UPDATED: MLA 2018 Special Session: Catholicism’s Gothic Legacy
This proposed MLA 2018 (January 4-7, NYC) session seeks papers that address the relationship between Catholicism and English Gothic literature in ways that move beyond simplistic observations of the genre’s use of anti-Catholic tropes. Especially welcome are papers that situate Gothic literature in the history of English Catholicism or which approach the religious content and contexts of Gothic literature from “post-secular” points of view. Papers might examine anything from 18th- and early 19th-century Catholicism’s influence on the rise of Gothic literature, to the lingering anti-Catholicism (or, conversely, Catholic nostalgia) in 21st-century Gothic literature and/or film, or anything in between.