The American Southern Gothic on Screen

Karen Horsley

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English

Routledge
01 December 2025

Humanities; Media studies

Series: Horror and Gothic Media Cultures

The Southern Gothic on Screen explores a body of screen texts that conform to certain generic conventions and aesthetics that, since the early twentieth century, have led to the construction of the American South as a space of ruin, decay, melancholy, loss, and haunting. The book considers the cultural significance of the Southern Gothic on screen by examining southern otherness as the primary mechanism through which the South is rendered a space of darkness and danger. This opens up a critical space for the Southern Gothic to be discussed as a screen genre with its own complex visual, thematic and narrative codes. The book establishes a perspective that synthesizes a broad understanding of Southern Gothic genericity with pre-existing cultural and political discourses on the South, resulting in an analysis that is specific to film and television while remaining heedful of the intersecting discourses that inform both the Gothic and the South as historic and mediated constructs.

By: Karen Horsley
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9781041187165
ISBN 10: 1041187165
Series: Horror and Gothic Media Cultures
Pages: 234
Publication Date: 01 December 2025
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Acknowledgements, Introduction, From Belles to Bayous: The Fall of the South on Screen, Section One The South in the Cultural Imaginary, 1. The South as Region: Southern History, Southern Identity, and Perceptions of Southern Difference, 2. From Sectionalism to Swamp People: Conceptualizations of Southern Otherness, 3. Ghosts Fierce and Instructive: The South as Haunted Terrain, Section Two Gothic Visions, Southern Stories, 4. Crumbling Structures and Contaminated Narratives: Genre and the Gothic, 5. Manifesting the Other, Section Three The Southern Gothic on Screen, 6. Locating the Gothic South, 7. Slavery, Degeneracy, Myth, and Historical Resonances: A Survey of Southern Gothic Screen Texts, Section Four Case Studies: Toys in the Attic and Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus, 8. Reinterpreting Gothic Secrecy: Toys in the Attic, 9. Finding the South in the Ethereal: Atmosphere and the Spectral in Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus, Conclusion, Fading, But Never Faded, Bibliography, Filmography, Television Series, Songs, Video Games, Websites, Index.

Born in Melbourne, Australia, Karen Horsley has spent 10 years researching the American South in film, television, and literature. This has included extensive travel in the Deep South (most of it on buses) collecting data on Southern regionalism, the Civil War, the Southern literary tradition, southern culture, and southern religion. She received her PhD from La Trobe University in 2017 and currently teaches Screen Studies and Media Studies at Swinburne University in Melbourne.