Ecohorror represents human fears about the natural world-killer plants and animals, catastrophic weather events, and disquieting encounters with the nonhuman. Its portrayals of animals, the environment, and even scientists build on popular conceptions of zoology, ecology, and the scientific process. As such, ecohorror is a genre uniquely situated to address life, art, and the dangers of scientific knowledge in the Anthropocene. Featuring new readings of the genre, Fear and Nature brings ecohorror texts and theories into conversation with other critical discourses. The chapters cover a variety of media forms, from literature and short fiction to manga, poetry, television, and film. The chronological range is equally varied, beginning in the nineteenth century with the work of Edgar Allan Poe and finishing in the twenty-first with Stephen King and Guillermo del Toro. This range highlights the significance of ecohorror as a mode. In their analyses, the contributors make explicit connections across chapters, question the limits of the genre, and address the ways in which our fears about nature intersect with those we hold about the racial, animal, and bodily "other." A foundational text, this volume will appeal to specialists in horror studies, Gothic studies, the environmental humanities, and ecocriticism. In addition to the editors, the contributors include Kristen Angierski, Bridgitte Barclay, Marisol Cortez, Chelsea Davis, Joseph K. Heumann, Dawn Keetley, Ashley Kniss, Robin L. Murray, Brittany R. Roberts, Sharon Sharp, and Keri Stevenson.
Christy Tidwell is Associate Professor of English and Humanities at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. She is the coeditor of Gender and Environment in Science Fiction. Carter Soles is Associate Professor of Film Studies at SUNY Brockport. He has published a number of journal articles and book chapters in the fields of film studies and ecomedia.
Acknowledgements Introduction: Ecohorror in the Anthropocene Christy Tidwell and Carter Soles Part 1: Expanding Horror 1. Tentacular Ecohorror and the Agency of Trees in Algernon Blackwood's "The Man Whom the Trees Loved" and Lorcan Finnegan's Without Name Dawn Keetley 2. Spiraling Inward and Outward: Junji Ito's Uzumaki and the Scope of Ecohorror Christy Tidwell 3. "The Hand of Deadly Decay": The Rotting Corpse, America's Religious Tradition, and the Ethics of Green Burial in Poe's "The Colloquy of Monos and Una" Ashley Kniss Part 2: Haunted and Unhaunted Landscapes 4. The Death of Birdsong, the Birdsong of Death: Algernon Charles Swinburne and the Horror of Erosion Keri Stevenson 5. An Unhaunted Landscape: The Anti-Gothic Impulse in Ambrose Bierce's "A Tough Tussle" Chelsea Davis 6. The Extinction-Haunted Salton Sea in The Monster That Challenged the World Bridgitte Barclay Part 3: The Ecohorror of Intimacy 7. From the Bedroom to the Bathroom: Stephen King's Scatology and the Emergence of an Urban Environmental Gothic Marisol Cortez 8. "This Bird Made an Art of Being Vile": Ontological Difference and Uncomfortable Intimacies in Stephen Gregory's The Cormorant Brittany R. Roberts 9. The Shape of Water and Post-pastoral Ecohorror Robin L. Murray and Joseph K. Heumann Part 4: Being Prey, Being Food 10. Superpig Blues: Agribusiness Ecohorror in Bong Joon-ho's Okja Kristen Angierski 11. Zoo: Television Ecohorror On and Off the Screen Sharon Sharp 12. Naturalizing White Supremacy in The Shallows Carter Soles Contributors Index
"Fear and Nature expansively defines eco-horror as not only a sub-genre of literature but as a cohesive mode operating across genres and media. Whether talking about Algernon Blackwood or Algernon Swinburne, Bong Joon Ho or Junji Ito, this volume explores the rhizomatic connections that make eco-criticism something that transcends genre, and makes a convincing case for its relevance not only today but as a way of reconsidering what has come before." -Brian Evenson, author of Song for the Unraveling of the World "Fear and Nature straddles popular culture studies, horror and gothic studies, film and literary studies, and cultural studies. It is an expansive, ambitious, and exploratory book that is working to move the field beyond earlier works of ecohorror criticism by considering fresh approaches to the subject." -Bernice Murphy, author of The Rural Gothic in American Popular Culture: Backwoods Horror and Terror in the Wilderness "This foundational text is an optimistic thrust of possible reimagination, one that does not "foreclose the future or discourage activism."" -ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment "This representative and symbolic book is highly recommended to readers as it can offer them the ethics and responsibilities towards nature." -Tohidur Rahaman, Journal of Ecohumanism
