic, gendered, and racial oppression. Ready or Not follows Grace as she is initiated into the affluent Le Domas family
on her wedding night. Subjected to a deadly ritual of hide-and-seek, Grace learns that her in-laws gained their fortune not through
hard work and business savvy but from a blood pact with a supernatural, omnipotent benefactor. To protect their empire, the Le
Domas family, including her husband, must sacrifice Grace by sunrise, revealing the ways in which marriage as an economic
agreement has historically risked the subjugation and exploitation of the working class and women. Infected with similar themes,
The Invitation concerns the horrific elopement of Evelyn, who lives as a struggling, biracial artist in New York City and receives an
invitation from a long lost relative to meet her extended family, the Alexanders, at their luxurious British estate. There she is
tricked into marrying Walter De Ville, who reveals himself to be Dracula and the source of the Alexanders’ wealth. Evelyn’s
resulting torment as a biracial woman married into a historically white, wealthy British family alludes to the racist backlash
Meghan Markle suffered upon marrying into the British Royal Family. The Invitation thus builds upon the critique presented by
Ready or Not, arguing marriage can serve as an economic lure to perpetuate not only systems of patriarchal oppression but of
colonialism as well.
A. Rose Johnson | Falmouth University
Confederate Ghosts and Queer Black Vampires: Balancing Metaphor and Reality
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HBO’s True Blood (2008-2014) operates as a social commentary on America during the Obama administration, a time many hoped
would prove to usher in an era of “post-racial” progression. (Younge 2016) The vampires, shapeshifters and other dark
supernatural creatures of Bon Temps, LA are used by the narrative as metaphors for othered identity: the title sequence features
a church sign reading “God Hates Fangs,” a play on Westboro Baptist Church rhetoric (Ní Fhlainn 2019). But True Blood is set in
the American South, and the issues depicted (police violence towards people of color, the US South’s glorification of Confederate
past, or church-based brutalization of queer people) are much more tangible than whether or not the “Vampire Rights
Amendment” will pass. Show creator Alan Ball finds this queer analogy “kind of lazy” (Shen 2009), since True Blood’s vampires
are violent and lack human morals. The show’s thesis, while progressive in some ways, still traps Black characters into
traditionally problematic depictions, such as drug-dealing “thugs” or long-suffering angry Black women with unmanaged PTSD.
Through an intersectional feminist lens (following Crenshaw, Garland, Moraga, and others) this presentation will examine True
Blood, its presentation of Black and queer characters, and the political arguments posited by its fictional American Vampire
League, which often dovetailed with or parodied real American political events - including mocking Ted Cruz during his run for
president in 2014. How does True Blood balance both real-life identity politics and the metaphors that its vampires represent? Is
it possible (or feasible) to attempt to use the monstrous Other (Cohen 1996) as a metaphor for the actual othered body in a text
where those bodies exist? Is this better or worse than texts like Twilight or The Vampire Diaries, which take place in sanitized,
white-only communities?
6B | Noir and Cyberpunk Aesthetics
Chair: Alejandro River Vadillo (Universidad de Alcalá)
Elif Kaymaz | Middle East Technical University
Violated Spaces: Film Noir, Bernard Tschumi and Designing Darkness
This paper makes a case for the shared spatial vision of one of the most influential figures in the contemporary design scene,
architect and theorist Bernard Tschumi and the film noir cycle centered on the urban anxieties and the metropolis during the
1940s and 1950s, mainly in the United States. A perverse, particular and ambiguous vision for urban architecture is that its
program is never predictable, its space is never static, and the pleasure, violence and madness activate the place. This study
aims to put urban and domestic spaces of film noir and the architectural theories of Tschumi into a conversation, focusing on the
darkness as an element of shock, a plot device and a spatial strategy. Drawing examples from The Naked City (1948, Jules Dassin)
and He Walked by Night (1948, Alfred L. Werker & Anthony Mann) –two noirs depicting oppositional urban characters: the
centripetal New York and the centrifugal Los Angeles of the post-war era, it further investigates the spatial concepts proposed
by Edward Dimendberg (2004). This paper argues that darkness in/of spaces and people of film noir, cities and Tschumi’s
architectural vision reflects, generates and violates the program and the action, reflecting their urban characters -each time
designing new opportunities beyond pre-destined modern architectural assumptions. Therefore, designing and curating
darkness becomes a spatial device in line with Tschumi’s (1981) argument of what architecture is: “bodies violating space” and
“spaces violating bodies” through lived experiences.
José Duarte | ULICES-ULisboa
Darkness Becomes a Theme
As generally discussed by several critics and academics (Mayer and MacDowell, 2007; Dixon, 2009; Lurh, 2012, or Spicer, 2013)
noir and neo-noir genres are typically associated with an idea of darkness – with noir literally meaning dark film. The opening
scenes of major classic period noir films, as well as post-classic period films, all point to the several readings of darkness that are
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mirrored by the noir and neo-noir context and history: the violence and darkness of the city; the darkness of the mind; the dark
actions of both men and women; the “darkness” of the night, or, in broader terms, darkness as way of expressing the emotional
and psychological turmoil of the main characters. These are, of course, well-known tropes. The purpose of this presentation is
not to give a general overview of noir and neo-noir genres, but rather to search for the theme of darkness in the opening credits
of one of the most recently acclaimed neo-noir series, True Detective (HBO, 2014-). Created by Nic Pizzolato, the series’ neo-noir
atmosphere deals with human darkness in different ways which, in its turn, relates to the landscape inhabited by the characters.
Each opening title, from S1 to S3, thus, encapsulates the pervasiveness of the theme of darkness (the rural landscape; the urban
and suburban areas). Therefore, the aim of this presentation is twofold: first, to look at a neo-noir series like True Detective and
its connection to the theme of darkness and, secondly, to analyze how the opening titles of each season are key to better
understand how darkness invades the characters’ territory, thus underlining an aesthetic of (human) disaster.
Sergio Salvador | Universidad de Zaragoza
Dark and Darkness as Key Motifs in Cyberpunk
Dark and grim. Cyberpunk fiction is often defined in this manner, reflecting the essence of a genre that is as popular and lasting
today as it was in the 80s when William Gibson's Neuromancer (1984) launched it. Cyberpunk is "dark" in both its aesthetics and
its concepts and ideals. The evocative, gloomy environments of cyberpunk novels represent a visual darkness. In novels, films,
and video-games, stories are set in polluted cities with perpetual rain and night, illuminated by the bright glow of Japanese and
Chinese language advertisements. This visual darkness is not just window dressing; it reflects the world's socio-political state,
where corporations have more influence than governments and the wealth gap is insurmountable. Cyberpunk also explores moral
and ethical dilemmas. Its anti-heroes typically question identity, humanity, and the effects of unrestrained technology. The
constant buzz of machinery reminds viewers of technology's repressive power. What does it mean to be human in a world where
humans and machines blur? What will society sacrifice in the name of progress? “Low-life" protagonists face these questions,
and their relationships require us to confront our own views and ideals. Characters are generally marginalised, repressed, or
struggling to live in dark environments, both visual and intangible. The characters must overcome corruption, brutality, and
exploitation to find redemption, progress, or survival. Living in such a world has an emotional and psychological toll.
In my paper, I argue that cyberpunk fiction's dark and gritty essence encompasses aesthetics, themes, and societal deterioration.
Darkness reflects our worries about the future. As we witness the implications of rapid technological advancement and the ethical
dilemmas it presents, cyberpunk remains a vital and relevant mode of expression, where we explore the darkness within
ourselves and the world we inhabit. Critical posthumanist arguments on transhumanism, techno-posthumanism, and cultural
studies inform my research.
7A | Candyman and its Horrors
Chair: Laura Álvarez Trigo (Universidad de Valladolid)
Irena Jurković and Marko Lukić | University of Zadar
The Trialectics of Darkness: Urban Legends, Ideology, and New Media
In contrast to the predominant approach in academic analyses, which often examine film portrayals of urban myths and legends
through the lens of adaptation theory to evaluate fidelity to the source material, this presentation aims to explore the
appropriation and reinterpretation of urban legends in new media. These adaptations, as we will argue, serve to construct a
cultural artifact that weaves a dark narrative of both America's past and present. By evaluating the sociohistorical and political
context of selected adaptations, as well as the divergent meanings from the source material, our objective is to identify the
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ideological messages predominantly concerning the issue of racism, inherent in these stories, and which continue to function as
enduring myths within American society. While drawing inspiration from Slavoj Žižek's insights in Living in the End Times (2010),
where he asserts that “one of the best ways to detect shifts in the ideological constellation is to compare consecutive remakes
of the same story” (61), our analysis will primarily employ Edward Soja's concept of the trialectics of space and the renegotiation
of cultural identity. This framework will help explain the ongoing process of reinterpretation, representation, and creation of new
mythologies, as well as transition of oral narratives to digital media spaces. Grounded in Soja's distinction of perceived, conceived,
and lived space, our presentation will examine how contemporary horror narratives— such as Candyman (1992), and its sequel
Candyman (2021)— transform and reimagine various elements of urban legends upon which they are based, particularly in
relation to the portrayal and confrontation of racial Otherness within the source texts. Conclusively, this presentation seeks to
demonstrate how (film) adaptations engage in a dynamic dialogue with both the source material and the socio-historical context,
while simultaneously generating new interpretations and mythologies that reflect the complexities of contemporary society.
Victoria Santamaría Ibor | Universidad de Zaragoza
The Intersections between Darkness and Abjection in Nia Da Costa’s Candyman
“Abjection” refers to the process of rejecting that considered disgusting, despicable or wretched. The term was coined by Georges
Bataille in 1934, in order to describe oppressed groups treated with aversion and excluded from the community. Bataille’s social
understanding of the term lost momentum after Julia Kristeva’s psychoanalytical interpretation of the concept in Powers of Horror
(1982). In the 1990s horror cinema was a fertile ground to explore abjection from a psychoanalytical angle, as is the case of
Barbara Creed’s The Monstrous Feminine (1993). Abjection has also been read as a bodily affect experienced by spectators when
viewing a visceral scene (Cherry 2009). Yet abjection in horror movies has never been explored in its sociological sense. This paper
considers abjection in relation to darkness in Nia Da Costa’s Candyman (2021). The film tells the story of a black artist who moves
to a gentrifying neighbourhood and investigates the local legend of Candyman, a monster who assassinates those who say his
name five times in front of the mirror. In Candyman, the world of art is associated with whiteness, both literally in the mise-en-
scène and in terms of race. In opposition, the abject ghetto is a dark space occupied by a marginalized black population. Candyman
as a black monster is an abject who is rejected by mainstream society but is also a figure that fights back systemic violence. Thus,
the darkness of the ghetto, in the film, as well as the abjection of the black monster, are also elements of subversion and
resistance. Through a textual analysis of the spaces depicted in the film, this paper aims to explore the portrayal of darkness and
abjection in Candyman.
Marta Miquel-Baldellou | Universitat de Lleida
Bernard Rose’s Candyman Shifting from Africanist Other to African American Gothic Archetype: Revisiting
and Updating Tropes from Plantation Horror
After Leslie Fiedler underscored the link between the infamous institution of slavery and American Gothic in the 1960s, Teresa
Goddu (1997) claimed that slavery arises as a central historical context that produces the Gothic, while arguing that the factual
reality of slavery exceeds the limitations of the Gothic as fiction. Drawing on metaphors pertaining to the Gothic, Toni Morrison
(1992) addresses the role that “the Africanist Other” plays in the making of white American literature, and more recently, Eric
Gary Anderson, Taylor Hagood and Daniel Cross Turner (2015) resort to the term “undead souths” to refer to the living dead in
Gothic narratives as indicative of the haunting irruption of the past in the present. In relation to the genre of southern Gothic,
Meredith Miller (2016) alludes to narratives portraying the uncanny return of the historical trauma of slavery and the
configuration of the southern states as the abject of the American nation after the Civil War, thus enacting the dynamics of the
discourses of race as passing through horrific loss, repression, and return. In this respect, critics like Carol Margaret Davidson
(2016) point out that contemporary African-American narratives deploy Gothic strategies that dialogue with the white American
literary tradition and contest its rationalist discourse and racist ideology. In particular, contemporary southern Gothic narratives
draw on elements from the nineteenth-century Gothic romance and plantation horror, such as secret tangled genealogies,
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spectral characters, peripheral spaces and doubles, which are revisited and transformed from the perspective of race and gender.
In these narratives, African-American heroes are femininized and white heroines protest against femininity in a reversal of gender
conventions, a parallelism is established between the undead and zombified slaves who are deprived of their will, the haunted
spaces that the spectres inhabit become the transitional limbo that the oppressed individuals occupy, and black ghosts arise as
embodiments of racialised Others.
As a case in point, based on Clive Barker’s short story “The Forbidden,” included in his anthology of short fiction entitled Book of
Blood (1984), Bernard Rose’s film Candyman (1992) transforms an all-white horror story to revisit tropes from plantation horror
and transform them into a contemporary narrative that explicitly revolves around the discourses of race and gives rise to an
African-American Gothic archetype as an emblem of protest against racial discrimination. As David Greven (2015) claims, by
means of reverting racial dynamics, in contemporary horror films about race, former abused victims turn into horrifying entities
that haunt the collective unconscious and are brought back to life to vindicate themselves. Following Jordan Peele’s recent
remake, which acknowledges the influence and prevalence of the original film, this presentation aims to revisit Rose’s Candyman
to identify traces of the nineteenth-century Gothic romance, analyse instances of the return of the trauma of slavery as legacy of
plantation horror, describe the characterisation of Candyman as an amalgamation of features from different Gothic archetypes,
and approach this cinematic narrative as a seminal horror film of reappropriation and vindication that gives rise to an African-
American Gothic archetype.
7B | Humor and Subversion
Chair:
Ninge Engelen | Radboud University Nijmegen
Louise Erdrich and Her Shadow: The Jacklight Effect
This article contributes to recent scholarship into the subversions of the human-animal distinction in Indigenous and African
American literatures and its redefinitions of “the human.” It does so by operationalizing a concept from Louise Erdrich’s poetic
mythology: “The Jacklight Effect” and its integral, deconstructive interrogation of ‘lightness versus darkness’ in the colonial
encounter. Building forth on theoretical notions from Indigenous, Black, and poststructuralist studies, this article argues that
Erdrich’s concept allows us to rethink the way certain Indigenous and otherwise marginalized writers “ironize” the colonial
mythology projected onto them. My claim is that subversive irony is already tacitly at work in the concept “jacklight” and that—
as such—Erdrich creates a mode of speaking about colonialism that already suggests its inherently contradictory ontology,
generating a potential for liberation.
In hunting, ‘jacklighting’ or ‘spotlighting’ is a specific technique where hunters shine white light into a forest at night in order to
petrify their prey. The effect of the jacklight is two-fold; it allows the hunter to see its prey and prohibits the prey from seeing the
hunter. The technique relies on the reflective eyeshine (tapetum lucidum) of animals such as deer, rabbits, and foxes—making
them easier to spot. The sudden bright light causes the eyes of the animals to dilate, blinding them, transfixing them, until they
are shot by the hunter. The word “jack” refers to a knave—as in the jack of spades—and connotes characteristics of roguishness
and deception. This duplicity of the “jack” as someone who tricks and conceals, on the one hand, joined with the word “light” as
something that reveals, on the other, points to the central thematic paradox in Louise Erdrich’s poetry collection Jacklight
(1984)—which I will analyze in this paper.
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 6
Usha SK Raghupathula | Andhra University
Laughing through Darkness: An exploration of Jewish Humor and Existential Dread in Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s
Complaint
Philip Roth’s breakout hit, Portnoy’s Complaint (1969) stands till date as one of the most controversial, fiercely debated and
powerfully evocative novels of the twentieth century American literary canon. The outrageously hilarious novel has an air of
intrepidity that makes it a force to be reckoned with in the American literary canon. In spite of the unending discourse on its
controversy, the novel is an extremely honest depiction of the Jewish way of life which earned the ire from most of its Jewish
readers. Roth, although celebrated to be one of the premier Jewish voices after the lights of Saul Bellow and Bernard Malamud,
has historically been charged with the contention of harboring hatred towards the Jewish community, exposing them to ridicule.
Roth’s semi-autobiographical rendition of his childhood, Alexander Portnoy, is thrusted in the shoes of a transforming identity
between orthodox Jewishness and liberal America, juggling between familial expectations, sexual desires, and existential dread.
Roth uses a consortium of confessional monologues, irreverent anecdotes, and comedic uproars to create a vivid, yet decidedly
dark picture of Portnoy’s psyche. The novel's comedic moments arise from the tension between societal expectations and
Portnoy's own desires, the clash between tradition and modernity, and the absurdity of navigating cultural identity. A particular
brand of dark humor, one that is laced with the resilience and wit that have long been central to Jewish comedy, is used as a tool
to navigate the themes of guilt, shame, and self-deprecation in the novel. The frame narrative, which puts Portnoy in therapy
talking to a mostly silent counselor, works as a clever platform for him to confront taboos head-on, using relentless self-mockery
and biting sarcasm as mechanisms for addressing his anxieties. Applying Arthur Schopenhaeur’s Incongruity Theory of Humor to
the analysis of Portnoy's Complaint allows for a comprehensive exploration of the ways in which humor and existential dread
intersect in the novel, shedding light on the intricate layers of Roth's work and the role of comedy as a coping mechanism in the
face of life's darkest moments.
KEYNOTE | KYLE T. MAYS
NdN Popular Culture: Musings on Cultural Appropriation and Representation
Chair: Paula Barba Guerrero (Universidad de Salamanca)
This talk will explore the meaning of NdN popular culture. Using various cultural artifacts, including Indigenous hip-hop, television
shows, and movies, I will analyze the various forms of cultural politics and the limits of representation as Indigenous artists
produce them within mainstream US popular culture
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 7
8A | TV Series and the Dark Fantastic
Chair: Laura Álvarez Trigo (Universidad de Valladolid)
Adrián Castro Cortés | Universidad de Granada
A Corpus-Stylistic Approach to Darkness (and Light) in Modern Fantasy as Popular Culture
Using a corpus-stylistic approach, I investigate the way the notions of darkness and light are linguistically realized in popular
culture, more specifically in American fantasy TV series and literature. The origin of fantasy in folk tales, fairy tales and mythology
seems to be tied to the dichotomy darkness/light (see for instance Greek cosmogony and the goddess Nyx). Darkness has
traditionally been associated with evil, which, according to Jackson (1981), becomes attached to a given culture’s fears and is
attributed meanings of ‘the Other’. Nowadays, the darkness/light dichotomy still seems to embody one of the main pillars of
modern fantasy. As such, these notions are recurring elements that belong to the core composition of the genre. In this paper, I
specifically focus on the linguistic realizations of both elements and how they are used to construe antagonistic forces within
fantasy (Castro, fc. 2023), a genre on which little research has been carried out when it comes down to the actual language
employed (Mandala, 2018). To this purpose, I use two corpora: the Fantasy TV Corpus and the Written Fantasy Corpus, which
have been personally designed and compiled and focus on works of fantasy ranging from 2010 to 2021. My analysis of semantic
categories brings to the fore that darkness and light, besides encoding denotative meanings, are also used to juxtapose
metaphorical meanings that aid the characterization of the genre and underscore the seemingly never-ending struggle between
good and evil. In fact, the two elements perform various but well-defined functions in fantasy TV series and literature. As
mentioned above, this touches upon issues of the self —and the Other— demonstrating popular culture’s potential to shed light
on aspects related to identity, society, and social change (Csomay & Young, 2021) and to become ‘a window into the world we
live in and some of its preoccupations’ (Bednarek, 2018: 41).
Sara Tabuyo-Santaclara | Universidade de Vigo
“And so I Step up, into the Darkness within; or Else the Light”: Ustopian Ambivalence in the Protest
Movement Inspired by The Handmaid’s Tale
While The Handmaid’s Tale has traditionally been classified as a dystopian novel, its author Margaret Atwood has mentioned the
co-existence of both utopia and dystopia within its pages by coining the term “ustopia” (Atwood 2011). While the readers’
perception may interpret the work as a pessimistic possible future for the United States, the actions taken by the regime in the
fiction aim to create a utopian version of the nation according to their puritan values. This dark side of utopia (Levitas and
Sargisson 2003) leaks into reality as abortion bans have proliferated across the US since 2019 (Nash et al. 2019), mirroring the
control of reproductive rights that is depicted in the ustopian universe. With the peak in popularity that The Handmaid’s Tale series
has brought to Atwood’s classic, the limits separating fiction and reality have become blurry. As abortion bans multiply, a protest
movement making use of the characteristic red handmaid gown has taken over the country (Howell 2019; Atkins 2022; Miranda
2020). And while it draws attention to the extreme vulnerability of women in states where abortion has been banned or severely
limited, the articulation of the movement also brings to life the dystopian configurations of the totalitarian fictional nation
(Miranda 2020, 102). This paper aims to analyze the connections between The Handmaid’s Tale universe and the limitation of
reproductive rights in the contemporary United States context. Especial attention will be dedicated to the handmaid-inspired
protests, which I understand as a movement of resistance and dystopian reenactment that plays into Atwood’s cautionary
narrative by setting up aesthetically striking performances against the restrictive reproductive politics. While the movement may
be seen as a source of light and hopeful fight for the recuperations of lost rights, its reenactment of the dystopian nation obscures
the identity of who is more vulnerable to suffer the violence of the restrictive measures, thus mirroring the ustopian ambivalence
of the series.
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 7
Haleigh Hayes | Indiana University of Pennsylvania
Perception is a Tool Pointed at Both Ends”: NBC’s Hannibal as Dark Commentary on American Perceptions
of Mental Health and the “Monsters” They Create
In the aftermath of COVID-19 exacerbating the mental health epidemic, a new revival of recent cult classics of horror cinema has
led to the reexamination of many academically compelling pieces for neurodivergent representation and theorizing opportunities.
Particularly compelling among these is NBC’s Hannibal, a critically acclaimed television adaptation of Richard Harris’ deeply
disturbing series of novels surrounding Dr. Hannibal Lecter, whom critics sometimes regard as the quintessential serial killer
archetype in modern horror fiction. However, hidden beneath the success of Mads Mikkelsen as the titular character is the
compelling performance of Hugh Dancy as Will Graham, the primary target of Lecter’s machinations and a refreshingly
unapologetic portrayal of mental illness that vehemently eschews any hint of glamorization or outright demonization that often
penetrates Hollywood depictions of the mentally ill. As Will’s condition worsens, the darkness of Graham’s disordered empathic
imagination takes on a supporting role in the crimes he solves. The shadows inform and distort in equal measure as he closes in
on each culprit, especially as it closes in on Lecter himself as a saboteur. At the same time, the people in place around Graham
designed to keep him from psychosis in the face of murder systematically fail him, presenting a dark but frighteningly true
commentary on American mental health treatment. In the proposed scholarship, the work of Alexandra Caroll and the monstrous
humanity applied to Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter as manifested through the manipulation of shadows in subtext and
perception, as well as the work on affective cinematography of Julian Hanich and the cultural theories presented by media-made
monsters like the mentally ill of Hannibal in Jeffrey Cohen’s Monster Theory.
Cormac McCarthy
Chair: Paula Barba Guerrero (Universidad de Salamanca)
Simona Leone | Universitat de València
The Analysis of the Darkness Elements and Their Meaning in Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy
Starting from the analysis of the work "Outer Dark" by Cormac McCarthy, it can be analysed how the theme of darkness is already
predominant within the novel that begins with the incestuous union between Culla and Rinthy Holme, who are siblings, echoing
thus a sense of unwilling blindness that is what connects the novel to the Greek myth of Oedipus. The theme of darkness is
always present in the work: the story is set in the dark lands of the Appalachian rural area. In addition, although it is focused on
the female character Rinty, the figure of her brother always echoes as a shadow behind her. The dark attempt of Cradle to get rid
of his son, as a product of incest, leads the character to lie to his sister about his son’s death, which then becomes reality when
he finds him with the Throat cut. All this darkness and blindness that pervades the novel ends with the idea that McCarthy gives
his works a feeling of letting things flow according to "destiny" and that therefore events go according to a succession of random
events without a causality. Further, the idea of darkness and horror that predominates throughout the scene, also identifies the
characters as wanderers and outcasts of society: despite Rinthy dating people who eventually seem to be friendly with her, Cradle
meets only rejected people who seem to die in bad circumstances, echoing the act he himself has done of abandoning his son
and whose will seems to be realized when the son is really found dead. Darkness is a recurring theme, from the opening "black
sun" of Culla's dream to the blind walk of the last page of the Garden of death. In conclusion, most of the important scenes in the
novel occur at night. Two scenes of the children's forgiveness, the ferry ship wreck, and the mysterious triple ocrees. The word
"shadow" and the thought of darkness infiltrate into the novel.
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 7
Sergio García Jiménez | Universidad de Oviedo
Darkness in America’s Westward Expansion: The Brutality of Western Territorial Appropriation as Depicted
in Blood Meridian
In 1985 American author Cormac McCarthy published Blood Meridian, a novel that deals with the adventures of a group of scalp
hunters in the years after the Mexican-American War (1846-48). The novel chronicles the descent into madness and
degeneration experienced by the party as they massacre Native Americans and others along the border between Mexico and the
United States. McCarthy’s magnum opus is set against the backdrop of the conquest of the West, a momentous and still relevant
process that has acquired quasi-mythical dimensions throughout history and that is undoubtedly embedded in the United States’
national consciousness. In this paper I will show the different mechanisms employed by Cormac McCarthy to deconstruct
conventional Western narratives that glorify and sanction the Westward expansion as a courageous endeavour that shaped the
American nation, hence underplaying the darker and more pernicious side of this chapter of America’s imperialistic undertakings.
To that end, I will argue that McCarthy contests the main tenets of the crucial 1893 Frontier Thesis proposed by Frederick Jackson
Turner, in particular the depiction of American colonial expansion as a source of progress and democratic development; likewise
I will contend that, in Blood Meridian, McCarthy aligns himself with the ideas of New Western Historians that offer a revisionist
perspective of the country’s past, revealing the brutality and wickedness exerted in the appropriation of western territories.
James Stannard
Destruction and Design: Judge Holden and Thomas Sutpen
This paper examines the moral ‘darkness’ of two of Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy’s most monstrous characters. Faulkner said
Sutpen ‘violated all the rules of dignity, honour and compassion.’ Rosa Coldfield agrees, calling Sutpen ‘villain-dyed,’ whilst Shreve
McCannon calls Thomas Sutpen a ‘demon.’ In Blood Meridian, Judge Holden represents the ‘unanimous dark of the world.’ Richard
Gray says Holden represents ‘a denial of human value and distinction’; the judge himself states that ‘whatever exists…without
my knowledge exists without my consent.’ In contrast, in Absalom, Absalom!, Sutpen’s initial drive is one of creation, to forge his
own plantation and dynasty, but his actions actually destroy the lives of those around him. Sutpen is finally cut down, killed by
Wash Jones. Blood Meridian ends with the judge’s savage murder of the Kid, and his claim that he himself ‘will never die,’ in contrast
to Sutpen’s human vulnerability. I will demonstrate the destructive ‘dark cosmos’ which Holden and Sutpen visit on the Kid and
Quentin in particular, in one case literal, the other the result of a myth.
9A | Racial Violence and the Black Experience
Chair: Carla Abella Rodríguez (Universidad de Salamanca)
Simon Cooper
“Darkness Necessary”: Ghetto Aesthetics in John Edgar Wideman’s The Lynchers
A bar-room question posed in John Edgar Wideman’s early novel The Lynchers (1973) -- “Why you think people like it dark when
they listen to jazz?” – inspires in its addressee, “Sweetman” Wilkerson, a series of musings of increasing abstraction: that
darkness matches the solemnity of the occasion; that it shields the dreaming of both audience and musicians. Sweetman is
provoked into his most profound meditation, however, in the recollection of a meeting with a Southern piano player, whose
shattered sunglasses suggest a sameness between sound, vision, movement, and language, at a meeting place where figure and
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 7
ground are reversed. Sweetman’s insight -- “darkness necessary” – is paralleled throughout the book. For son, Thomas, the
labour of defining himself against his family background evokes the nightmare of stasis within change, the recurrence of the past
within the present effectively closing off the possibility of a future. For Littleman, ringleader of a plot to lynch a white police officer,
false accusation and murder represent the appropriation and subversion of white power, a form of praxis merging brute violence
with the creative imagination.
As against the binary assertion of political violence as “necessary” to right the historical record, Wideman proposes instead a
determinate negation, that two negatives can never add up to a plus. Wideman’s first three novels are located in an imaginative
space, drawn from modernist aesthetics, but stretched: backwards, to reflect America’s ongoing history of racial violence
(documentary records included as “matters prefatory” to The Lynchers); forwards, to anticipate the contemporary urban
environment. This paper proposes to map aesthetic and thematic concerns onto the concept of uneven development. The
production and reproduction of substandard housing is likewise a figure/ground reversal: no slums, no gated communities; no
ghetto no suburban sprawl.
Caleb Doan | Grand Valley State University
Bringing Light into Darkness: Novel Experimentation in Martin Delany’s Blake
Thomas Hamilton, co-publisher of The Anglo-African Magazine, introduced Martin Delany’s Blake (1859-1861) as a work that
“differs essentially from all others heretofore published.” The novel, he claims, “not only shows the combined political and
commercial interests that unite the North and the South, but gives in the most familiar manner the formidable understanding
among the slaves throughout the United States and Cuba.” Hamilton’s assessment hints at the dual significance of Blake as both
a critique of the institutional forces that enslave, exploit, and oppress Black people around the globe and a call for transnational
Black solidarity, resistance, and freedom. The twofold aims, I argue, pushed Delany to make formal innovations to the antebellum
novel. He variously employs, challenges, satirizes, or synthesizes sentimentalism, realism, and historical romance to create
something new. This presentation considers how Delany, often called the “Father of Black Nationalism,” transforms the novel to
suit his radical political agenda. Inspired by Barbara Foley’s conceptualization of the collective novel of U.S. proletarian fiction in
the 1930s, my analysis reflects on Blake’s focus on the group rather than the individual, the experimental techniques used to
disrupt realism (or the traditional representations of reality), and the incorporation of documentary materials that prompt his
audience to see connections between the real and literary worlds to imagine systemic change (Foley 1993). Through what is
arguably the first US novel written for a Black audience, Delany aims to enlighten and empower his oppressed people, or, in other
words, to bring light into darkness.
Stephanie Polsky | Northeastern University
The Dark Posthumanism of Frederick Douglass’ Racial Imagination
This presentation will concern Frederick Douglass’ 1852 oration of “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July,” a speech he composed
in order to resist the hardening of conditions of racialised, classificatory perception establishing themselves in mid-century
America. What is critical to note in this oration is that Douglass as a free Black person has no interest in moving beyond the human
nor opposing it. He does so not to mount a refusal against race, and in particular blackness, but rather to construe the human
body as a position cannot be escaped, but must rise to the challenge of pertaining to its animality, objecthood, and thingliness in
such a way as to radically shift the terms of the existential predicament of modern racial Blackness. The strange prescience of
Douglass’ remarks come from the fact this is not as work of antiracist prophecy so much as it is a forecast of convergence. It is
posthumanist, but only to the degree that animality forms but one of the parts in his post-natural imagined environment.
Douglass’ visionary text suggests that technology, in the form of oceanic navigation, railroads and telegraphs, as well as human
and animal life, eventually will become possessed of sympathetic intelligence towards one another, by forming connections
across speciological divides and sentient differences. The body to come will require a more capacious form. The prospect of a
multiracial national community is similarly too limited in this place of biological hierarchy, which insists on allegiance to its
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 7
Founder’s Constitution while ignoring the co-constitution of political and ecological processes that everywhere surround it and
will ultimately overtake its ramparts. That perspective on darkness suggests our focus should be on the shadowed aspects that
are often missed in the way we focus our attention on the habituation of what we have come to recognise as life. It is those
obscurities that ultimately when left to their own devices, crack up systems. What results from that might not be so much
celebratory as fabulous.
War, Madness, and Parody in Literature
Chair: Laura Álvarez Trigo (Universidad de Valladolid)
Elisa Fernández Rodríguez | Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Dark Vietnam: Trauma Memories of War in Tim O’Brien
In Tim O’Brien’s Vietnam War novel The Things They Carried (1990), the word ‘dark’ – and its derivatives – is used over seventy
times. In his post-Vietnam thriller, In the Lake of the Woods (1994), it appears over a hundred. This darkness is used by O’Brien
both for the literal darkness of the environment, usually linked to nighttime, and for the darkness of memory and trauma of the
Vietnam War as well. Both novels recall dark places and refer to the darkness inside their character’s minds: “I take a high leap
into the dark and come down thirty years later” (Things); “he would have no memory beyond darkness”, “conversing with the dark”
(Lake).
The Vietnam War, a dark moment in US history itself, spawned a generation of veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress
disorder. The darkness of Vietnam and the darkness inside the war veterans becomes intrinsically linked with their war memories
and their surrounding environment. The present paper will attempt to offer an in depth-study of the concept of darkness as put
forth by the American novelist in two of his most famous works: the aforementioned The Things They Carried (1990) and In the
Lake of the Woods (1994). It will draw from other war veterans’ testimonies, such as Philip Caputo (A Rumor of War, 1977) and
David Morris (The Evil Hours, 2015). It will attempt to explain how the literal darkness of war becomes, through the literary form,
an inner darkness in those who have witnessed a conflict. Because, as Morris explained, trauma is inherently connected with the
dark: it is “what happens when you catch a surprise glimpse of that darkness, the coming annihilation not only of the body and
the mind but also, seemingly, of the world”.
K. Rama Tejaswini | Andhra University
Embracing Darkness: The Dualistic Nature of Darkness in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and its Reflection
on Post-World War II American Society
Ken Kesey's canonical novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962), had successfully garnered attention for its meticulous
representation of oppressive forces that permeated post World War II American society. There is an intricate and dualistic nature
to the darkness in the novel, which is set within the confines of a mental institution, where the clash between individuality and
conformity takes center stage. Chief Bromden, a formidable and silent figure, serves as the novel's insightful narrator, who names
the oppressive force as 'combine', which determines the lives of individuals in the ward and of the man in the outside world. This
deleterious power of society forces individuals like Chief Bromden to voluntarily join an asylum to escape the perils of conformity.
Initially presented as a source of fear and oppression, darkness later emerges as a catalyst for empowerment, resistance, and
liberation for characters like Chief Bromden and McMurphy within the mental institution. Chief Bromden initially experiences
darkness as a symbol of oppression, but he also finds solace and comfort in its obscurity. It becomes a refuge where he can
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conceal himself and temporarily distance himself from the oppressive forces at play in the institution. Also, darkness plays a
pivotal role in aiding McMurphy, the charismatic and rebellious protagonist, in his quest for freedom. While darkness may seem
threatening at first, it becomes a source of strength and freedom for McMurphy in his battle against the oppressive systems of
mental asylum. Drawing on close textual analysis, this study aims to provide a comprehensive interpretation of the duality of
darkness portrayed in the novel and to explore the multifaceted nature of darkness as a recurring theme in the novel, analyzing
its symbolic significance, and examining how it reflects and shapes the American collective consciousness during the post-World
War II era. Through this exploration, the paper illuminates the novel's enduring significance in its ability to provoke thought and
prompt a re-evaluation of societal values and norms.
Helena Maragou | The American College of Greece
Darkness and Parodic Subversion of History in Melville’s Israel Potter
One of Herman Melville’s most neglected works, Israel Potter (1855), has been traditionally viewed as a tract on heroic stoicism
or a self-portrait of the author’s declining creativity. More recent treatments examine the text as a historical romance that gives
utterance to Melville’s view of the American Revolution and the complex relationship between the American individual and the
authority emanating from state rule. Some of the critics who regard the novel as Melville’s critique of national idealism, have
offered very insightful discussions of the novel’s functioning as Melville’s direct challenge against individual and national memory,
and even as his parodic subversion of the very notion of history. Building on critical treatments of Israel Potter as Melville’s critique
of history itself, this paper argues that in undercutting the narrative of the heroic American past, Melville creates no doubt a
political text—but one which confuses the critic by disengaging the protagonist’s fate from the operations of socio-political
forces. Melville’s literary experimentation produces a paradoxical combination of effects, whereby to expose the falsehoods that
underlie the rhetorical constructions of American citizenship, he ironically pushes the narrative beyond historical time and into
the realm of myth. The protagonist’s motion through space evokes parallels with the quest of the mythic figure of Odysseus,
another soldier trying to find his way home. But, unlike the classical mythic hero, Melville’s protagonist stumbles blindly into a
world of semantic darkness, an ideological vacuum in which historical time has been supplanted by myth lacking myth’s
regenerative potential. Israel Potter emerges as an a-temporal dystopia, unfolding its plot in a surreal landscape of shadows. Thus,
Melville articulates his dark vision of a world ruled by existential dread and of man as a universally dispossessed and historically
irrelevant cipher.
10A | Darkness in Art and Visual Expressions
Chair: Anna Marta Marini (Universidad de Alcalá)
Lidia Kniaź-Hunek | Maria Curie-Skłodowska University
Darkness and Black Body Horror in Grace Jones’ “Corporate Cannibal”
Portraying Black characters involved in the situations of horror has a long history in American audiovisual media with films such
as Candyman (dir. Bernard Rose, 1992), Kuso (dir. Flying Lotus, 2017), Us (dir. Jordan Peele, 2019) and music videos such as Michael
Jackson’s “Thriller” (dir. John Landis, 1983), Rihanna’s “Disturbia” (dir. Anthony Mandler, 2008), and The Games’ “Martians vs.
Goblins” (dir. Matt Alonzo, 2011). Black body horror, a genre trope that “feeds on” graphic metamorphoses of the human flesh, is
a particular manifestation of Black horror genre, repeatedly employed in the medium of music video. Examples include Mykki
Blanco’s “The Initiation” (dir. Ninian Doff, 2013), Tyler, The Creator’s “Who Dat Boy” (dir. Wolf Haley, 2017), and Tierra Whack’s
“Bugs Life” (dir. Thibaut Duverneix and Mathieu Léger, 2018). The presentation aims to analyze the portrayal of darkness and
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Black body horror in Grace Jones’ “Corporate Cannibal” (dir. Nick Hooker, 2008) by employing the framework Ethno-Gothic Horror
theory attributed to John Ira Jennings (2016). I argue that Grace Jones’ “Corporate Cannibalism” is, in fact, a representative of what
I call the “digital body horror” subgenre in contemporary American music video. To achieve that I juxtapose the reading of
“Corporate Cannibalism” as a potential instance of Ethno-Gothic body horror with Steven Shaviro’s analysis of the music video
(Post Cinematic Affect, 2010). I underline the ways in which the atmosphere of terror does not come from the portrayal of actual
deformed and insectoid human flesh but rather from modification of the binary signal. Finally, I elaborate on the resulting
implications about artist’s and director’s perceptions of corporate capitalism.
Rachel Birke | UCLA
Aubrey Beardlsey’s Racial Grotesque: Poe & Baudelaire in Black-and-White
“If I am not grotesque, I am nothing,” states artist Aubrey Beardsley in an 1897 interview for
the popular Idler magazine. Beardsley’s high-contrast drawings manifest this notion of a single, binary choice between
nothingness and grotesquerie as they slash and cleave the abyssal whiteness of a blank page into monstrous definition.
Beardsley’s grotesquerie lies as much in the delicate violence of his lines as in the distorted forms they distinguish. The severity
of this binary is simultaneously made strange as Beardsley’s lines grow so slender that they threaten to disappear and leave the
human form indistinguishable from the artificial and the vacant. This paper examines the grotesque, black-and-white visual
economy of Beardsley’s graphic interpretation of Poe’s “The Black Cat” as situated within the transatlantic nineteenth-century
effort to devise, maintain, and recuperate a cohesive white racial identity. Invoking Toni Morrison’s reading of Poe’s “impenetrable
whiteness” in her monograph Playing in the Dark, I will attempt to make visible the pervasive racial discourses often left
conspicuously invisible in the work of these three figures, as well as in much of the scholarship surrounding them. My analysis
posits that Beardsley’s images, which emerge from a legacy shared with Baudelaire and Poe of the “entire range of views,
assumptions, readings, and misreadings” that make up this transatlantic effort to construct a stable white identity through the
use of Morrison’s “signing and signifying” blackness, undo the racial work of Poe, Baudelaire, and Baudelaire’s Poe while also,
and importantly, mirroring it. Moreover, this triangulation of British, European, and American gothic approaches to the literary
and visual convergence of black-and-white will highlight the curious role of 19th-Century American racial logics in navigating and
justifying those across the Atlantic.
Chantal Meng | Goldsmiths, University of London / The New School for Social Research (NSSR)
BLACK & WHITE: Images Created with Light
This paper serves as a visual essay based on my work as a photographer and strives to see darkness in a new light. It explores
the interplay between light and black and white, with a specific focus on the early days of photography and its impact on
environmental design and therefore modes of perception towards darkness. Drawing on the fields of environmental aesthetics,
phenomenology, media ecology, visual perception, and representation, this study presents a pictorial investigation that delves
into the intricate nuances of shades produced by artificial light. By critically examining the dominance of visual representation and
challenging binary perspectives, this research reveals the rich complexities hidden within stark contrasts. It sheds light on the
intricate relationship between space, artificial light, and images, inviting readers to explore a diverse range of shades and tonalities
that transcend traditional boundaries. Through this exploration, we can enhance our understanding of visual perceptual habits
and broaden our appreciation of the multifaceted nature of darkness.
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Gustavo Alberto Garcia Vaca | California State University, Northridge
Black Sea: Drexciya in Comics and Contemporary Art
This single paper session will explore the mythological Afrofuturist narratives of Detroit Techno artists Drexciya and their
inspiration in comics and contemporary art. Drexciya is the sub-aquatic civilization of water-breathing aquatically mutated
descendants of pregnant African women thrown off slave ships during the Middle Passage. That rupture in time and space created
new cultures in liminal spaces of the Atlantic, in the Americas – with Drexciya emerging out of the black sea, out of the void of
light, out of the absence of air. The conference theme of Darkness [specifically, Darkness in the Deep Sea] is examined via the
Drexciyan mythos. Drexciya creates worlds beyond – worlds born of suffering, formed in the imagination and thriving in the
[im]possible. The sonic imaginaries of Drexciya are discussed in their realizations of alternate futures, pasts and presents: the
graphic novels of AbuQadim Haqq [who created artwork for Drexciya records as well], the paintings of Ellen Gallagher, the film
work of Jenn Nkiru, and other works will be explored. Just as humans underwent transformation to become water-breathing
Drexciyans, so too does the music of Drexciya transform the listener – to become a new being arising from the blackness of the
sea. That blackness, that darkness of the sea, is a place of strength, self-determination and possibilities.
10B | Haunted Environment
Chair: Ester Díaz Morillo (UNED)
Sofia Duarte | Universidad de Valencia
“And let the darkness set us free”: The Role of the Wilderness in Yellowjackets
In 2021, Showtime premiered Yellowjackets (2021-), an American television series that follows a group of teenage girls from New
Jersey who must survive in the remote and vast wilderness after their plane crashes when flying to Seattle. Combining flashbacks
and present-day scenes, viewers gradually discover the lengths that the girls underwent to survive nineteen months in the
remoteness of the forest. Isolated from society and in need to endure the crudeness of winter, the group must resort to
unconventional and reputed ways of survival. In my analysis of the television series, I argue that the darkness of the wilderness
allows the girls to disclose their true selves following Murray’s description of the city as a place “of bound opportunity” while the
Chantal Meng, Bright, 2018
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 7
wilderness is “a place of freedom” (65). Following Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of “becoming-animal”, I analyse how the
characters gradually become one with the wilderness and follow its guidance regardless of their initial repulsion and fear.
Additionally, despite the passage of time, this traumatic experience follows them into adulthood as their time in the wilderness
becomes an unspeakable subject, yet it seems to be the only moment in their lives when they were truly themselves. As Sullivan
argues, the wilderness is terrifying, but we are simultaneously hypnotized by it and “return to its puzzle” (38), following the
group’s inability to truly escape from it. Furthermore, the darkness of the wilderness is presented as a living entity which seems
to disclose their deepest desires and secrets. The night is conceived as a moment of discovery as it is then when the characters
are the closest to the animal-self and carry out their rituals. Thus, in this paper I analyse the concept of wilderness, how it is
presented in the series and how the apparent darkness within it reveals itself through various living beings.
Inna Häkkinen | University of Helsinki / iASK Köszeg
Nuclear Darkness within the Imagined Future: Nuclear Winter, Videogaming and “Slow Hope” Synchronized
The focus on studying the narrative toolkit of conceptualizing ‘darkness’ within ‘nuclear’ narratives appeals to ‘nuclear darkness’
as the implication of ‘nuclear winter’ in envisioning the alternative scenarios of imagined future(s). The presentation appeals to
the launch of ‘nuclear darkness’ (Crutzen 1984) in order to summarize the dominating motifs (nuclear-related winter, crop failure,
mass starvation and death) in narrating an alternative imagined future. Against this perspective the presentation highlights
weakening ‘apocalyptic’ rhetoric of conceptualizing ‘nuclear darkness’ and strengthening ‘survival/hope/resilience’ motifs as a
result of critical thinking on speculative narratives of the imagined nuclear energy/war-impacted future. In studying this narrative
change in storytelling ‘nuclear darkness’ the presentation appeals to ‘slow hope’ concept (Mauch 2018) as a tool for clarifying the
ways of translating the nuclear history of humanity, communicating the current nuclear agenda and predicting ‘nuclear’ future
scenarios. The presentation intends to introduce the narrative dimensions of storytelling ‘nuclear darkness’ as the implication of
the ‘nuke’ imagined future for situating a switch from ‘survival’ narrative to ‘hope/resilience’ narratives in storytelling ‘the nuclear
apocalypse’ in videogaming, on the example of such video game products: 1) Nuclear Darkness (2013) by EternalBlaze Industries,
Bethesda Softworks, and Respawn Entertainment; 2) Nuclear Winter’68: Hearts of Darkness (2014) by Lock&Loads Publishing. LLC;
3) Nuclear Last Darkness (2023) by Ivan MarceloPretti. The presentation contributes to researching the issues on narrating nuclear
energy via fictional storytelling, faciliting the debates on nuclear fictional storytelling as a tools of nuclear knowledge
management towards developing energy literacy (DeWaters, Powers 2011) through multi-mediated components for framing
alternative ‘nuclear impacted’ scenarios of the imagined future.
Colin Bancroft | Newcastle College
Lovely, Dark and Deep: The EcoGothic in the Poetry of Robert Frost
This study will analyse elements of the EcoGothic in the poetry of Robert Frost. The EcoGothic looks to evaluate environmental
concerns through the Gothic lens and is a sub-strand of Ecocriticism, which in its widest definition looks to evaluate the
relationships of culture on the non-human world. The EcoGothic utilises the tropes of the Gothic genre such as: monstrosity,
imprisonment, fear, the Other, the Uncanny, repression, oppression and the Sublime to illuminate issues surrounding the self,
relationships, landscapes and the environment. ‘Darkness’ is a staple trope of gothic and symbolically it represents the danger
inherent in the unknown. The ideas of darkness and light are often collocated in western culture to represent the notions of good
and evil, purity and sin. In Frost, the word ‘dark’ and its linguistic conversions represent many of these same ideas with the word
acting like a bridge across Frost’s canon to explore both man’s fear of the unknown and the malicious ‘darkness’ that characterises
natures ambivalent attitude towards the survival of man. With these ideas in mind, this study will focus on the following areas:
how Frost uses elements of the EcoGothic to explore the dislocation of people and nature through the representation of dark
landscapes; how existential concerns and consolations are mediated through confrontations with dark spaces and how Frost
uses darkness as a vehicle to create tension and terror within his poetry.
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 7
Michal Peprník | Palacký University
Dark Forest Not so Dark
Dark forest is employed as a poetic trope (simile or metaphor) and/or as a forest setting in literary fiction. I shall be concerned
with the latter form. As a forest setting it is used in fairy tales, folk-tales, Gothic novels, romantic fiction and horror as the symbolic
space of the Other (see Robert P. Harrison). The attribute Dark generates a particular set of expectations and emotional
responses, mostly negative ones, because the darkness impairs the sight, the dominant sense of orientation and cognitive
differentiation. In literature the syntagma Dark Forest has become a literary topos fostering a set of scripts (in most cases
wandering and getting lost, a victimization by the malevolent agents at home in the dark or a rescue by benevolent agents). Less
frequently, the Dark Forest is a hiding place from pursuit and persecution. Emotional responses range from fear, anxiety, panic to
suspense and excitement, only rarely produce a stoic calm or curiosity. In the really dark forest, the space and place, as R. B.
Manning point out, the forest becomes a genuine ancient Greek hyle, chaos, primordial shapeless matter, “with only the potential
of forms.”
However, a careful examination of early American literature will reveal that the Dark Forest is: first, never utterly dark, and thus
forms can take shape, and second, it is seldom a scene of important action. It is so for very simple reasons: conflict as a driving
force of the plot generally requires forms: a face to face confrontation, consequently, some degree of visibility. On top of that,
the writers in the 19th century were under the strong influence of theatre melodrama and therefore they situated the most
important scenes in open spaces inside the dark forest, on some kind of stage: a clearing, a mountain top, a lake, a cave, an island,
a river bed, or a some building in the dark forest, be it a military fort, or an Indian village or a log cabin. My paper will support this
argument with examples from Charles Brockden Brown’s Edgar Huntly (1799), J. F. Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales (1823–41),
Catharine Sedgwick’s Hope Leslie (1827), R. M. Bird’s Nick of the Woods (1837), Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short stories, and Catharine
Sedgwick’s Hope Leslie (1827).
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 8
11A | Female Darkness
Chair: Laura Álvarez Trigo (Universidad de Valladolid)
Claudia García-Pajín | Universidad de Oviedo
The Darkness of Female Anger: Murder as a Manifestation of Female Rage in Contemporary American
Literature
Since the early the 2010s, the beginning of fourth-wave feminism, and the appearance of the #MeToo movement, female anger
has emerged as a recurrent topic within the American literary panorama. From Gillian Flynn’s 2012 Gone Girl to Chelsea G.
Summers’s 2020 A Certain Hunger, feminine rage has been crowding best-seller lists for years now; and often this depiction of
fury comes in the form of women murderers and criminals, as is the case of the aforementioned works, or novels like Ottessa
Moshfegh’s Eileen or Mona Awad’s Bunny. Murder and criminal activities are, therefore, depicted in this rising literary tendency as
an imaginary gendered response to rage. Through literature, these authors explore the darkness of a feminine anger that is
presented as a collective and inherited reaction to patriarchal oppression. Thus, this study aims at analysing how the darkness
inhabiting female rage is depicted in the imagination of these successful authors. Lissa Taddeo’s Animal will be taken as a central
work to be examined because of its newness (2021), which will allow for a better understanding of how female rage is being dealt
with in very recent literature. Additionally, through close reading, the study intends to trace a genealogy of female anger in
literature, trying to pinpoint how different texts converge and differ in their representation of the emotion, and the discourses
built and (re)produced. From the framework of Cultural Studies, the investigation also aims at determining how these texts are
representations and responses to the material conditions in which they have been produced and received, taking into
consideration the role of social media in the dissemination of these works and what draws the public to them.
Amie Caddy
Literal and Psychological Darkness in Djuna Barnes’s The Book of Repulsive Women
This paper will argue that Djuna Barnes’s lesser-known work, The Book of Repulsive Women (1915) depicts an array of
simultaneously sexualized and animalised women, who rise from the liminal space of the literal darkness and/or the darkness of
the imagination. I will explore Deborah Parsons’ suggestion that ‘Barnes’s writing indicates that she was well versed in […] the
understanding of sexuality as rooted in the struggle between the desires of the unconscious and the demands of modern
civilization’ (Parsons 2003, 68). Repulsive Women’s speaker appears to function as the mouthpiece of modern civilization, with
their tone ranging from pity to resentment, but always laced with fear. The women within the text are depicted in various locations
around New York, suggesting that a potential threat lurks wherever one may go within the city:
Still her clothing is less risky
Than her body in its prime,
[…]
Ravelling grandly into vice
Dropping crooked into rhyme.
Slipping through the stitch of virtue,
Into crime. (Barnes 2003, 17)
These women ravel, drop and slip their way out of the darkness, into the light and the collective consciousness. As if to reinforce
the subtle threat posed by these ‘repulsive women’, Barnes blends both poetry and illustrations within the text. This blurs the
boundaries between forms and forces them to inhabit the same physical space on the page, mimicking the way the darkness (and
all it contains) and the light must share the physical space of New York City.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 8
11B | True Crime and Dark Histories
Chair: Anna Marta Marini (Universidad de Alcalá)
Raluca Andreescu | University of Bucharest
“A Senseless Act of Children, Wandering Around in the Dark”: The Leopold and Loeb Trial in American
Popular Culture
In 1924, the eminent American criminal defense attorney Clarence Darrow was called on to provide legal representation to thrill
killers Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb in what at the time was deemed the “trial of the century”. The cold-blooded murder of a
randomly chosen fourteen-year old solely as an experiment and with no discernible reason shook the American society to the
core, altered the interaction between psychiatry and the law, and reframed the discussion about psychological abnormality or
that “slippery phantom” that constituted the human mind at the beginning of the previous century. Written thirty years later,
Meyer Levin’s novel Compulsion (1956) provides a semi-fictional account of Leopold and Loeb’s “senseless act of children,
wandering around in the dark” and of the subsequent trial. The book tries to tackle the “mysteries wrapped inside of enigmas in
this case” while exposing and perpetuating, at the same time, the American society’s persistent fascination with it. My paper aims
to explore the manner in which Meyer Levin’s narrative, based on first-hand observations of the trial and its (in)famous actors
and probing into the darkest recesses of the human mind, tries to makes sense of a crime so vile and gratuitous as to resist
closure even after decades. In my endeavor I will focus on how the dominant tendencies in the fields of psychology, physiology,
endocrinology and criminology at the beginning of the twentieth-century are reflected in the novel and on how its author relates
the murder with the philosophical bent that would later on justify the atrocities of the Second World War. Among the theories
underlying the analysis are endocrinologist Louis Berman’s claims that the “dark places in human nature” are not solely the
province of Freudian psychology and that in fact physiologists hold the “arc-lights” illuminating the future of human existence.
Moreover, I look at how Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophical principles, in themselves a “species of insanity”, are hijacked by
providing justification to both the two young criminals’ abominable act, and to the Nazi doctrine arguably prefigured in this
senseless crime at the beginning of last century.
Merran Williams | La Trobe University
Dark Tourism Success: How a Fake Australian Convict Ship Captured the American Imagination
“A V i v i d F r a g m e n t o f P e n a l H i s t o r y ” s u b h e a d i n g f r o m The History of the Convict Ship “Success”
(1912).
From 1912 to the 1930s, a floating museum of crime and punishment toured the United States. Visitors to the repurposed
nineteenth-century sailing ship, Success, included Harry Houdini, who performed an escape from one of the cells and silent film
stars Fatty Arbuckle and Mabel Normand. A book published to promote the Success’s voyage to America is a lurid mix of fact and
fiction, designed to propagate the lie that the ship itself had transported convicts from Britain to Australia in the early 1800s.
Tourists came on board to marvel at implements of torture, watch simulated floggings, see how long they could endure the
infamous “black hole” solitary confinement and view the waxworks of notorious criminals displayed in the cells. The Success was
an immersive true crime experience, fusing performance and exhibits to present a version of popular history that found a wide
audience. It presented dramatic stories about Australia’s convict past, as well as thrilling tales of outlaws like Ned Kelly. In this
paper I will examine the meaning behind the popularity of this dark tourism venture and what the American appetite for macabre
entertainment tells us about the national character during this period. When the ship was displayed in Australia, audiences were
torn between interest and discomfort at exposure of their convict past. In Sydney, the waxworks were mutilated by someone
unhappy at the stories they revealed. However, on a different continent, the Success was far removed from its true origins in
Melbourne, where it had served as a floating prison during the goldrush, and customers could experience horror in a satisfactorily
distanced way.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 8
12A | Literary Darkness and Race
Chair: Michael Fuchs (University of Innsbruck)
Smiley R. Bessy | Andhra University
The Abject Encounter: Unveiling the Darkness in To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, is hailed as a classic of modern American literature and provides
a compelling exploration of racism, social injustices, and the complexities of human nature. This research paper aims to explore
the significance of the abject encounter in this novel through the lens of Kristevan psychoanalysis. This can be done through
emphasizing the concept of the abject and its disruptive nature, by exploring how darkness in the novel represents the abject,
encompassing elements such as racial prejudice, social injustice, marginalized characters, and the loss of innocence. Drawing on
Kristeva’s theory, one can delve into specific scenes and instances in To Kill a Mockingbird, examining how darkness functions as
a catalyst for the unveiling of uncomfortable truths and the questioning of societal structures. It explores how the abject
encounter prompts characters to confront their own complicity, grapple with moral dilemmas, and navigate the complexities of
their own identities. Moreover, it is imperative to explore the broader implications of darkness and the abject within the novel's
narrative structure. By investigating how darkness disrupts established social boundaries, exposes contradictions within the
fictional town of Maycomb, the study would provide for a deeper reflection on societal norms. By unraveling the psychological
discomfort and repulsion associated with the abject encounter, the paper illuminates the novel's critique of prejudice, injustice,
and the struggle for empathy. By applying Kristevan psychoanalysis to the theme of darkness in To Kill a Mockingbird, this research
paper aims to attain fresh insights into the novel's profound commentary on societal abjections and the disruptive potential of
embracing the uncomfortable truths of human existence. This paper aims to highlight the understanding of the characters' moral
development, their engagement with societal contradictions, and the call for social transformation in relation to the theory of
abjection.
Illustration from The History of the Convict Ship “Success” (1912)
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 8
Simona Porro | Università di Firenze
Blackness, Trauma, and Enchantment in Toni Morrison’s God Help the Child
There is a substantial body of scholarship arguing for the relevance of magical realism to Toni Morrison’s fictional production—
particularly to Beloved and Song of Solomon—with one notable exception being her last novel God Help the Child (2015), which, in
that respect, has been remarkably overlooked. The present paper intends to fill this scholarly gap by focusing on Morrison’s
treatment of magical realism in God Help the Child. More precisely, I argue that the novel qualifies as an instance of what Morrison
called “enchantment”, a powerful blend of magic and realism which fulfills the purpose of subverting the narratives of a “post-
racial America”, whereby systemic structures of racism are believed to be a thing of the past, especially considering the election
of Barack Obama as president of the United States in 2009. The dimension of enchantment in the novel opens a few hours after
the protagonist’s birth, as she undergoes an actual metamorphosis, which sees her light skin turn blue-black right before her
mother’s eyes. The reason behind this transformation is never addressed, thus proving it to be the very first of a series of changes
that remain unexplained throughout the story. Thanks to Morrison’s apt use of enchantment, these circumstances are presented
in the novel as upsetting but not extraordinary, an oscillation between the realms of the real and the fantastic which, I argue,
cleverly alerts the readers to the insidious dynamics of the transgenerational transmission of racial prejudices, all the while
underlying the sad “ordinariness” of such situations in the existences of minoritarian subjects. In this case, Morrison tackles
discriminatory prejudices that are held not only by the non-Blacks, but also by the African American community itself, with the
most pervasive being colorism. As the protagonist grows into a sensational Black beauty icon named Bride—the poster-girl of a
white-centered aesthetic paradigm that gives value to Blackness only for commercial and material reasons—she is made to
suffer an uncanny disintegration of her much-admired body, a phenomenon which can be construed as a metaphorical reflection
of Morrison’s conception of racial trauma as “the severe fragmentation of the self”. Indeed, these circumstances force the main
character to come to terms with harrowing experiences of racial discrimination, misogyny, and abuse, which she has desperately
tried to put behind her throughout her life.
Klara Szmańko | University of Opole
Representation of Whiteness and Blackness in Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior
The paper focuses on the representation of whiteness and blackness in the imagery of Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman
Warrior. Many of The Woman Warrior images present whiteness side by side with blackness, which can be seen as an extension of
Kingston’s commentary on racial relations in the United States, a constituent element of a meticulously constructed design, an
attempt to “transform aspects of [one’s] social grounding into aspects of language” (Morrison, Playing in the Dark 4). This
juxtaposition reveals what can be termed as the dyadic quality of whiteness, that is, the socio-historical dependence of whiteness
for its construction on non-white racial categories. Whites position themselves in the center, defining themselves in relation to
the people, whom they place in the margins. Beyond rendering the dyadic quality of whiteness, the black-white imagery of The
Woman Warrior may also be perceived as an illustration of the US racial relations at the time. In the black and white American
world, the tensions between white Americans and black Americans came to the foreground and other marginalized racial and
ethnic groups frequently found themselves left out of the picture. Kingston openly questions the black-white dyad in her third
work, a novel, Tripmaster Monkey (1989). The purpose of The Woman Warrior is to find a voice and articulate unique Chinese
American experience rather than reclaim America for Chinese Americans.
While opting for a particularist, socio-historical explanation of black-white imagery in The Woman Warrior, I ground the explanation
in the archetypal theory of color perception. Cultural critic Tzvetan Todorov looks for the opposition in nature that contributed to
the creation of the dichotomy of black versus white across cultures (Todorov cited in Adams 20). White is associated with light
and day, while black with darkness and night. Expounding Todorov’s theories, Michael Vannoy Adams assures that Todorov
withholds from drawing definitive parallels between the polarity of black and white in the world of nature and the world of culture
(Adams 21). It is also worth noting that traditional color theory identifies both black and white as achromatic colors. What makes
both of them achromatic is their relation to light. While white reflects all wavelengths of light, black absorbs all wavelengths of
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 8
light (Adams 33). Undermining the traditional color theory, Patricia Sloane shifts the focus from light to sight. Sloane’s shift of
emphasis to sight and perception in the definition of colors is of particular significance to this study because of the centrality of
vision to its subject matter. According to Sloane, both black and white are colors because human beings perceive them as such.
12B | Queer Bodies
Chair: Beatriz Hermida Ramos (Universidad de Salamanca)
Sara Soler i Arjona | Universitat de Barcelona
“In the dark, our facts lit us up and our acts pinned us down”: Darkness, Queerness, and Temporal
Dislocation in Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (2019)
In his poetry collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds (2016), Ocean Vuong employs the symbol of the ‘exit wound’ to explore the
material consequences of war and violence, especially drawing on his own experience as a Vietnamese refugee. As an injury
inflicted by a bullet, an exit wound serves a double meaning: whilst it is a proof of past violence and loss, it also becomes a source
of regeneration and healing. Such a dualistic focus on trauma and survival equally permeates Vuong’s debut novel On Earth We’re
Briefly Gorgeous (2019). Written as a letter to his illiterate mother, Vuong’s non-linear narrative excavates the protagonist’s family
history, shifting between past and present, to examine his identity as a queer diasporic subject living in today’s America. I analyze
the novel’s temporal dislocation as a formulation of queer time: by rejecting the heteronormative structure of temporality that
normalizes linear patterns of repetition and progression, the novel envisions an alternative understanding of time where the
queer subject is endowed with agency (Muñoz 2009; Freeman 2010). Jumping between Vietnam and the US, Vuong’s narrative
contests dominant narratives of war―those embedded within US imperialism―and sheds light on the conflict’s ‘exit wounds,’
the losses it leaves behind. As a result, the voices of those who have been silenced by Western representation are brought to the
fore. At the same time, this temporal mechanism reveals the ongoing histories of violence that queer diasporic subjects must still
face. As a crucial enabler of cross-temporal connections, darkness becomes a catalyst for such an exploration―from the
protagonist’s account of his grandmother’s war stories and his mother’s PTSD nightmares, to his coming to terms with his own
sexuality. In this way, the novel’s deployment of darkness, despite uncovering myriad dangers and traumas, becomes primarily a
tool for subversion and, above all, survival.
Elena Cortés Farrujia | Universitat de Barcelona
Some (Living) Things Are Left in the Dark: Basements and Homes Where the Forgotten Dwell in Queer
Indigenous Literatures
Queer Indigenous literatures, as Lisa Tantonetti asserts in relation to the work of Janice Gould (Koyangk'auwi Maidu), could
generally be seen as a “Palimpsest[s] of pasts and presents that fluidly intersect, overlap and rearrange through the felt
experience[s] of history and memory” (2014, 146, emphasis in the original). This paper is an approach to how mnemonic and
historical experiences are entangled with spatiotemporal home configurations in indigiqueer and Two-Spirit authors and their
texts, such as Joshua Whitehead (Cree), and Beth Brant (Mohawk). This paper dwells in their representations of home, which
encompass (beyond) domestic structures, the land, and the body itself, and pays particular attention to the roles that the
basement has in orientating the writers’ memory in their works of literary fiction. The space of the basement has long been
associated with that space where the uncanny occurs. In popular culture, and especially in horror films, basements are identified
with the ghostly presence of unliving beings, which, most often than not, make (c)overt realities that were deemed to be forgotten
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 8
visible. This paper contends that the basements present in works like Jonny Appleseed (Whitehead, 2018) and “My House” (Brant,
1991) stand as spaces where darkness embodies entities, experiences, and knowledges that have been left out of the main
household for (forced) assimilation to occur (and displayed in the more “visible” parts of the house) and that stand as
multitemporal spaces of enunciation. Therefore, darkness in the basement embodies recognition, history, and survivance
(Vizenor). Thus, I aim to observe how these authors work chorally to (dis)locate their characters and their identities, understanding
the incommensurable objects (following Sara Ahmed’s definition) that they use to (dis)orient themselves in these spaces, namely
those which at times are associated to waste, to body fluids and things discarded or deemed as to be banished from the “clean”
ideal of the “American Home” as queer decolonial, Indigenous orientation devices.
Wesley Cornwell | Columbia University
Losing the Form, Feeling the Heat
In his collection of experimental, autobiographical essays Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration, American artist and activist
David Wojnarowicz recounts in searing detail his often fraught, occasionally tender experiences of public sex. For example, in
“Losing the Form in Darkness,” Wojnarowicz remembers “the appearance of night in a room full of strangers, the maze of hallways
wandered as in films, the fracturing of bodies from darkness into light.” Wojnarowicz’s description of cruising along the Hudson
River piers exemplifies the affective relay between atmosphere (night, darkness), architecture (a room, a maze of hallways), and
the (dis)articulation of corporeal limits (fractured bodies). By virtue of its sensorial impact, darkness reconfigures, but does not
dissolve, the boundary between the self and the world. In turn, this bodily disintegration allows for the fleeting emergence of
complex, contingent modes of sociality: impersonal intimacy emerges through the darkened fissures of the self. In this
presentation, I trace the role of darkness vis-a-vis (in)visibility and corporeality in the late twentieth century American imagination
of cruising. By reading the works of David Wojnarowicz, Samuel Delany, and Leonard Fink among others in conversation with
queer theory, disability studies, and phenomenology, I argue for the central role of darkness in spaces of public sex both before
and in the wake of AIDS. In much of this literature and visual art, darkness is both an environment and a force, a place around the
body and a pressure on the body. Through the synesthetic sensation of darkness (that is, darkness experienced not only visually
but also haptically), bodily boundaries are temporarily reshaped, which enables—and indeed engenders—new forms of social
relation.
13A | Women and Religion
Chair: Laura Álvarez Trigo (Universidad de Valladolid)
Ann Beebe | University of Texas at Tyler
“For there shall be no darksome night”: Anne Bradstreet’s Sunshine and Shadows
For the Puritans of the Great Migration (1620-1642), darkness was accepted as a literal and metaphorical loss of God. John 1:4-
5 offers this promise: “In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness
comprehended it not” (KJV). John Cotton (1584-1652), a minister who accompanied the Puritans across the Atlantic, describes a
Puritan’s greatest fear in The Way of Life (1641) as “I am as one singled out and left in darknesse.” For the Puritan poet Anne
Bradstreet (1612-1672), darkness and light did carry these connotations of sin / salvation or earth / heaven. But her use of light
and darkness imagery, often made more concrete as sunshine and shadow, transcends that single meaning. In her “Of the Four
Ages of Man” there is an increasing use of darkness (“darksome prison” line 325) through the ages of man—childhood, youth,
middle age, old age—until the body lies in the “dark house” or grave (line 449). In “Contemplations” and her prose Meditations
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shadows are a welcome refuge from the “parching sun” (Meditation #47). And perhaps most interestingly for this poet, sunbeams
and shadows become an expression for the working of a mind. Thoughts, which “yield me more content” (“The Flesh and the
Spirit,” line 70), can be figured as sunbeams or shadowed folds of light which draw her from the “darksome night” (line 101). This
paper will explore the layers of meaning in Anne Bradstreet’s use of light and darkness imagery in her seventeenth-century poetry
and meditations.
Rita Filanti
“Out of the Darkness”: Oppositional Metaphors in Voltairine de Cleyre’s Anarchist Poetry
At the turn of the twentieth century, most anarchist militants around the world used poetry as a weapon of political propaganda
while also insisting on its aesthetic and ethical function (Cohn 2014; Ordóñez 2018). Born in a small midwestern town, Voltairine
de Cleyre (1866-1912) was among the most prolific American anarchist writers of her time, producing poems, essays, short
stories and translations while teaching English to immigrant workers in Philadelphia. Expressing her rage against the stifling State
and Church oppression, de Cleyre’s writing revolves around a series of oppositional metaphors. The repetition of antonyms such
as “darkness” and “light,” “night” and “day,” “black” and “white,” however, destabilizes their conventional meaning through ironic
reversals. As if lingering on late Victorian paradigms, De Cleyre’s rhyming stanzas only in passing presage the upheaval of
Modernist experimentation. While the “Chicago Renaissance” and nascent Imagism were blazing the path to the “short twentieth
century”, de Cleyre’s bitter verses sound an apparently old-fashioned note. An in-depth analysis of her language, however, reveals
what surrealist poet and activist Franklin Rosemont once defined as her “hauntingly wild and violent lyricism” (1990). Analyzing
some of her graveyard poems (“Night on the Graves” 1886, and “Light upon Waldheim”1897), alongside her poems of conversion
to atheism and anarchism (“The Christian’s Faith” 1887, “The Freethinker’s Plea” 1887, “Out of the Darkness” 1893), this paper
focuses on the use of metaphorical language in de Cleyre’s revolutionary thought, particularly the subversion of, or compliance
with, accepted images of darkness as oppression vs. light as deliverance. By dismantling hegemonic discourse, her “spiraling
rhetoric” aims at making an egalitarian, anti-hierarchical and borderless model possible in language as well as in life (DeLamotte
2003).
Inês Tadeu | Universidade da Madeira
Things of Darkness by Salem’s Nocturnal Agents: The Inversionary Behaviour of the Woman-As-Witch in
Nineteenth-Century Mnemonic (Re)Imaginations of the Salem Witch Hunt of 1692
The ultimate crime of witchcraft was to enter into a covenant with the prince of darkness, the Devil. (Koslofsky 30) In the case of
the Salem witch hunt of 1692, the magistrates elicited from the accused witches confessions about their heretical nocturnal
preternatural activities: the signing of the Devil’s black book and the attending of the Sabbath. The Devil-ridden testimonies and
confessions are well-documented in contemporary primary source legal records. They were broadly available in the nineteenth
century, making the subject of the Salem witch-hunt quite an established American dark literary motif at that time. (Adams 2008)
What dark deeds by Salem’s nocturnal agents did these testimonies entail? How were they treated in nineteenth-century
American fiction? This study explored the (re)creation of the Puritan culture of the nocturnal as the site of diabolical temptation
in a selection of nineteenth-century American Romantic historical fiction authored by women, currently dismissed as lesser
authors. We critically described how these women writers (re)presented the darkness encompassing the woman-as-witch in
their mnemonic (re)imaginations of the Salem witch hunt. Our selected corpus included the following novels: Salem: A Tale of the
Seventeenth Century (1874) by D.R. Castleton; Dorothy the Puritan: The Story of a Strange Delusion (1893) by A.C. Watson; and Ye
Lyttle Salem Maide: A Story of Witchcraft by P. B. Mackie. The findings in these novels illustrated the authors’ view that the dark
could not conceal any form of inversionary behaviour by the woman-as-witch of Salem. Instead, it exacerbated and exposed her
to preternatural perils.
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13B | Frontiers of Human Knowledge
Chair: John NA Brown (Robert Gordon University)
Roxana Oltean | University of Bucharest
“Sullen Darkness,” “Luminous Glare.” Cartographic Imaginations in Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur
Gordon Pym
Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym occupies a special place in both Poe criticism (Alethea Hayter, R. Kopley) as
well as in inquiries into nineteenth-century romances of discovery or, one might put it, “heart-of-darkness” narratives (Lawrence
Buell, Robert Tally). At the same time, Poe’s text, and his whole work, have occasioned investigations into the construction of
darkness and whiteness, and of colonial dispossession, in the antebellum literary imagination (Toni Morrison, Gesa Mackenthun).
Most famously, Poe’s narrative of sailing into horror, mapped along a trajectory marked by uncanny or cryptic encounters with
“things of evil” (as he memorably puts in in “The Raven”) sometimes animated by hopes of deliverance or the thrill of adventure,
stops short of any closure afforded by a denouement, either the witnessing of a final catastrophe, or a miraculous rescue, or the
revelation of a heart of terror. Rather, the narrative breaks off in an indeterminate point, in a moment of tension between “sullen
darkness” and “luminous glare” augmented by the apparition of a white, shrouded figure. The breadth of interpretations of this
tantalizing encounter ranges from readings of coded representations of the slaveholding south (John Carlos Rowe) to
interpretations centering on the disintegration of language (Gerald Kennedy), but the scene has also been read as a realist
rendering of optical phenomena occurring in a polar region (Dameron). Drawing together disparate lines of analysis, the present
paper examines the imaginative cartography conjured by Poe’s text from the perspectives opened up by archipelagic studies (for
example, Michelle Ann Stephens), eschewing oppositions and pointing to submerged continuities between apparently contrasting
realms of light and dark, and in dialogue with readings of Poe’s problematic position with regard to concepts like home and
deracination (P. E. Phillips). In doing so, the paper looks at how the construction of darkness – and a continuous, rather than
opposed, and no less terrifying, whiteness – are inscribed into the fabric of the very social life the novel seems to leave behind,
and re-echoed in texts inspired by Poe’s narrative, most notably Jules Verne’s lesser-known An Antarctic Mystery (1897) and Mat
Johnson’s Pym (2011).
Isaac Aday | UT Dallas
”Darkness [threatens] the light of reason with what it [does] not know”: The Gothic/Horror as Re-
Enchantment
Max Weber (1864-1920) described the modern world as one characterized by "disenchantment" (Entzauberung, or “de-magic-
ation”)—that is, more specifically, one in which magical thinking, recognition of the supernatural/paranormal, belief, and
superstition, have given way to rationalization, empiricism, positivism, and science. The "old world" was, to Weber and others,
one enshrouded in darkness—and the new, modern and post-Enlightenment world, one in which religion, mythology, and other
previously unexplainable phenomenon, were increasingly eschewed in favor of empirically testable, and "demystified", theories
and hypotheses. Light cast out darkness—and darkness was made obsolete. In this paper, I argue—through an analysis of the
past and present of the Gothic narrative—that this "disenchantment," this "death" of magical thinking is indeed the very requisite
to the Gothic novel's success. The Gothic/horror is, in its heart, the re-emergence—invasion—of the old, enchanted, and
darkened world, into that of scientific empiricism and knowledge. The Gothic's success—what Fred Bottling refers to as the
combined terror and pleasure of the sublime—is nothing more than the discombobulation of truth, knowledge, reason,
imagination, and feeling that results in the sloppy and uncontained collision of darkness and light (7). Cthulhu and the "Old Ones"
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threaten all that science has come to know about mankind's origins and telos; Dracula, the undead scourge of England, thwarts
modern medicine and is thwarted himself by Christian images and peasant superstitions; "Ligeia", at its conclusion, walks
carefully the thin line between the explainable (a drug-induced hallucination) and the unexplainable (a genuine ghost sighting),
fully aware of the sublimity of the impossibility of differentiation. In each of these stories, reason, enlightenment, and positivism
is challenged by the re-emergence of the old, enchanted world of ghosts, gods, and demons. In other words, what I seek to discuss
in this presentation is the importance of scientific rationalism and Enlightenment thought in the development and success of
Horror and the Gothic. The relation between the two, I suggest, is critical in how we understand the Gothic/horror novel, and the
effects it has upon its readers.
Michael Fuchs | University of Innsbruck
The Deep Dark Ocean: Monsters and the Limits of Human Knowledge
In the documentary film Deepsea Challenge (2014), filmmaker James Cameron’s goal is to reach the bottom of the Challenger Deep,
the deepest point of the seabed on Earth. When putting the submersible designed for the project to a stress test, Cameron notes,
“You just go into darkness.” Both in this scene and later when Cameron ventures down to nearly 36,000 feet below the ocean
surface, the images viewers can see support this idea, as the light emanating from the sub penetrates the darkness. Similarly, in
Steve Alten’s novel Meg (1997), the narrator describes the descent to the bottom of the ocean: “Within minutes the sunlight faded
to a deep shade of gray, and then… total blackness” (74). When one character eventually turns on the search light below 34,000
feet, the characters in the sub are “awestruck by the view,” thinking they have “entered a different world” (78) ready for
exploration and (knowledge) extraction. Deep-sea narratives such as these illustrate the Western belief in techno-scientific
progress, as the exploration of the deep sea brings literal light to the darkness. However, these deep-sea stories just as much
reveal that much remains hidden from human sight. By surveying examples ranging from documentary films (e.g. the segment
about the deep sea Our Planet [2019]) and illustrations of deep-sea creatures in coffee table books (e.g. Creatures of the Deep Sea
[2014]) to feature films (e.g. The Meg [2018]) and videogames (e.g. SILT [2022]), I will thus demonstrate that imaginations of the
deep sea foreground the limits of human knowledge. These limits of human knowledge, in turn, may be a challenge (“Exploration
is never done,” remarks Cameron when returning to the surface), but they may also become a source of horror.
14A | Surveillance and the Dark
Chair: Paula Barba Guerrero (Universidad de Salamanca)
Laura Álvarez Trigo | Universidad de Valladolid
We’re Never in the Dark: Raising Children Under Constant Surveillance in Contemporary Sci-Fi Asian-
American Fiction
There is an evident sense of freedom and self-assurance that comes from not been watched, from remaining in the dark in your
own private space. The idea of being in the dark can be associated with a lack of necessary information as well as a lack of safety
but, at the same time, it allows you to be hidden, limiting the outside knowledge and control over your most intimate routines.
Beyond CCTV constantly recording public spaces, contemporary technologies such as social networks and virtual assistants have
also entered the private realm. Although it is not always the case, ideally, one’s home is thought of as a secret enclave of safety,
not only due to the comfort of our loved ones but also to the knowledge that our failures will not be known beyond the walls of
our house. Thus the home, without surveillance, is a place that remains in the dark, where restrictions can be lax and mistakes or
imperfections can go unnoticed. On the contrary, with surveillance, the home implies a complete absence of agency in which
darkness comes to represent a literal and metaphorical aesthetic of resistance.
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In this paper, I explore the representation of surveillance in contemporary Sci-Fi Asian-American Fiction. In order to explore the
safety of the dark space that the home might represent, this study specifically deals with characters in situations where child-
caring is involved. It focuses primarily in The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan, published in 2022, and offers a brief
comparison to Ted Chiang’s short story “Truth of Fact, Truth of Feeling” (2013) and to the movie After Yang (Kogonada, 2021). In
The School for Good Mothers, Frida, the protagonist, speaks of retreating to the toilet in her house where there are no cameras
installed and, later, at the constantly surveilled compound where she is secluded, longs for her “tiny dark house”. This work
questions the effectiveness of the constant presence of cameras (as well as other surveying technologies that measure emotions,
vitals, etc.), exploring how surveillance is framed in these narratives, what sacrifices and benefits attempting to be and/or
remaining “in the dark” represent for the characters and how they rationalize or confront the alleged necessity of constant
supervision of their ability to care for their families.
Carla Abella Rodríguez | Universidad de Salamanca
Surveilled Bodies in Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s Friday Black
The main aim of this paper is to explore Blackness in relation to surveillance in Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s short story collection
Friday Black (2018). The ongoing racial violence in the context of the contemporary rise of white supremacism features in Adjei-
Brenyah’s narrative. His short stories engage with racial violence in order respond to the normalisation of Black death in American
society, where “there is a certain way of black people being murdered that has become palatable” (Adjei-Brenyah n.p.). The main
purpose of this investigation is to scrutinise the surveillance of Blackness in the short story collection. More specifically, the paper
tries to explore anti-Blackness as instrumental for the management of racialised difference. The research is theoretically
anchored in the notion of anti-Blackness as a “race-based paradigm of racial othering and subjugation through a litany of
organized structural violence against Black people” (Gilmore and Bettis 1). As Dumas notes, anti-Black violence rests on the idea
that “[t]he Black cannot be human, is not simply an Other but is other than human,” thus denying the humanitity of Black life (13).
This paper intends to explore how Blacks appear as recipients of processes of containment. The discourses and apparatuses
implemented to Other the Black body are analysed to unveil the mechanisms to control Blackness, which appears as a threat to
white American society. Friday Black reveals that Black characters can also deploy their own strategies of control and regulation.
These mechanisms can be read as a defiance against national anti-Blackness.
Sarah Cullen | Trinity College Dublin
“There ain’t no watchman to be drugged—now there ought to be a watchman”: Curfews and Race in
Nineteenth-Century American Literature
Curfews are a pervasive and overarching trope of nineteenth-century American literature, from regulations within white
settlements requiring citizens to stay indoors after a certain hour, to rules forbidding enslaved African Americans from leaving
their plantations after dark, edicts regarding the spaces denied to Native American tribes at night, and laws preventing night work
for women working in certain industries. This paper examines the representation of curfews in nineteenth-century American
literature in order to demonstrate how nocturnal rules were used to justify white expansion and colonialism, while simultaneously
demonising and disenfranchising people of colour.
The title of this paper comes from Twain’s Huckleberry Finn (1885). At one point, Tom Sawyer objects that the night does not
present enough obstacles for him. Crucially, the lack of watchmen – those who enforce curfews – gets in the way of his game:
that of rescuing the captured Jim. Instances such as this highlight Toni Morrison’s observation in Playing in the Dark (1992) that
“Africanism is the vehicle by which the American self knows itself as not enslaved[.]” Building upon Morrison’s argument, my
paper argues that the night is the vehicle by which white Americans attempt to deny their freedom by imagining themselves
instead as those being oppressed. In texts from James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans (1827) to Caroline Lee Hentz’s
The Planter’s Northern Bride (1954), the gathering darkness is made synonymous with the dangers that supposedly threaten the
legitimacy of white society. Lucy Maddox has argued that “[...] the American writer was, whether intentionally or not, contributing
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 8
to the process of constructing a new-nation ideology[.]” I argue that by representing white society as threatened or even
endangered, white American authors reinforced arguments which justified the use of curfews and nocturnal regulations, laying
the groundwork for the construction of a white dominated America.
Dark Romanticism
Chair: Alejandro River Vadillo (Universidad de Alcalá)
Kristina Chavez | La Sierra University
Exploring Darkness in the American Imagination: A Study of Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy
Hollow"
This presentation critically examines the theme of darkness in the American imagination as portrayed in Washington Irving's "The
Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (1819). This presentation offers a comprehensive analysis of the author’s background; the historical
context and its relation to the story; as well as the integration of Gothic elements to further explore the duality between Ichabod
Crane and the Headless Horseman. Irving’s central motif of darkness in the American imagination within "The Legend of Sleepy
Hollow" highlights the moral ambiguities and societal anxieties of early nineteenth-century America. To facilitate a
comprehensive analysis, my presentation briefly notates Irving's background, appraising his notable contributions to American
literature. The author's motivations and influences ultimately reinforce the importance of his exploration of darkness as a central
theme vis-à-vis “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”. Contextually, a historical framework that situates the narrative amidst the
societal changes and tensions characteristic of early nineteenth-century America is also necessary. Within the Dutch settlement
of Sleepy Hollow, societal anxieties and uncertainties were prevalent amid this transformative period. Further, evidence of
morality and superstitions of the era were present within Irving’s text. Crane’s paranoia about the ghost stories and exceedingly
superstitious tendencies only added to the eerie setting of the story alongside his mysterious disappearance. The integration of
Gothic elements demonstrates the potency of darkness as a symbolic device within the narrative. For example, an analysis of:
the eerie setting, supernatural occurrences, and psychological depth within the text, enriches the exploration of the American
imagination–heightening the thematic significance of darkness. The crux of the presentation lies in the examination of the duality
between Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman. A meticulous analysis of their respective traits, motivations, and symbolism
showcases the moral ambiguities and societal anxieties interwoven within their respective characters. This exploration
underscores how darkness serves as a conduit for grappling with the human condition and reflecting the cultural and historical
tensions emblematic of early nineteenth-century America.
Gamze Ar | Ege University
Shades of Sin: The Darkness of Puritan Society in The Scarlet Letter
The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is an excellent representation of the darkness that permeated Puritan society,
revealing the strict moral codes that governed American society in 1850. This darkness comes from the practices of Puritans in
their deeds and regulations in society. The Scarlet Letter is a powerful critique of Puritan society's strict moral codes and hypocrisy.
The darkness portrayed in the novel represents the oppressive nature of this society, exposing the flaws and contradictions
hidden beneath a façade of righteousness. The novel revolves around Hester Prynne, a young woman who commits adultery and
is punished by society by being forced to wear a scarlet letter "A" on her clothing as a symbol of her shame. Hawthorne's use of
diverse symbols and motifs masterfully portrays the darkness inherent in Puritan society while exposing its hypocrisy. Set in a
society governed by strict moral codes and religious beliefs, The Scarlet Letter describes a world where sin and punishment are
central themes. Throughout the novel, Hawthorne's use of the scarlet letter motif underscores the theme of darkness. The letter
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 8
is not only a symbol of Hester's sin but also represents the darkness that pervades Puritan society. The Puritans' strict adherence
to their moral codes often leads to hypocrisy and intolerance, as seen in how they treat Hester and other outcasts in their
community. The Scarlet Letter is an outstanding depiction of the darkness that permeated Puritan society. Hawthorne's symbols
and motifs expose the themes of hypocrisy, intolerance, and the devastating consequences of rigid social codes. The novel also
examines the tension between individualism and society, as seen in the themes of love and judgment. In addition to exploring the
darkness of Puritan society, the novel also focuses on the relationships between characters. By analyzing the story from various
perspectives, one can understand the essential point of the darkness in the book. The study will try to reflect the darkness in
Hawthorne’s world in multiple aspects. This study will reveal how darkness is shown in the novel. From which perspectives did
Hawthorne use darkness as the central theme? What is the essential point in the darkness?
Samuel Suárez Murias | Universidad de Oviedo
From the Gaols to the Stake: How Religious Intolerance Took the Quakers from England to Dark Times in
New England
In 17th c. England, under the reign of King Charles I, William Laud became Archbishop of Canterbury. With him holding the power
within the Anglican Church, and sharing ideas with Charles I, both introduce new reforms into the church. Those reforms become
known as Laudanism and tried to reverse the Calvinist approach brought forth by the Reformation, drawing the Anglican church
closer to Catholicism with measures such as bringing clerics to prominent positions of power, taking back landownership for the
Church, and sticking to the scriptures, not considering other possible interpretations of the Bible. Puritan population did not agree
with those measures, as they thought they were taking the Anglican church closer to Catholicism.
As a consequence of these reforms, a new wave of religious persecution took place, and it provoked a clash with the Puritan
factions present in England. In addition, these reforms stirred up civil unrest alongside other factors. Among censorship and the
restrictions to exercise religious freedom, religious groups such as the Society of Friends became belligerent, but as they were
not able to succeed, they decided to leave for the Massachusetts Bay Colony and to the Pennsylvania colony. Once there, the
Puritan communities reproduced the dark times they had escaped from in England, by enforcing their own religious persecution,
censorship, and intolerance. Quakers went from being judged and sent to trial to be burned at the stake, and isolated in territories
such as Barbados. Bearing this in mind, I will explore how religious intolerance traveled from Europe to the “New World” colonies
and how the dreams of freedom turned into a situation worse than the one experienced on the continent taking the Quakers from
a shadowy period to a Dark Age.
KEYNOTE | NOAM M. ELCOTT
La Nuit américaine: Artificial Darkness and Race in Recent American Art
Chair: Anna Marta Marini (Universidad de Alcalá)
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