Hawthorne and the EcoGothic

The Annual Conference of the MLA will meet in Toronto on January 7-10, 2021. The editors of Gothic Nature observe that the Gothic now serves as a primary means to articulate the horrors of climate change and our current environmental crisis. EcoGothic, however, has been a fundamental component of American literature since William Bradford recoiled from the continent’s “hideous & desolate wilderness.” A recent spate of articles not only acknowledges this strange continuity but has begun to situate Nathaniel Hawthorne as one of the tradition’s key figures. This panel invites papers that further investigate Hawthorne’s entanglement with the ecoGothic.

Abstracts of 250 words to Nancy Sweet at nsweet@csus.edu by March 13, 2020.