I’ll be starting 2024 with two visits to Hill House! I’m joining SPACE (Signum Portals for Adult Continuing Education) online with Signum University. My first modules include The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (January) and its authorized sequel, A Haunting on the Hill by Elizabeth Hand (February).
Registration is now open for January’s module. Voting is now open for February’s module. Here are more details. I hope to see you in SPACE!
ALT
ALT
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October 2: Conversion by Katherine Howe (2014)
Quote:
Something was eating away at the back of my brain. Girls. Dominant narratives. Sex. Death. Arthur Miller. Ann Putman sitting invisible right in the middle of history.
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On my latest “Looking Back at Genre History” segment on the StarShipSofa podcast (Episode 748), I revisit the brilliant The Twilight Zone series and discuss Monsters on Maple Street: The Twilight Zone and the Postwar American Dream by David J. Brokaw.
Here is the link!
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(Art is “Zbrush Doodle: Day 1750 - Festive Pumpkin” by UnexpectedToy.)
For today, here is the atmospheric opening of the short story “Haunted!” by Jack Edwards, originally published in The Weekly Tale Teller #83 (December 3, 1910), as found in Glimpses of the Unknown: Lost Ghost Stories edited by Mike Ashley (2018):
Watch Now: Race Massacre graves researchers need DNA, genealogies to tie burials to victims
Utah Cold Case Coalition Intermountain Forensics is seeking DNA help from anyone who may have relatives from the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.
Researchers think DNA is the best chance for the case known for now as “burial 27” to be the first conclusively identified victim of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.
In a project update Wednesday with reporters, University of Oklahoma archaeologist Kary Stackelbeck expressed optimism the team’s efforts could possibly have “successfully located the first victim of the massacre” after a young Black man was exhumed with two bullets from a potter’s field corner of Oaklawn Cemetery.
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Dark Academia novel: The Ravens by Kass Morgan and Danielle Paige (2020)
From the cover:
These sorority girls are real witches.
Quote:
That was when she noticed the single tarot card positioned nearly at the head of her bare mattress, as if placed there by a careful hand.
It was the Death card her mother had given her.
The skeleton leered up at her with a gruesome smile, and for a moment, it almost looked like the eyes glowed red. Vivi shivered, despite knowing that it was a trick of the light. I told you. Westerly isn’t a safe place, not for people like you…
ALT
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October 24: House of Night series by P.C. & Kristin Cast (2007-2014)
Quote from Marked (2007):
“Remember, darkness does not always equate to evil, just as light does not always bring good.”
NOTE: I contributed the essay “Reimagining ‘Magic City’: How the Casts Mythologize Tulsa” to a book about the House of Night Series, Nyx in the House of Night. You can read more of my posts about the series here.
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Happy Halloween, everyone!
Song: “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe
Quote:
The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
Went envying her and me—
Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.
Read the complete poem.
Listen to Joan Baez’s performance…
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October 10: This Is Not a Test by Courtney Summers (2012)
Quote 1:
We eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner to the soundtrack of our own impending death.
Quote 2:
Sometimes you catch something specific like the screams and cries of people trying to hold on to each other before they’re swallowed into other, bigger noises. This is what it sounds like when the world ends.
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In 1920, Native Women Sought the Vote. Here’s What They Seek Now.
Native women were highly visible in early 20th-century suffrage activism. White suffragists, fascinated by Native matriarchal power, invited Native women to speak at conferences, join parades, and write for their publications. Native suffragists took advantage of these opportunities to speak about pressing issues in their communities — Native voting, land loss and treaty rights. But their stories have largely been forgotten.
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dramyhsturgis:
Registration for RRIII: The Expanding Universe is now officially OPEN! Join now to attend this three day digital conference May 4-6, 2023 for social events (cosplay reception), panels, brilliant keynotes, and all things Star Wars!
Realizing Resistance Episode III Tickets | Digital Cultural Studies Cooperative
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October is almost here!
I’m currently working on new academic projects related to Dark Academia (the subgenre, not the aesthetic), so for Halloween month I’ll be posting a different DA title each day with a haunting/atmospheric quote. I hope you’ll enjoy the recs!
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October 27: The Devil Makes Three by Tori Bovalino (2021)
Quote:
Demons. Dark magic. The devil. These were the things he searched, muttering under his breath and dead to the world around him as dawn broke; as something grappled at the door of his office and found itself forbidden.
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A new take on familiar entertainment | Lenoir-Rhyne University
My Star Wars class gets a shout out in this article. I’m offering it again in the Spring 2023 semester.
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October 17: In My Dreams I Hold a Knife by Ashley Winstead (2021)
Quote:
It turns out the real you is a quilt, made up of the light and the dark. The life you’ve lived in sunshine and your shadow life, stretching underneath the surface of your mind like a deep underwater world, exerting invisible power. You are a living, breathing story made up of the moments in time you cherish, all strung together, and those you hide. The moments that seem lost. Until the day they’re not.
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Dark Academia
I’m delighted to share the details of my Fall 2022 online Dark Academia class at Signum University!
I’m also thrilled to add that 3 of the brilliant authors whose works we’ll be studying in the Dark Academia course will be holding live Q&A sessions with the class!
I’m thrilled to add that 3 of the brilliant authors whose works we’ll be studying in the #DarkAcademia course will be holding live Q&A sessions with the class!
Peadar Ó Guilín for THE CALL (‘16)
Elisabeth Thomas for CATHERINE HOUSE ('20)
R.F. Kuang for BABEL ('22).
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Dark Academia novel: The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson (2012)
Quote:
Keep calm and carry on. Also, stay in and hide because the Ripper is coming.
ALT
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Meet The Last Man!
In March 2024, I will be offering the module “Meet The Last Man” with SPACE (Signum Portals for Adult Continuing Education) online via Signum University.
Mary Shelley’s novel The Last Man is one of the most relevant books we can read right now, and I’m really looking forward to exploring it with students!
Here is more information.
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October 3: Ace of Spades by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé (2021).
Quote:
I feel like I’m reliving the same nightmare over and over, and it will never stop.
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October 30: The Mary Shelley Club by Goldy Moldavsky (2021)
Quote 1:
And when you’re truly scared, there’s nowhere to hide - no private school, no popularity, no trust fund. It’s just you and your most base emotion. Fear is where the truth lies.
Quote 2:
But there was something wrong with me. It clawed at my insides, desperate to get out.
Quote 3:
If you want this to be over, just make sure she screams.
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October is here! This year for my Halloween countdown, with the invaluable assistance of my husband (and resident expert on all things Appalachian), I will be bringing you a spooky, Halloween-appropriate song with a twist of mountain flavor. I’ve chosen one version of each of these songs to share, but some have been recorded and reinterpreted many, many times.
If you like “Boograss” (or Spooky Bluegrass), Southern Gothic tales, traditional murder ballads, ghost stories, and/or Halloween chills, I hope you will enjoy each day’s post!
Song: “O Death”
Quote:
O Death, O Death in the morning,
O Death, spare me over ‘til another year.
Listen to Rhiannon Giddens’ performance…
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