The 'Evil Child' in Literature, Film and Popular Culture

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317966740
Total Pages : 202 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (179 download)

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Book Synopsis The 'Evil Child' in Literature, Film and Popular Culture by : Karen J. Renner

Download or read book The 'Evil Child' in Literature, Film and Popular Culture written by Karen J. Renner and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-18 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 'evil child' has infiltrated the cultural imagination, taking on prominent roles in popular films, television shows and literature. This collection of essays from a global range of scholars examines a fascinating array of evil children and the cultural work that they perform, drawing upon sociohistorical, cinematic, and psychological approaches. The chapters explore a wide range of characters including Tom Riddle in the Harry Potter series, the possessed Regan in William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist, the monstrous Ben in Doris Lessing’s The Fifth Child, the hostile fetuses of Rosemary’s Baby and Alien, and even the tiny terrors featured in the reality television series Supernanny. Contributors also analyse various themes and issues within film, literature and popular culture including ethics, representations of evil and critiques of society. This book was originally published as two special issues of Literature Interpretation Theory.

Evil Children in the Popular Imagination

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Author :
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 1137599634
Total Pages : 214 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (375 download)

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Book Synopsis Evil Children in the Popular Imagination by : Karen J. Renner

Download or read book Evil Children in the Popular Imagination written by Karen J. Renner and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-12-15 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on narratives with supernatural components, Karen J. Renner argues that the recent proliferation of stories about evil children demonstrates not a declining faith in the innocence of childhood but a desire to preserve its purity. From novels to music videos, photography to video games, the evil child haunts a range of texts and comes in a variety of forms, including changelings, ferals, and monstrous newborns. In this book, Renner illustrates how each subtype offers a different explanation for the problem of the “evil” child and adapts to changing historical circumstances and ideologies.

Cruel Children in Popular Texts and Cultures

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Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 3319722751
Total Pages : 313 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (197 download)

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Book Synopsis Cruel Children in Popular Texts and Cultures by : Monica Flegel

Download or read book Cruel Children in Popular Texts and Cultures written by Monica Flegel and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-04-19 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores how alarmist social discourses about 'cruel' young people fail to recognize the complexity of cruelty and the role it plays in child agency. Examining representations of cruel young people in popular texts and popular culture, the collected essays demonstrate how gender, race, and class influence who gets labeled 'cruel' and which actions are viewed as negative, aggressive, and disruptive. It shows how representations of cruel young people negotiate the violence that shadows polite society, and how narratives of cruelty and aggression are used to affirm, or to deny, young people’s agency.

Children in the Films of Steven Spielberg

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Publisher : Lexington Books
ISBN 13 : 1498518850
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (985 download)

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Book Synopsis Children in the Films of Steven Spielberg by : Adrian Schober

Download or read book Children in the Films of Steven Spielberg written by Adrian Schober and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2016-04-13 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To say that children matter in Steven Spielberg's films is an understatement. Think of the possessed Stevie in Something Evil (TV), Baby Langston in The Sugarland Express, the alien-abducted Barry in Close Encounters,Elliott and his unearthly alter-ego in E.T, the war-damaged Jim in Empire of the Sun, the little girl in the red coat in Schindler’s List, the mecha child in A.I., the kidnapped boy in Minority Report, and the eponymous boy hero of The Adventures of Tintin. (There are many other instances across his oeuvre). Contradicting his reputation as a purveyor of ‘popcorn’ entertainment, Spielberg’s vision of children/childhood is complex. Discerning critics have begun to note its darker underpinnings, increasingly fraught with tensions, conflicts and anxieties. But, while childhood is Spielberg’s principal source of inspiration, the topic has never been the focus of a dedicated collection of essays. The essays in Children in the Films of Steven Spielberg therefore seek to address childhood in the full spectrum of Spielberg’s cinema. Fittingly, the scholars represented here draw on a range of theoretical frameworks and disciplines—cinema studies, literary studies, audience reception, critical race theory, psychoanalysis, sociology, and more. This is an important book for not only scholars but teachers and students of Spielberg's work, and for any serious fan of the director and his career.

Terrifying Texts

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Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 1476671303
Total Pages : 269 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (766 download)

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Book Synopsis Terrifying Texts by : Cynthia J. Miller

Download or read book Terrifying Texts written by Cynthia J. Miller and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2018-09-14 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Faust (1926) to The Babadook (2014), books have been featured in horror films as warnings, gateways, prisons and manifestations of the monstrous. Ancient grimoires such as the Necronomicon serve as timeless vessels of knowledge beyond human comprehension, while runes, summoning diaries, and spell books offer their readers access to the powers of the supernatural--but at what cost? This collection of new essays examines nearly a century of genre horror in which on-screen texts drive and shape their narratives, sometimes unnoticed. The contributors explore American films like The Evil Dead (1981), The Prophecy (1995) and It Follows (2014), as well as such international films as Eric Valette's Malefique (2002), Paco Cabeza's The Appeared (2007) and Lucio Fulci's The Beyond (1981).

Elder Horror

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Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 1476635072
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (766 download)

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Book Synopsis Elder Horror by : Cynthia J. Miller

Download or read book Elder Horror written by Cynthia J. Miller and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2019-01-25 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As baby boomers gray, cinematic depictions of aging and the aged are on the rise. In the horror genre, fears of growing old take on fantastic proportions. Elderly characters are portrayed as either eccentric harbingers of doom--the crone who stops at nothing to restore her youth, the ancient ancestor who haunts the living--or as frail victims. This collection of new essays explores how various filmic portrayals of aging, as an inescapable horror destined to overtake us all, reflect our complex attitudes toward growing old, along with its social, psychological and economic consequences.

War Gothic in Literature and Culture

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317383249
Total Pages : 291 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (173 download)

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Book Synopsis War Gothic in Literature and Culture by : Steffen Hantke

Download or read book War Gothic in Literature and Culture written by Steffen Hantke and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-12-07 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the context of the current explosion of interest in Gothic literature and popular culture, this interdisciplinary collection of essays explores for the first time the rich and long-standing relationship between war and the Gothic. Critics have described the global Seven Year’s War as the "crucible" from which the Gothic genre emerged in the eighteenth century. Since then, the Gothic has been a privileged mode for representing violence and extreme emotions and situations. Covering the period from the American Civil War to the War on Terror, this collection examines how the Gothic has provided writers an indispensable toolbox for narrating, critiquing, and representing real and fictional wars. The book also sheds light on the overlap and complicity between Gothic aesthetics and certain aspects of military experience, including the bodily violation and mental dissolution of combat, the dehumanization of "others," psychic numbing, masculinity in crisis, and the subjective experience of trauma and memory. Engaging with popular forms such as young adult literature, gaming, and comic books, as well as literature, film, and visual art, War Gothic provides an important and timely overview of war-themed Gothic art and narrative by respected experts in the field of Gothic Studies. This book makes important contributions to the fields of Gothic Literature, War Literature, Popular Culture, American Studies, and Film, Television & Media.

Children and Childhood in the Works of Stephen King

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Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1793600139
Total Pages : 353 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (936 download)

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Book Synopsis Children and Childhood in the Works of Stephen King by : Debbie Olson

Download or read book Children and Childhood in the Works of Stephen King written by Debbie Olson and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique and timely collection examines childhood and the child character throughout Stephen King’s works, from his early novels and short stories, through film adaptations, to his most recent publications. King’s use of child characters within the framework of horror (or of horrific childhood) raises questions about adult expectations of children, childhood, the American family, child agency, and the nature of fear and terror for (or by) children. The ways in which King presents, complicates, challenges, or terrorizes children and notions of childhood provide a unique lens through which to examine American culture, including both adult and social anxieties about children and childhood across the decades of King’s works.

Little Horrors

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Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 1476626669
Total Pages : 227 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (766 download)

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Book Synopsis Little Horrors by : T.S. Kord

Download or read book Little Horrors written by T.S. Kord and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2016-07-25 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Zombies, werewolves and chainsaw-wielding maniacs are tried-and-true staples of horror films. But none can match the visceral dread evoked by a child with an innocent face and a diabolical stare. Cinema's evil children attack our cherished ideas of innocence and our innocent bystander status as the audience. A good horror film is a scary ride--a "devil child" movie is a guilt trip. This book examines 24 international films--with discussions of another 100--that in effect "indict" viewers for crimes of child abuse and abandonment, greed, social and ecological negligence, and political and war crimes, and for persistent denial of responsibility for them all. For 75 years evil children have ritually rebuked audiences and, in playing on our guilt, established a horror subgenre that might be described as a blood-spattered rampage on an ethical mission.

Horror Films for Children

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Author :
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1350135275
Total Pages : 233 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (51 download)

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Book Synopsis Horror Films for Children by : Catherine Lester

Download or read book Horror Films for Children written by Catherine Lester and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-10-21 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Children and horror are often thought to be an incompatible meeting of audience and genre, beset by concerns that children will be corrupted or harmed through exposure to horror media. Nowhere is this tension more clear than in horror films for adults, where the demonic child villain is one of the genre's most enduring tropes. However, horror for children is a unique category of contemporary Hollywood cinema in which children are addressed as an audience with specific needs, fears and desires, and where child characters are represented as sympathetic protagonists whose encounters with the horrific lead to cathartic, subversive and productive outcomes. Horror Films for Children examines the history, aesthetics and generic characteristics of children's horror films, and identifies the 'horrific child' as one of the defining features of the genre, where it is as much a staple as it is in adult horror but with vastly different representational, interpretative and affective possibilities. Through analysis of case studies including blockbuster hits (Gremlins), cult favourites (The Monster Squad) and indie darlings (Coraline), Catherine Lester asks, what happens to the horror genre, and the horrific children it represents, when children are the target audience?

The Truths of Monsters

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Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 1476683484
Total Pages : 258 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (766 download)

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Book Synopsis The Truths of Monsters by : Ildikó Limpár

Download or read book The Truths of Monsters written by Ildikó Limpár and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2021-03-19 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As monster theory highlights, monsters are cultural symbols, guarding the borders that society creates to protect its values and norms. Adolescence is the time when one explores and aims at crossing borders to learn the rules of the culture that one will fit into as an adult. Exploring the roles of monsters in coming-of-age narratives and the need to confront and understand the monstrous, this work explores recent developments in the presentation of monsters--such as the vampire, the zombie, and the man-made monster--in maturation narratives, then moves on to discuss monsters inhabiting the psychic landscapes of child characters. Finally, it touches on monsters in science fiction, in which facing the monstrous is a variation of the New World narrative. Discussions of novels by M. R. Carey, Suzanne Collins, Neil Gaiman, Theodora Goss, Daryl Gregory, Sarah Maria Griffin, Seanan McGuire, Stephenie Meyer, Patrick Ness, and Jon Skovron are complemented by analysis of television series, such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Westworld.

The Oxford Handbook of Children's Film

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190939354
Total Pages : 897 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (99 download)

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Book Synopsis The Oxford Handbook of Children's Film by : Noel Brown

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Children's Film written by Noel Brown and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022 with total page 897 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring cultural and social differences in defining a children's film / Becky Parry -- Screening innocence in children's film / Debbie Olson -- Screen adaptations of the Wizard of OZ and metafilmicity in children's film / Ryan Bunch -- Children's films and the avant-garde / Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer -- Intertextuality and 'adult' humour in children's film / Sam Summers -- Children's film and the problematic 'happy ending' / Noel Brown -- The cop and the kid in 1930s American film / Pamela Robertson-Wojcik -- History, forbidden games, children's play, and trauma theory / Ian Wojcik-Andrews -- Changing conceptions of childhood in the work of the Children's Film Foundation / Robert Shail -- Migrant children and the 'space between' in the films of Angelopoulos / Stephanie Hemelryk Donald -- Iranian cinema and a world through the eyes of a child / John Stephens -- The American tween and contemporary Hollywood cinema / Timothy Shary -- Growing up on Scandinavian screens / Anders Lysne -- Mary Pickford, Alma Taylor, and girlhood in Early Hollywood and British cinema / Matthew Smith -- Craft and play in Lotte Reiniger's fairy tale films / Caroline Ruddell -- Disney's musical landscapes / Daniel Batchelder -- Hayley Mills and the Disneyfication of childhood / David Buckingham -- Danny Kaye as children's film star / Bruce Babington -- Real animals and the problem of anthropomorphism in children's film / Claudia Alonso-Recarte and Ignacio Ramos-Gay -- Nation, identity, and the arrikin streak in Australian children's cinema / Adrian Schober -- Nationalism in Swedish Children's Film and the Case of Astrid Lindgren / Anders Wilhelm Åberg -- Unreality, Fantasy, and the Anti-Fascist Politics of the Children's Films of Satyajit Ray / Koel Banerjee -- Gender, Ideology, and Nationalism in Chinese Children's Cinema / Yuhan Huang -- Ethnic and racial difference in the Hungarian animated features Macskafogó/Cat City (1986) and Macskafogó 2/Cat City 2 (2007) / Gábor Gergely -- Negotiating East and West when representing childhood in Miyazaki's Spirited away / Katherine Whitehurst -- Coming of age in South Korean cinema / Sung-Ae Lee -- The Walt Disney Company, family entertainment, and global movie hits / Peter Krämer -- Reading Jason and the argonauts as a children's film / Susan Smith -- Hollywood and the baby boom audience in the 1950s and 1960s / James Russell -- Don Bluth and the Disney renaissance / Peter Kunze -- On 'love experts', evil princes, gullible princesses, and Frozen / Amy M. Davis -- Hollywood, regulation, and the 'disappearing' children's film / Filipa Antunes -- How children learn to 'read' movies / Cary Bazalgette -- Star Wars, children's film culture, and fan paratexts / Lincoln Geraghty -- Norwegian tween girls and everyday life through Disney tween franchises / Ingvild Kvale Sørenssen -- A multimethod study on contemporary young audiences and their film/cinema discourses and practices in Flanders, Belgium / Aleit Veenstra, Philippe Meers, and Daniël Biltereyst -- An empirical report on young people's responses to adult fantasy films / Martin Barker -- Disney's adult audiences / James R. Mason.

Monstrous Children and Childish Monsters

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Author :
Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 0786494794
Total Pages : 287 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (864 download)

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Book Synopsis Monstrous Children and Childish Monsters by : Markus P.J. Bohlmann

Download or read book Monstrous Children and Childish Monsters written by Markus P.J. Bohlmann and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-03-25 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Perhaps because of the wisdom received from our Romantic forbears about the purity of the child, depictions of children as monsters have held a tremendous fascination for film audiences for decades. Numerous social factors have influenced the popularity and longevity of the monster-child trope but its appeal is also rooted in the dual concepts of the child-like (innocent, angelic) and the childish (selfish, mischievous). This collection of fresh essays discusses the representation of monstrous children in popular cinema since the 1950s, with a focus on the relationship between monstrosity and "childness," a term whose implications the contributors explore.

The Millennials on Film and Television

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Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 0786478802
Total Pages : 217 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (864 download)

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Book Synopsis The Millennials on Film and Television by : Betty Kaklamanidou

Download or read book The Millennials on Film and Television written by Betty Kaklamanidou and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-03-13 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The millennials, who constitute the largest generation in America's history, may resist a simple definition; nevertheless, they do share a number of common traits and also an ever increasing presence on film and television. This collection of new essays first situates the millennials within their historical context and then proceeds to an examination of specific characteristics--as addressed in the television and film narratives created about them, including their relationship to work, technology, family, religion, romance and history. Drawing on a multiplicity of theoretical frameworks, the essays show how these cultural products work at a number of levels, and through a variety of means, to shape our understanding of the millennials.

The Celebration of Death in Contemporary Culture

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Publisher : University of Michigan Press
ISBN 13 : 0472130269
Total Pages : 265 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (721 download)

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Book Synopsis The Celebration of Death in Contemporary Culture by : Dina Khapaeva

Download or read book The Celebration of Death in Contemporary Culture written by Dina Khapaeva and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2017-03-06 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Popular culture has reimagined death as entertainment and monsters as heroes, reflecting a profound contempt for the human race

Grotesque Progeny

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Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN 13 : 149685358X
Total Pages : 144 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (968 download)

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Book Synopsis Grotesque Progeny by : Mark Heimermann

Download or read book Grotesque Progeny written by Mark Heimermann and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2024-11-20 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In contemporary Western society, childhood appears more protected than ever to the casual onlooker. Yet, we are increasingly fascinated by narratives in which children are depicted as unsettling beings, both dangerous and endangered, sometimes chaotic or even evil. In Grotesque Progeny: The Commodification of Dangerous and Endangered Children, author Mark Heimermann argues that these representations reflect cultural anxiety regarding a shifting conception of youths from emotional assets to economic ones. In the early to mid-twentieth century, children, who had previously been viewed in part as economic investments, were largely moved out of the work force. For decades, children were instead valued primarily as emotional assets. However, the rise of neoliberal capitalism in the 1970s and 1980s, and its eventual proliferation throughout our politics and our lives, has led to the widespread commodification of social arenas previously kept separate from the capitalist quest for profit. Not even children have escaped being objectified and dehumanized in this manner. Heimermann examines a variety of texts that center on children and adolescents who are marked as different from the adult characters and consequently viewed as grotesque. Chapters cover Jeff Lemire’s Sweet Tooth, M. R. Carey’s The Girl with All the Gifts, Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love, Richard Starkings’s Elephantmen, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, and more. Because the young characters are not viewed as equal members of society, they must either strike back at those who commodify them or risk facing a lifetime of dehumanization. Grotesque Progeny argues that these monstrous depictions reveal societal unease over shortsighted economic and political thinking, the exploitation of children, and the changing nature of childhood. The book addresses a growing concern over which spaces ought to be excluded or removed from the harsh valuations of neoliberalism.

House of Horrors

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Publisher : University of Wales Press
ISBN 13 : 1837720142
Total Pages : 275 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (377 download)

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Book Synopsis House of Horrors by : Agnieszka Kotwasińska

Download or read book House of Horrors written by Agnieszka Kotwasińska and published by University of Wales Press. This book was released on 2023-06-15 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a study of tumultuous transformations of kinship and intimate relationships in American horror fiction over the last three decades. Twelve contemporary novels (by ten women writers and two whose work has been identified as women’s fiction) are grouped into four main thematic clusters – haunted houses; monsters; vampires; and hauntings – but it is social scripts and concerns linked directly to intimacy and family life that structure the entire volume. By drawing attention to how the most intimate of all social relationships – the family – supports and replicates social hierarchies, exclusions, and struggles for dominance, the book problematises the source of horror. The consideration of horror narratives through the lens of familial intimacies makes it possible to rethink genre boundaries, to question the efficacy of certain genre tropes, and to consider the contribution of such diverse authors as Kathe Koja, Tananarive Due, Gwendolyn Kiste, Elizabeth Engstrom, Sara Gran and Caitlín R. Kiernan.