One of the most exciting things as a researcher is seeing writing, long worked for behind-the-scenes, finally enter the world! I’m so pleased to share that my latest article, ‘Haunted by “Lenore”: The Fragment as Gothic Form, Creative Practice and Textual Evolution’, has just been published in Gothic Studies (the premiere journal in my field)!
(more…)
Here in Sydney, it’s cold, rainy, and we’re in the midst of another greater city-wide lockdown. You know what that means? Perfect TV binging time!
In my latest story for Macquarie University’s The Lighthouse, I wrote about why modern television loves to revisit and reimagine the Victorian era, and reviewed three of my recent Victorian-era TV binges (including The Nevers, pictured above)!
(more…)
I’m very excited to share my latest article “The Supernatural Fourth Dimension in Lucas Malet’s The Carissima and The Gateless Barrier” which is included in The Palgrave Handbook of Steam Age Gothic. This article is the first examination of Lucas Malet’s work against the exciting Victorian phenomenon of the supernatural fourth dimension. While much of my research has focused on space, the supernatural and the fourth dimension, this article is my first published foray into the wonderful writing of Lucas Malet.
(more…)
I am excited to learn that an edited collection I contributed to is a finalist in the 2020 Mythopoeic Awards! Informing the Inklings: George MacDonald and the Victorian Roots of Modern Fantasy (2018), edited by Michael Partridge and Kirstin Jeffrey-Johnson, is nominated in the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Inklings Studies.
This is a wonderful collection to be a part of, and this award nomination is testament to the excellent scholarship and dedicated editing that went into this volume. Emerging out of the George MacDonald Society conference held at the University of Oxford in 2014, this collection represents much of the new and exciting scholarship emerging around Victorian author George MacDonald, and his contemporaries like Charles Kingsley, Lewis Carroll, Andrew Lang and more. This volume explores how these Victorian writers and their contexts helped pave the way for modern fantasy as we know it in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis and the Inklings.
The essay I was honoured to contribute is called ‘Dreaming into Hyperspace: The Victorian Spatial Imagination and the Origins of Modern Fantasy in MacDonald and Carroll.’
Read more about this volume in my earlier blog post.
Purchase this book online in a range of places, including here.
Do you like ghosts, goblins, and all things gothic? What about horses, horse-riding and all things equestrian? What happens if you put both of those things together? Heads will roll…
On Thursday the 5th March I will be talking about the evolution of the dark, demonic, ghostly horse and rider (yes, the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow fame, along with his ancestors and descendants!) as the first speaker in the Macquarie University Department of English’s 2020 Research Seminar Series. (more…)
Dracula (BBC and Netflix, 2020) is the latest adaptation of Bram Stoker’s classic Victorian Gothic vampire novel. Dark, gory, and beautifully cinematic, it both returns to and departs from the novel in many different ways. Indulging liberally in well recognised gothic and horror tropes, locations and characters, it sinks its teeth into the long history of Dracula adaptations with relish, bundling them together into something that feels both fresh and familiar. But the question of how successful this combination is has stoked (sorry, I had to) some contention. (more…)
Kirstin Mills is an Australian artist, writer, lecturer and researcher following her endless curiosity into realms of imagination and wonder. Read more about her life & projects here.
