A growing percentage of the American population is leaving the church and opting to let go of religious and spiritual frameworks to find social and personal meaning and even economic success, and this is true for African Americans who would have had no other option than to be “churched.” This development is noteworthy because much of what it means to be “black” in the United States, at least from a Western standpoint, is immersed in religious or spiritual frameworks that claim that people of African descent are inherently religious or spiritual. To be sure, it is often assumed that being religious is synonymous (ontologically) with being black and African.

Dark times call for dark and demonic stories. Deep and dark works and our fixation on them provide apocalyptic, devastating, and shocking revelations about individuals, society, and nature. While works of horror tear audiences away from realistic norms and social acceptability, they confront us with extreme embodiment, emotion, and intellectual crisis. Norms of decency, sensitivity, and reason are in decline but simultaneously acquire added value. This session investigates the meaning and importance of horror, terror, and monstrosity through the study of film, graphic fiction, and literature. What do these works demand from us?