Research group: Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies
Studying the history and cultural significance of the Gothic aesthetic, from its eighteenth-century British origins through to its contemporary global manifestations.
About our research
About our research
We promote the study of the Gothic to as many different groups as possible.
We work with communities as diverse as secondary school pupils, undergraduate students, postdoctoral researchers and members of the public.
Our research-driven events include creative writing workshops, Sixth Form Gothic Study Days and short Continuing Professional Development (CPD) courses.
We also host the annual Gothic Manchester Festival, Gothic networking days and public research lectures and seminars. These are often run in collaboration with our extensive network of external partners and stakeholders across Greater Manchester.
Such events help us to showcase our research, and to reveal its relevance to contemporary cultural life beyond the University.
As internationally recognised experts within the broad field of Gothic Studies, our researchers are committed to research-led teaching at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels.
The Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies is particularly proud to host MA English Studies (The Gothic), one of the only taught MA programmes in the field of Gothic Studies worldwide.
Our researchers are also experienced supervisors of postgraduate and postdoctoral research, and are always keen to discuss ideas with prospective students. Details of our specialist research interests may be found on our staff profiles.
We will advertise funded PhD or masters opportunities and scholarships on our study page when they become available.
Research themes
Our research themes
The history of Gothic fiction, poetry and drama
One of our research strengths is in English literature, especially the history of the Gothic literary aesthetic from the early modern period, through the eighteenth century to the present day.
Our researchers have published on topics that range from the role of architecture in eighteenth-century Gothic writing to Victorian ghost stories written by women, as well as the political and economic functions of Gothic cultural production in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Gothic screens and sounds
We also specialise in horror film. Our researchers have contributed to major critical debates in the field of horror studies, and have discussed the Gothic on screen in publications and in public engagement work with film festivals and other cultural organisations.
Our researchers have also explored the significance of sound and soundscapes to the Gothic mode, and have advanced critical and popular conceptualisations of haunted space.
Death studies
Our researchers have worked on the social context of death and disposal, in partnership with the Encountering Corpses research group and The Association for the Study of Death and Society.
We are interested in ethnographic approaches to burial and disposal, radical approaches to death studies and memorialisation in Gothic texts and Manchester cemeteries.
Decolonising the Gothic
Working with colleagues in the Centre for Migration and Postcolonial Studies, we are interested in exploring the crossover between the Gothic, race and postcolonialism.
In June 2019, we hosted Absent Presences: Shifting the Core and Peripheries of the Gothic Mode, a conference that highlighted marginalised voices and figures in the field.
Public engagement
The Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies runs an International Gothic Summer School: an exciting series of lectures, workshops and seminars.
We also host a popular summer reading series, the Contemporary Gothic Reading Group.
Featured projects
Key publications
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Key publications
Key publications
- Townshend, D, Wright, A and Spooner, C (2020-2021) The Cambridge History of the Gothic, Volumes 1 to 3, Cambridge University Press
- Liggins, E (2020) The Haunted House in Women’s Ghost Stories: Gender, Space and Modernity, 1850 to 1945, Palgrave Macmillan
- Reyes, XA (2020) Gothic Cinema, Routledge
- Carter, M (2020) The Perpetuation of Myth: Ideology in Bone Tomahawk, Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 68(1), pp 21–35.
- Townshend, D (2019) Gothic Antiquity: History, Romance, and the Architectural Imagination, 1760–1840, Oxford University Press
- Foley, M (2019) Patrick McGrath and His Worlds: Madness and the Transnational Gothic, Routledge
- Ní Fhlainn, S (2019) Postmodern Vampires: Film, Fiction, and Popular Culture, Palgrave Macmillan
- Foley, M (2018) Haunting Modernisms: Ghostly Aesthetics, Mourning, and Spectral Resistance Fantasies in Literary Modernism, Palgrave Macmillan
- Holloway, J (2018) The Magical Battle of Britain: The Spatialities of Occult Geopolitics in Bartolini, N, MacKian, S and Pile, S eds, Spaces of Spirituality, Routledge pp 205–220
- Blake, L and Soltysik Monnet, A eds (2017) Neoliberal Gothic: International Gothic in the Neoliberal Age, Manchester University Press
- Germaine, C (2017) Twenty-First-Century Children’s Gothic: From the Wanderer to Nomadic Subject, Edinburgh University Press
- Germaine, C and Illot, S eds (2017) Telling It Slant: Critical Approaches to Helen Oyeyemi, Sussex Academic Press
- Reyes, XA (2017) Spanish Gothic: National Identity, Collaboration and Cultural Adaptation, Palgrave Macmillan
- Ní Fhlainn, S ed (2017) Clive Barker: Dark Imaginer, Manchester University Press
- Carter, M, Lindfield, PN and Townshend, D eds (2017) Writing Britain’s Ruins, British Library Publishing
- Holloway, J (2017) On the Spaces and Movement of Monsters: The Itinerant Crossings of Gef the Talking Mongoose in Cultural Geographies, 24(1) pp 21-41
- Lindfield, PN, (2016) Georgian Gothic, Boydell and Brewer
- Starnes, K (2016) Fairy Tales and International Relations: A Folklorist Reading of IR Textbooks, Routledge
- Blake, L and Reyes, XA eds (2016) Digital Horror: Haunted Technologies, Network Panic and the Found Footage Phenomenon, I.B. Tauris
- Allmer, P, Huxley, D and Brick, E eds (2012) European Nightmares: Horror Cinema in Europe since 1945, Wallflower Press
Partners
Organisations we work with
Visit Manchester
HOME Cinema
Grimmfest Film Festival
Ordsall Hall
Contact information
Contact us
For general enquiries about our Gothic research group, you can contact its leads Prof Xavier Aldana Reyes or Prof Dale Townshend.