No More Haunted Dolls: Horror Fiction that Transcends the Tropes

'No More Haunted Dolls: Horror Fiction that Transcends the Tropes' is a multi-author work united by the common theme of critical analysis of the use of horror tropes in literature, film, and even video games. Tackling issues dealing with gender, race, sexuality, social class, religion, politics, disability, and more in horror, the authors are horror scholars hailing from varied backgrounds and areas of specialty. This book may be used as a resource for classes that study horror or simply as entertainment for horror fans; readers will consider diverse perspectives on the tropes themselves as well as their representation in specific works.

Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Cassandra O’Sullivan Sachar
Chapter 1 Disturbed Mask-ulinity: The Mask Motive in the Slasher Film
Stefan Sonntagbauer
Chapter 2 Goremands: Human Cannibalism and Eating the Other in Contemporary Fiction
Carlos A. González
Chapter 3 Broken Christs and the Advent of Horror: From Shelley’s Frankenstein to AMC’s The Walking Dead
Zaher Alajlani
Chapter 4 Conjured Others and Exorcized Bodies: Reimagining the Horror of Possession in Alice Sola Kim’s “Mothers Lock Up Your Daughters Because They Are Terrifying”
Melissa Eriko Poulsen
Chapter 5 The Horror of Adolescence: Coming of Age Tropes in Horror Cinema
Andrew Wilczak
Chapter 6 “It’s What You Can’t See…That’s What Matters”: A Re-Evaluation of the Human Monster
David Edwards
Chapter 7 She Floated Away: Vampirism and Identity in The Pallbearers Club
Josh Hanson
Chapter 8 Blacks in Horror and Cultivated Bias
Lisa Wood
Chapter 9 Why Are Female Protagonists Not Believed in Horror Fiction?
Cass Heid
Chapter 10 Schlock and Awe: Transgression and Trash Aesthetics in Nick Zedd's They Eat Scum
Stephan Zguta
Chapter 11 The Monstrous Human: Exploring the Agency of Fear in Stephen King’s Misery
Priyanka Bharali
Chapter 12 Archiving Horror: Archive 81 and the Haunting of Analogue Media
Maria Juko
Chapter 13 Body Horror and Disability in Video Games: The Fear of the Unknown and Different
Chayyim Holtkamp
Chapter 14 Hollywood Mythology and King Kong
Kazım Tolga Gürel
Chapter 15 No One Is Coming to Save Us: Government Inadequacy in Large-Scale Horror
Andrew Wilczak
Index

Cassandra O’Sullivan Sachar, Ed.D., M.F.A., is a horror/suspense writer and associate professor of English at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania. She received her Doctorate of Education with a Literacy Specialization from the University of Delaware and her M.F.A. in Creative Writing with a focus on horror fiction from Wilkes University. She also holds a Master of Instruction from the University of Delaware and a Master of Arts in Fiction from Wilkes University. She has chaired panels on and presented horror scholarship at the Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) Convention and the Ann Radcliffe Academic Conference. A member of the Horror Writers Association, her horror stories and essays have appeared in numerous publications including 'The Horror Zine', 'HorrorAddicts.net', 'The Angry Gable', 'The Chamber Magazine', and 'Tales from the Moonlit Path'. Dr. Sachar is the author of the dark suspense novel 'Darkness There but Something More' (published by Wicked House Publishing) and the short horror story collection 'Keeper of Corpses and Other Dark Tales' (forthcoming from Velox Books). She has additionally served as the fiction editor for 'River & South Review' and is the current creative prose editor at Pennsylvania English. Furthermore, her research studies and practitioner articles have appeared in diverse educational publications.

horror criticism, slasher, other, monster, gender, cultivated bias, disability, fear, motive, final girl, cannibal, vampire, zombie, possession, body horror, mask