This session explores the evolving role of Gothic literature and aesthetics in contemporary fiction, critical theory, and interdisciplinary scholarship. Gothic studies, often associated with the nineteenth-century novel, have long been valued for their imaginative engagement with fear, the uncanny, and social anxieties. However, recent scholarship demonstrates that Gothic modes persist far beyond their historical origins, offering analytical tools for understanding ecological collapse, posthuman subjectivities, colonial legacies, and the materiality of illness. Our session seeks to highlight how Gothic forms, both literary and visual, continue to mediate the tensions between individual experience, cultural memory, and systemic power structures. By bringing together early-career researchers and established scholars, we aim to provide a forum for diverse approaches that balance theoretical reflection, historical awareness, and literary analysis.

The rationale for this session stems from the recognition that Gothic studies has expanded into transnational, ecocritical, and posthumanist frameworks, yet the field remains underrepresented in conversations connecting literature with contemporary critical theory. By foregrounding Gothic modes as lenses for exploring social, environmental, and epistemological crises, the session interrogates how both canonical and contemporary texts problematize assumptions about normality, human agency, and ethical responsibility. The session is structured to accommodate four presentations, each of which illuminates a different facet of Gothic inquiry, while reserving at least fifteen minutes at the conclusion for open discussion and participant engagement.

The first presentation, “Gothic Rhetoric in the Tradition of Critical Theory” by Timothy Heimlich (Duke University), situates Gothic aesthetics within the history of Enlightenment critique and modern critical theory. Heimlich traces a genealogical arc from Horace Walpole’s early Gothic to the conceptual vocabularies of Derrida, Sedgwick, and Fred Moten, arguing that Gothic rhetoric functions as a methodological tool for grappling with aporias, ethical discomforts, and the affective residues of historical violence. This paper emphasizes the enduring analytical power of Gothic tropes, demonstrating that they are not merely literary ornaments but instruments of critical reflection.

The second presentation, “Localized Apocalypse and the Posthuman Gothic in Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God” by the session organizer and presider, examines the intersection of Southern Gothic and postapocalyptic ecogothic narratives. Through McCarthy’s depiction of rural Tennessee, this study highlights how Gothic architectures—abandoned houses, decaying landscapes, subterranean spaces—mediate anxieties about environmental degradation, social collapse, and the fragility of human and nonhuman systems. The analysis situates Lester Ballard as a posthuman Gothic figure, whose alienation and survival illuminate contemporary ethical questions about social ecosystems and the limits of the human.

1. L. Andrews (Old Dominion University) contributes the third presentation, “Reinterpreting Dracula Through the Great New England Vampire Panic’s Attempt to Control the Uncanny Body Using the Kill-or-Cure Myth.” Andrews examines Victorian Gothic literature alongside historical medical discourse, demonstrating how vampiric and ill bodies were constructed as socially and culturally threatening. By juxtaposing literary texts with archival reportage, this paper underscores Gothic literature’s capacity to reveal and critique societal anxieties about illness, mortality, and bodily autonomy.

Finally, Natalie Thompson (Medical University of South Carolina) presents “Cereus Blooms at Night: Reclaiming the Gothic Threshold-Crossing of Jane Eyre,” which explores Shani Mootoo’s novel as a revisionist Gothic narrative. Thompson traces how Mootoo reimagines the “madwoman in the attic” through recursive interactions with domestic space, creating a Gothic environment that facilitates social, physical, and psychological recovery. This work demonstrates how Gothic thresholds serve as sites of empowerment, intergenerational witnessing, and postcolonial critique, linking literary form with questions of justice, care, and memory.

Together, these presentations reflect a deliberate diversity of voices and scholarly approaches, spanning early-career researchers and established faculty, canonical and contemporary texts, historical and theoretical frameworks, and literary and visual mediums. By combining archival, ecocritical, posthumanist, and intertextual analyses, the session foregrounds the Gothic as a dynamic site for thinking across disciplinary, temporal, and material boundaries. Participants will leave with a richer understanding of how Gothic modes continue to illuminate pressing cultural, social, and ethical concerns, while also engaging with strategies for applying Gothic studies in their own research and teaching.