Projects
Bloomsbury Gothic Legacy Series
Gothic Legacies showcases the “living archive” of Gothic writers and other creative artists from around the globe, whether through a critical examination of the persistence and pertinence of their tropes and themes or the creative reception of their works in literature, theatre and performance, popular and fine art, film and television, music, and other media. This series chiefly attends to major Gothic works produced in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, while also drawing out connections with non-canonical works and modern reworkings from the vantage points of diverse conceptual approaches. This series simultaneously addresses contemporary concerns by re-engaging with familiar, charismatic works of literature and interrogates the ongoing relevance of those works in the twenty-first century. Objectives: to examine the influence of canonical Gothic works today; to recover once significant but now lesser-known writers and their works; to model the intellectual merits of different conceptual frameworks; to commemorate major milestones in the Gothic tradition, including anniversaries.
Coded Black
Coded Black teaches the long, horrible, contradictory, and illogical history of anti-Blackness and its nightmarish consequences while also providing evidence to counter the racist ideologies. It is a Social Justice game that exposes players to the primary sources/ evidence which they might not know exists, much less have access to. It also touches upon the grotesque details of US and UK racial history which many would deny happened, and most don’t know occurred. The content is multi-media to keep users engaged. Nearly everything in the game is a reproduction of historical documents and events and relevant scholarly commentary.
African American Gothic in the Era of Black Lives Matter (minigraph)
My Cambridge Element explores twenty-first- century Black Gothic literature and film as it responds to American anti-Blackness. The element argues the "texts" collectively represent a mode of Black Gothic fiction termed Black Lives Matter (BLM) Gothic. Intended as an introduction to a complex mode, this Element explores the three central themes in BLM Gothic texts. The first section reviews the fiction’s' depictions of American anti-Blackness, arguing that the texts reveal the necropolitical mechanisms at play in US systemic racism. The second section explores the ways the fictions ‘make whiteness strange’ in order to destabilize white normativity and shatter the power arising from such claims. The final section examines the costs of waging war against racial oppression and the power of embracing ‘monstrosity’.
"You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time."
Angela Davis
Recent Events
A collaboration with local Sheffield artists and creative groups including Kweku Sackey (K.O.G), Warda Yassin, Eelyn Lee, Otis Mensah, Dalbinder Kular and the Our True Nature Writing Group, Angela Abel, and Franz Von, the project was officially launched on 18th November 2021 with a celebration event. This evening brought together communities in Sheffield for a night of poetry, music, and film and it followed a series of workshops in September I led with the Nyara School of Arts.
Alongside a physical gallery and performances of poetry, music, and dance, the celebration event also launched the film "Hegira" and the free online His House to Our Home exhibition hosted on Kunstmatrix. In the first room, visitors to the online exhibition can explore my research on anti-Blackness and Gothic and Horror traditions, while the second and third rooms showcase commissioned pieces and artwork from Sheffield and around the world exploring the theme of home, reflecting on what home is and imagining what home could be.
Writer and Director
Gothic Futures Summer Institute
Gothic Futures took place at the University of Sheffield, UK from Monday 8th-Friday 12th July, 2024, and was open to MA students, PhD students, Early Career Researchers, Independent Scholars and artists and writers working in the fields of Gothic and Horror.
This summer program focused on new and continuing areas of exploration in Gothic, including creating Gothic art and literature. This program highlighted the diversity of Gothic scholars and scholarship, while also encouraging new generations of scholars from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds to join the conversation.
The program was attended by students from five countries (Ireland, USA, Poland, Italy, and the UK) and included an online option for participants who could not make it to Sheffield.
Candyman and the Whole Damn Swarm
This conference was a collaboration between the Centre for the History of the Gothic at the University of Sheffield and University of California, Riverside. The principal organisers ware Maisha Wester, John Jennings and Mary Going. We were thrilled to host our Keynote Roundtable featuring Dr Kinitra Brooks, Tananarive Due, Dr Robin Means Coleman, and Jon Towlson.
We were also delighted to announce our special guests. As part of our “In Conversation” interviews, we welcomed:
Bernard Rose - Candyman (1992) writer and director
Tony Todd - Candyman (1992) lead actor
Win Rosenfeld - Candyman (2021) co-writer and producer
Sherwin Ovid - Candyman (2021) portrait artist
Curious about what you missed? Check out the event archive in the title link.
