Queer Gothic

This is a book that’s urgently needed, and it doesn’t disappoint. Its sixteen authors provide an up-to-date exploration of queer Gothic, reflecting a rapidly changing theoretical field and ranging widely across the LGBTQ+ spectrum. The result is a rich, riotous feast of ideas, sure to tantalise, provoke and spark new conversations. -- Catherine Spooner, Lancaster University
What about the gothic genre lends it so naturally to conversations of queerness and queer theory? What about queer frameworks creates opportunities to investigate the tensions and possibilities of the gothic narrative? Each essay in Ardel Haefele-Thomas’s collection seeks to answer these questions by analyzing stories, both classical and contemporary, and examining the ways in which the queer gothic genre offers a place to explore the world when one decides to play by different rules. Written in an engaging manner that will appeal to students and scholars of the genre, Queer Gothic is also accessible to the general reader and may pull people in through its examination of more contemporary gothic storytelling types (e.g., video games and slash fiction). Like most collections, some contributions are stronger and of broader interest than others, but every essay seems like a necessary and relevant piece to the overarching conversation about the queer gothic as a narrative space in which queer dilemmas and desires can be represented and marginalized identities can find their own voice. Summing Up: Highly recommended. -- B. McQueen, Miami University Hamilton * CHOICE *