This paper considers the use of Boym’s formulations of reflective and restorative nostalgia as a productive lens for viewing the tensions within folk horror texts and their appeals. Considering folk horror texts such as The Wicker Man, Midsommar and The Living and the Dead, the paper will demonstrate that Boym’s two conceptions help to draw out…[Read more]

This paper analyses the sitcom “Friends” (1994-2004) and its performance motifs.

Analysis of the episode from television series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, “Who Are You?” (4.16).

This paper examines the early connections between BBC radio and television and the Hammer / Exclusive film companies.

This paper examines the responses to the 1954 BBC adaptation of Nineteen Eighty-Four, as held by the BBC Written Archives Centre, in the light of the British Horror Comics campaign of the mid-1950s.

Keynote presentation at the UK’s first academic folk horror conference.

Invited research presentation given at the University of Reading, 8 October 2015.

It has become a standard approach when considering screen presentations that incorporate the country house to examine them in the light of Andrew Higson’s formulation of the heritage drama, which presented an essentially conservative, depoliticised spectacle of grandeur, safely distanced from the reality of the majority of viewers. However, the c…[Read more]

While there has been a growing acknowledgement of the existence of earlier examples of television science fiction, the typical history of the genre still privileges Nigel Kneale’s The Quatermass Experiment (1953) as foundational. This was a significant production, and an effective piece of television drama, but it was not the first piece of B…[Read more]

Each Christmas during his tenure as Provost of King’s College, Cambridge, M.R.James would take part in a ritual celebration of Christmas with students and colleagues which invariably culminated with the reading of a ghost story. This tradition drew on a long tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas that can be traced back through the l…[Read more]

There is a long tradition in the UK, in England in particular, of the Christmas ghost story. The most famous is probably Dickens’ A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost Story of Christmas, but close behind are the ghost stories of M.R.James. James wrote many of his stories as Christmas entertainments, but this link was reinforced in the 1970s w…[Read more]

This paper focuses on UK and US traditions of seasonal horror at Christmas and Halloween to consider how they provide opportunities for reflection on the causes of fear at liminal times in the calendar. These liminal times contain numerous traditions dedicated to looking back and forward, such as end of year reviews, or addresses from heads of…[Read more]

This paper focuses on UK and US traditions of seasonal horror on television and radio at Christmas and Halloween to consider how they provide opportunities for reflection on the causes of fear at liminal times in the calendar. These liminal times contain numerous traditions dedicated to looking back and forward, such as end of year reviews, or…[Read more]

The author proposes fairy-tale logic as a mode of magical thinking typified by the belief that certain functions, fulfilled correctly and in the right order, lead to predictable outcomes. Mapping similarities in implicit reasoning within “Beauty and the Beast,” the reality television program Beauty and the Geek (2005-08), and the misogynistic nar…[Read more]

You are cordially invited to a special event to celebrate ten years of the Open Graves, Open Minds project and to launch our new book In the Company of Wolves: Werewolves, Wolves and Wild Children.
In the Company of Wolves presents further research from the Open Graves, Open Minds Project. It connects together innovative research from a variety…[Read more]

Postmodernity’s cultural database logic and the consequent filmic characteristics of the digital age were fostered by Lev Manovich’s 1999 essay “The Database as Symbolic Form,” whereby Manovich furthered Roland Barthes’ adoption of Saussurrean sign-systems to describe cultural phenomena. In particular, Manovich applied Saussure’s description…[Read more]

Seung-Hui Cho, the mass murderer who called himself Question Mark, left a lot of questions behind him. One of them obviously speaks for itself: what motivated him to kill thirty-three strangers at Virginia Tech? Another question almost goes without saying: why do we seek refuge behind moral explanations? Like ‘the question mark kid’ the adult…[Read more]

El podcast es una de las diversas herramientas colaborativas que se implementan en el Periodismo Digital, siendo un formato de fácil distribución y que puede proporcionar un espacio dinámico y creativo para el profesional de la comunicación social. Esta investigación pretende evaluar los podcasts que se publican en sitios de noticias de la ciud…[Read more]

Aunque fue uno de los grandes taquillazos cinematográficos de la época, Juana la Loca… de vez en cuando (José Ramón Larraz, 1983), recibió unas duras críticas por parte del público especializado, que veían en la cinta una penosa manera de hacer cine. Personajes, ambientación, guion, interpretaciones, etc., nada escapó a la pluma de los críticos, q…[Read more]

A data representation of every incident of sexual violence in American Horror Story, Murder House through Hotel. Broken into 22 metrics, part of an ongoing mapping project. Covers victims/assailant count, genders of both, on screen/off screen representations, nonhuman entities, fatalities, and more.