Ecofeminism and the Gothic Archives of American Folk Horror : Shadows of the Anthropos

This study explores American folk horror as a mode of inquiry into the literary, cultural, filmic, ecological, and political histories of the United States. By using ecofeminist theory to read American folk horror against its roots in the frontier gothic, a genre concerned with the realities and afterlives of American settler colonialism, in turn inextricably linked with the U.S.' founding myths and national narratives that developed since the arrival of the first European settlers, my approach uncovers the dual and simultaneous exploitation of women and nature since 1492, focusing on the ways human and non-human Others continue to be at the mercy of anthropocentric and capitalocentric systems. American folk horror as genre, and the frontier gothic as its archive, allows us to see the ways American founding narratives serve as and word like folklore, contributing to the perpetuation of discrimination against underprivileged groups, especially those who are seen as nature, like women. This book offers a lengthy theorization of the genre as well as both ecofeminist readings of select texts of American folk horror (Darren Aronofsky's mother!, Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Robert Eggers's The VVitch: A New-England Folktale) and a first discussion of a potential corpus of the genre ranging from frontier gothic literature and contemporary film to video games of the 2020s.

Level thesis:degree_level

thesis.doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher

Universität Passau

Year

2024

Author dc:creator

• Hauke, Alexandra

Contributors dc:contributor

• Fitz, Karsten

• ecofeminism
• frontier gothic
• American folk horror
• Anthropocene
• settler colonialism

Statement dc:rights

• Creative Commons - CC BY - Namensnennung 4.0 International

Repository record source_url

https://opus4.kobv.de/opus4-uni-passau/frontdoor/index/index/docId/1476

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:kobv.de-opus4-uni-passau:1476