New Online Course: “The Uncanny & The Abject”

“The Uncanny and The Abject”: Applying Psychology to Disturb the Reader Live Saturday, May 22, 5 P.M. EST — StokerCon 2021 Online Also Available Asynchronously Following the Event! Details TBA DESCRIPTION: This two hour online workshop will unravel the psychological theories of the Uncanny and the Abject. Together, we will explore how they pertain to… Continue reading New Online Course: “The Uncanny & The Abject”

UO Feminist Media Studies Symposium (10-11 Feb 2017)

This Spring, the University of Oregon Cinema Studies program is hosting a Symposium on Feminist Media Studies in honor of the program founder, Kathleen Rowe Karlyn. Kathleen was my Ph.D. dissertation advisor in the UO English Department back in the late 90’s, helping guide me through the initial research and early draft of The Popular… Continue reading UO Feminist Media Studies Symposium (10-11 Feb 2017)

Photolog: My ‘Uncanny’ Trip to Neumann University

  This past weekend, I had a splendid time visiting the campus of Neumann University (near Philadelphia, PA), where I was kindly invited to give a talk on the Popular Uncanny. I was ushered around for all sorts of events by Dr. William Hamilton (the gentleman in the brown coat in many of the photos… Continue reading Photolog: My ‘Uncanny’ Trip to Neumann University

The Transformative Power of Horror Film in Education

“The Transformative Power of Film” — online panel — 2pm est. TODAY — I’ll be discussing horror in the classroom:meridianuniversity.edu/index.php/comp… — Michael Arnzen, Ph.D (@arnzen) September 13, 2012 I’ll try to update this entry with the archives afterward, if you can’t attend. The panel, hosted by Christine Jarvis, and featuring Drs. Paul Armstrong, Michele Paule,… Continue reading The Transformative Power of Horror Film in Education

The Uncanny in your Inbox — and a Book in your Mailbox

A brief alert to let readers of this blog and fans of all things “uncanny” know that my latest book is a large collection of micropoetry — called The Gorelets Omnibus. Aside from hundreds of twisted (and sometimes funny) horror poems, it features a collection of academic articles written about the gorelets project (by critics… Continue reading The Uncanny in your Inbox — and a Book in your Mailbox

Interview with NHRS: The Uncanny in Popular Horror Fiction

A former grad student of mine, WD Prescott, is running an interesting website bluntly called The Non-Horror Reader Survey that is studying what today’s readers think about the modern horror genre. It features interviews with various readers, writers, and scholars, along with a research questionnaire you can fill out, if you want to participate. It’s… Continue reading Interview with NHRS: The Uncanny in Popular Horror Fiction

Uncanny Digital Literacies: Defamiliarization in The Classroom

Just found this neat Prezi presentation on “Uncanny Digital Literacies” by Sian Bayne, from the ESRC seminar series on Literacy in the Digital University (University of Edinburgh, 16 Oct 2009). I like the free-floating zoomieness of Bayne’s presentation, but with an ‘absent’ presenter, it is a little difficult to make the ideas and images cohere.… Continue reading Uncanny Digital Literacies: Defamiliarization in The Classroom

The New Uncanny: Tales of Unease — A Class Review

I am currently teaching an online horror literature course in “Psychos and the Psyche” for graduate students in our MFA in Writing Popular Fiction program at Seton Hill University. This month we are studying Freud’s article on “Das Unheimlich” and reading a fascinating new anthology of horror fiction called The New Uncanny: Tales of Unease,… Continue reading The New Uncanny: Tales of Unease — A Class Review

Andrew Huang’s Uncanny Videos

I thank my colleagues at Seton Hill University, Laura Patterson and Maureen Vissat, for recently passing along a YouTube link to “Doll Face” by Andrew Huang. It’s a brilliant treatment of the relationship between media technology and gender identity, using uncanny structures like automatism and the compulsion to repeat to deliver its message. The video… Continue reading Andrew Huang’s Uncanny Videos

Slideshow on Freud’s Uncanny

[UPDATE 4/29/12…] Dr. Rob McMinn (the UK teacher behind the We Study Media edublog) gives a succinct overview of Freud’s work on the uncanny (das Unheimliche) in relation to horror texts and the media, in the following slideshow (formerly a “slideshare”, now a google document) related to one of his courses: I particularly liked this… Continue reading Slideshow on Freud’s Uncanny