Prelims

Half Title Page

GENDER AND CONTEMPORARY HORROR IN COMICS, GAMES AND TRANSMEDIA

Series Page

EMERALD STUDIES IN POPULAR CULTURE AND GENDER

Series Editor: Samantha Holland, Leeds Beckett University, UK

As we re-imagine and re-boot at an ever faster pace, this series explores the different strands of contemporary culture and gender. Looking across cinema, television, graphic novels, fashion studies and reality TV, the series asks: what has changed for gender? And, perhaps more seriously, what has not? Have representations of genders changed? How much does the concept of ‘gender’ in popular culture define and limit us?

We not only consume cultural texts, but share them more than ever before; meanings and messages reach more people and perpetuate more understandings (and misunderstandings) than at any time in history. This new series interrogates whether feminism has challenged or change misogynist attitudes in popular culture.

Emerald Studies in Popular Culture and Gender provides a focus for writers and researchers interested in sociological and cultural research that expands our understanding of the ontological status of gender, popular culture and related discourses, objects and practices.

Titles in this series

Samantha Holland, Robert Shail and Steven Gerrard (eds), Gender and Contemporary Horror in Film

Steven Gerrard, Samantha Holland and Robert Shail (eds), Gender and Contemporary Horror in Television

Robert Shail, Steven Gerrard and Samantha Holland (eds), Gender and Contemporary Horror in Comics, Games and Transmedia

Samantha Holland, Screen Heroines, Superheroines, Feminism and Popular Culture

Title Page

GENDER AND CONTEMPORARY HORROR IN COMICS, GAMES AND TRANSMEDIA

EDITED BY

ROBERT SHAIL

Leeds Beckett University, UK

STEVEN GERRARD

Leeds Beckett University, UK

SAMANTHA HOLLAND

Leeds Beckett University, UK

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

Copyright Page

Emerald Publishing Limited

Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2019

Editorial matter and selection © the volume editors; individual chapters © their respective authors, 2019.

Reprints and permissions service

Contact: permissions@emeraldinsight.com

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. Any opinions expressed in the chapters are those of the authors. Whilst Emerald makes every effort to ensure the quality and accuracy of its content, Emerald makes no representation implied or otherwise, as to the chapters’ suitability and application and disclaims any warranties, express or implied, to their use.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-78769-108-7 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-78769-107-0 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-78769-109-4 (EPub)

List of Contributors

Charlotte Baker is a PhD student, author and Associate Lecturer in Film and TV, Media and Creative Writing at the University of Derby. Charlotte has written articles for EYE as well as a published novella and a series of short stories. She is also currently awaiting the publication of her first novel, Themis. Her research interests include horror and crime television and fiction, identification and fandom.

Alison Bainbridge is a Postgraduate Researcher in English Literature at Northumbria University, and her thesis is on representations of American neoliberalist politics in the podcast Welcome to Night Vale. Her other research interests include audio and digital horror, gothic geographies and online fan practices. Her chapter on desert gothic will be published in the forthcoming Gothic Handbook (Palgrave MacMillan). She is also an author, and her short horror fiction is available in Revenant journal and the Daughters of Darkness anthology (Independent).

Kelly Doyle teaches in the English department at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in British Columbia and is an Advisory Board Member, reviewer, and copyeditor for Mise-en-Scène: The Journal of Film and Visual Narration. Her research and teaching specialisations include film studies, critical theory, and contemporary horror/gothic Studies. She continues to teach and write about the capacity of horror films to critique sexism, racism and speciesism, especially zombie films.

Michael Fuchs is a fixed-term Assistant Professor in American Studies at the University of Graz in Austria. He has co-edited six essay collections and has authored and co-authored more than fifty published and forthcoming journal articles and book chapters. Among others, Michael is currently working on three monograph projects – one on American cities in horror cinema, one on the aesthetics of television horror, and one on animal monsters in American culture. For additional information about his past and ongoing research, see www.michael-fuchs.info.

Steven Gerrard is Reader in Film at the School of Film, Music and Performing Arts, Leeds Beckett University. A firm fan of all things low culture, Steven has written two monographs entitled The Carry On Films (Palgrave MacMillan) and The Modern British Horror Film (Rutgers University Press). He is co-editor of the forthcoming Crank it up! Jason Statham – Star to be published by Manchester University Press.

Kathryn Hemmann is an Assistant Professor of Japanese Studies in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages at George Mason University. Her writing on films, comic, and video games has appeared in publications such as the Journal of Transformative Works and Cultures, the U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal, and Asiascape: Digital Asia, as well as on websites such as Kill Screen and Geek Feminism. Kathryn also runs the blog Contemporary Japanese Literature (japaneselit.net), which features reviews of fiction in translation and essays on gender, society and popular culture.

Richard J. Hand is Professor of Media Practice at the University of East Anglia. He is the author of numerous studies of popular horror culture including two books on horror radio drama and is the co-author of three books on Grand-Guignol horror theatre. He is the founding co-editor of the Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance, and his interests include adaptation, translation and interdisciplinarity in performance media (with a particular interest in historical forms of popular culture, especially horror) using critical and practical research methodologies.

Rebecca Jones is an American PhD student in the Cinema and Television History Research Institute at De Montfort University, Leicester. She is researching the depiction of female-presenting artificial intelligence and robots in post-millennial American and British science fiction film. She completed her Masters in Adaptation Studies at De Montfort University focusing on the intertextual adaptation of Shakespeare’s plays within science fiction films and novels and has published on the progressive representations within the Monstress (2015–present) comic series.

Matt Curtis Linton is a PhD student in the Film and Media Studies programme at Wayne State University in Detroit, MI. His areas of research include constructions and representations of race, biopolitics, and visual narrative in comics and film. He is on the board of the Wayne State Comics Collective, Kino Club 313, the Humanities Center Pop Culture Working Group, and the Planning Committee for the Pop Culture Conference. He has presented at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference, the International Society for the Study of Narrative Conference, the Graphic Justice Conference, and the Annual Comics Conference at UF.

L.M.K Sheppard and Richard Sheppard. Dr L.M.K. Sheppard is a Lecturer at Palomar College and Associate Tutor at the University of East Anglia where she received her doctorate in Media Studies in 2017. Richard Sheppard is an author of short stories, a film historian and theorist and podcaster. Most recently, they founded The Hallowed Histories Project. The project focuses on the lore, legend and superstition of East Anglia and encompasses film screenings, podcasts, theatre, and literary events. Their research interests include The Gothic, horror film and literature in light of their historical, cultural and spiritual connections.

Tiago José Lemos Monteiro obtained his PhD in Communication at Universidade Federal Fluminense (2012) and holds a Masters Degree in Communication and Culture (2007). He is author of Tudo isto é pop: portugalidades musicais contemporâneas entre a tradição e a modernidade (2013). Since 2010 he has worked at Instituto Federal do Rio de Janeiro, teaching classes on cinema, media and cultural production. His research interests in communication focus on the following subjects: media culture, horror movies, fringe cinema, popular music, identity, and cultural exchanges between Brazil and Portugal.

Klaus Rieser is Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Graz, Austria. His areas of research comprise American film, representations of family, gender and ethnicity, and visual cultural studies. His monographs have dealt with immigration in film, experimental films, and masculinity in film. He has also published a number of articles and co-edited four volumes on topics related to American culture, including cultural icons and contact spaces. He co-edits the book series American Studies in Austria and is a board member of JAAAS: The Journal of the Austrian Association for American Studies, a gold open access journal whose first issue came out in 2019.

Merlin Seller completed an MA and a MSt at St Andrews and Oxford respectively, and a doctoral thesis at the University of East Anglia under the supervision of Professor David Peters Corbett on the topic of transmedium and intermedium works between film and painting in the 1930s. With a Masters and PhD background in Art History and Visual Cultural Studies, Dr Seller’s interests now lie in Game Studies where they currently hold a position as Lecturer in Game Art and Design at Norwich University of the Arts. Their present research interests include Phenomenology, Thing Theory and Queer Studies approaches to Games.

Robert Shail is Professor of Film and Director of Research in the School of Film, Music and Performing Arts at Leeds Beckett University. He is widely published on postwar British cinema, masculinity, and stardom. More recently his work has focused on both comic books and children’s media with publications such as his monograph The Children’s Film Foundation: History and Legacy (Palgrave/BFI, 2016).

Janelle Vermaak is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Media and Communication at the Nelson Mandela University in South Africa. Her research interests include fan studies, film studies, popular culture studies and media studies.

Rosana Vivar is a Lecturer in Communication at Saint Louis University Madrid. Her work focuses on subcultural film audiences and event-led cinema experiences. She has conducted research on film festival audiences in Spain, involving the study of the ludic aspects of these film events and the use of new media and second screens by festivalgoers. Rosana received her PhD from the University of Granada and her work has been published in Participations, Secuencias Revista de Historia del Cine and Bloomsbury Academic.