Focusing on programs from the 1970s to the early 2000s, this volume explores televised youth horror as a distinctive genre that affords children productive experiences of fear. Led by intrepid teenage investigators and storytellers, series such as Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated and Are You Afraid of the Dark? show how young people can effectively confront the terrifying, alienating, and disruptive aspects of human existence. The contributors analyze how televised youth horror is uniquely positioned to encourage young viewers to interrogate—and often reimagine—constructs of normativity. Approaching the home as a particularly dynamic viewing space for young audiences, this book attests to the power of televised horror as a domain that enables children to explore larger questions about justice, human identity, and the preconceptions of the adult world.
Reader, beware! The kids who grew up sitting too close to the television or peeking through their fingers to watch Goosebumps and Watership Down have grown up, and they are here to mine their childhood nightmares to frighteningly satisfying ends. Youth Horror Television and the Question of Fear unites the most exciting new and established voices in the field to give long overdue attention to this fascinating area of study. — Catherine Lester, University of Birmingham
Youth Horror Television and the Question of Fear elevates the unmediated yet communal experience of watching TV to a source of both joyful reminiscence and satisfying critical intervention. It recognizes how ‘televised youth horror’ spawns horror-loving adults, exposing them to the haunting powers of narrative from a young age. This is a neglected area of contemporary horror’s origin story. — Laura R. Kremmel, Niagara University
" This volume of essays is a wonderful tribute to the scholarly achievements of Professor Baker. "
"The volume is . . . alive with pieces that, rather than uncritically celebrating her achievements, discuss, refine, and sometimes take issue with her views."
"The Wife of Bath in Afterlife is a must-read not only for all serious-minded Chaucerian scholars but also for avid readers who earnestly endeavor to enhance their knowledge about theWife of Bath and to broaden their capacity for learning.”
-- Christina Pinkston, Norfolk State University
Review of Fiddled out of Reason, by John William Knapp
"a valuable contribution to our understanding of the hymn as a literary and cultural phenomenon."
-- Joshua Swidzinski, University of Portland
The Final Days of Edgar Allan Poe, by David F. Gaylin, has been "recommended for all readers" by Choice Reviews and was listed in their Community College Top 75 titles.
"This engaging collection redresses the balance of Poe studies to consider his work from the perspective of women, those in his works and those reading them. . . . [It] offers a welcome emphasis on the irrepressibility of women in his work who ‘die but do not stay dead’"
Very much in the spirit of Robertson's many impacts on our field, this collection opens a range of fascinating apertures into the medieval literary world that promise to be useful, both to fellow scholars and in a variety of literature classrooms.
New Directions in Medieval Mystical and Devotional Literature not only makes a fitting tribute to a beloved scholar and teacher; it constitutes a significant contribution to the field in its own right. The essays in this beautifully presented book will be essential reading for anyone interested in late-medieval vernacular theology and its reception, both in England and beyond.
--Nicholas Watson, professor of English, Harvard University
Dolan and Labbe’s wide-ranging yet cohesive collection of essays offers a comprehensive and convincing breadth that succeeds in its mission of placing Charlotte Smith. Beyond Smithian scholarship, the volume comes at a prescient time.
--Heather Heckman-McKenna University of Missouri-Columbia
