Date Awarded

2023

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (M.A.)

Department

American Studies

Advisor

Charles McGovern

Committee Member

Elizabeth Losh

Committee Member

Francesca Sawaya

Abstract

Uses of hauntology within academic scholarship are peculiarly metaphorical and British. This project aims to combat the overabundance of such readings to create more breadth in academic discourse on the spectral. This project does not seek to replace metaphorical or British renderings of hauntology, but to exist alongside it as overreliance on a particular formulation creates detrimental limits and barriers to scholastic innovation. The first essay examines the ghosts of Theodore “Wes” Wesley and Samuel Isaac Bailey within Unwell: A Midwestern Gothic Mystery (2018-2023) and The Sheridan Tapes (2020-present). Examining these category-defying ghosts which exhibit mass, warmth, and breath through Rosi Braidotti’s sustainable nomadic ethics, monster theory, and biopolitical theories of sovereignty and community/immunity, this work offers five theses for a newer and more expansive vision of spectrality inclusive of metaphorical and non-metaphorical readings. The second essay examines the peculiarly British nature of hauntological horror scholarship, attributing it largely to the influence of Mark Fisher’s white and European renderings of haunting and cultural time in the twenty-first century. This project reviews Fisherian hauntology to ultimately conclude that a fixation on British public media and shallow engagements of ghosts drives Fisher’s white and English universalism. Reversing this formulation and borrowing from other areas of Fisher’s work this project offers a rendering of an American hauntology attuned to racial history, landscape, and folk culture to encourage the emergence of other national hauntologies. The project concludes by applying the theses to three folktales featuring a Cap Haitian Zombie, a blood-red river in southwestern Virginia, and black devil dogs.

DOI

https://dx.doi.org/10.21220/s2-h6jv-6t13

Rights

© The Author

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