In her seminal essay on body genres, Linda Williams characterizes embodied responses to film genres, citing shudders and screams as the products of horror and tears as the product of melodrama. Yet a great deal of horror scholarship has investigated the intimate allegorical relations between horror’s monsters and marginalized subject positions, as in canonical works such as Monsters in the Closet (Harry M. Benshoff) and Horror Noire (Robin R. Means Coleman). Studies have further explored how horror media function cathartically as relatively safe encounters with terror for those experiencing cultural prejudice, as seen in Isabel Cristina Pinedo’s Recreational Terror and Heather Petrocelli’s Queer for Fear. This lineage speaks to intensities of feeling between marginalized communities and horror and poses questions about the ways horror may bring about varied emotional reactions, producing not only screams but also grief, introspection, and tears. Contemporary accounts of horror posit emerging forms of arthouse influenced horror that eschew the genre’s expectations for cyclical patterns of scare moments, sometimes calling this post-horror (David Church) or, in popular contexts, elevated horror. However, other research ponders the long-standing history of horror as an ambient, non-linear, and experimental cinema by considering, for example, the melancholy of Val Lewton’s 1940s productions (Alexander Nemerov, Icons of Grief) and the overlap between horror and art cinema in works by Todd Browning, George Franju, and Andy Warhol (Joan Hawkins, Cutting Edge).

This panel invites explorations of emotion, feeling, and affect in horror film and media. Possible topics include studies of films and other media relevant to horror that mix genres and/or produce mixed emotional responses. Intersections between horror, the gothic, the avant-garde, experimental cinema, and melodrama. Media whose status as horror is debated. Emotional responses to horror, especially those other than fear. Community affinities for horror media which cultivate non-terrorized responses such as joy and celebration, especially among marginalized communities. The blurring of horror’s conventions through the intervention of other cinematic traditions, such as queer cinema, Black cinema, women’s cinema, or international cinemas. The application of aesthetics not commonly associated with horror to horrific subject matters. Media that is not marketed as horror but produces a horrified response. Expansive considerations of horror as a feelings-based cinema.

Please send an abstract (no more than 2500 characters), select bibliography (3-5 sources), and short biography (500 characters) to Peter Marra at thepetermarra@wayne.edu by August 15th.