Nashville Lecture: “Horror & the Southern Gothic”
Just wanted to announce that on October 22, 2025, I’ll be giving another lecture for Profs and Pints at the lovely Fait La Force in Nashville, TN. Here’s the abstract for the talk:
What makes the Southern Gothic so haunting, and how does it intersect with horror? In this talk, Stephanie Graves, a scholar of horror and the Gothic, will explore how the Southern Gothic acts as part genre, part style, and part setting that explores our haunted regional past. The Southern Gothic has persisted in the American imagination, weaving together decaying landscapes, grotesque characters, and the supernatural. This talk will explore the Southern Gothic as a stylistic mode, considering its influence within broader horror traditions. While classic Gothic literature found its origins in the castles and abbeys of Europe, the Southern Gothic relocates these tropes to the haunted landscapes of the American South. It persists through reiterations of the past and the inescapable presence of what lies buried—whether literally in the grave or figuratively in cultural memory.
From the AMC series Interview with the Vampire to the enormously popular film Sinners, the Southern Gothic is a subgenre that highlights horror’s preoccupation with fear, dread, and the supernatural. Ghost stories, monstrous figures, and eerie rituals not only entertain, but also expose deeper cultural anxieties surrounding class, race, gender, violence, and place. This talk will explore the Southern Gothic in literary texts (both classic and contemporary) as well as in film and television to look at how it amplifies horror’s ability to unsettle by rooting fear in familiar soil, showing that the landscape of the South itself can become both setting and spectral presence. By tracing these resonances, this talk will explore how Southern Gothic horror continues to thrive as a cultural space where the spooky and supernatural entwine with history, memory, and dread.
Once the tickets and more info are available, I’ll post it here!
Hope to see you this spooky season!
