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…)
I’m very excited to share the newly released collection of essays entitled Gothic Animals: Uncanny Otherness and the Animal With-Out, edited by Ruth Heholt and Melissa Edmundson, and published by Palgrave MacMillan (with gorgeous design and quality production work). Brimming with excellent new scholarship on the creepiest manifestations of animals in gothic fiction, from rats and cats to spiders and snails, this volume charts new territory in bringing together the fields of gothic and animal studies. My own chapter, entitled “Hellish Horses and Monstrous Men: Gothic Horsemanship in Washington Irving and Edgar Allan Poe,” shares some of my recent research into the ways that gothic fiction uses horses and their relationship to their riders to signal changing cultural boundaries around desirable and undesirable masculinity. (more…)
I am very excited to announce the publication of a wonderful collection of essays entitled Informing the Inklings: George MacDonald and the Victorian Roots of Modern Fantasy, edited by Michael Partridge and Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson (Winged Lion Press, 2018). Based on ground-breaking research presented at the George MacDonald Society Conference at The University of Oxford, 2014, which you can read about here, this collection of essays represents new directions not only in George MacDonald studies but also studies in Victorian fantasy, imagination, philosophy, science and more besides. Each of the twelve essays explores how MacDonald and fellow literary figures such as S. T. Coleridge, Lewis Carroll, Charles Kingsley, and Andrew Lang paved the way for the group of twentieth-century fantasy authors known as “the Inklings,” including C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. With contributions from major critics in the field such as Stephen Prickett, Malcolm Guite, Jean Webb and Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson, as well as newer voices from a range of international scholars, this book treads new territory while returning us to the roots of modern fantasy literature. (more…)
I was recently interviewed by the Keats-Shelley Association of America (KSAA) about my research into Mary Shelley, mental health, travel writing and the gothic, which I presented last September at The Shelleys conference in London. This morning I awoke to the delightful news that the interview has now been published online. This research resonates with me on a very personal level (as you’ll see by reading the interview), so I was deeply touched and heartened to read the wonderful feedback it has already received from some Shelley scholars online.
In the interview I answer three excellent questions about my research posed by Ellen Nicholls, who did a wonderful job of chairing the panel on which I spoke at the conference. My responses explore ideas relating to Mary Shelley’s grief, depression and emotional trauma following the many tragic events in her life, not least the deaths of her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and several of their infant children. I discuss what we can learn from the ways that Shelley handles this grief by turning to the dual outlets of travel and creative writing, and the ways that she thereby constructs a space within which to navigate, understand and attempt to heal her mental anguish. I also look at the competing and complimentary influences upon her writings: her blurred personal and professional agendas; the influences of the gothic, sentimental, and epistolary genres; and the perennial question of how close and how equal was the collaboration between Mary and Percy Shelley (my opinion on this is quite strong, in rebuff of a long tradition of overlooking the genius of Mary Shelley in favour of her husband).
You can read the full interview here:
< Shelley Conference: Kirstin Mills on Mary Shelley and the Landscapes of the Mind >
Silver-sickled, celestial, circling satellite suspended in star-slung, far-flung skies.
Full-bellied billowing, voluminously glittering, luminously glistering in lunatics’ eyes.
The thrice-spinning moon threads stories through time, spun with the world-wending wisdom of old.
Prophesying poetry: there is magic in words; the weather-witch speaks of secrets foretold.
‘Lunar Lore’ by Kirstin Mills.
The poem above was inspired by a little nineteenth-century volume of collected Weather Folklore, in which the author, introducing a section on lore of the moon, referred to our luminous orb as a “weather witch.” “The moon too has always had her votaries, as a weather-witch,” he writes, (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.
