PhD student research interests
Carys Crossen
PhD Thesis Title
'There is God and the Devil in Them;' Gender and Sexuality in Post-1800 Werewolf Fiction and Film.
Supervisor:
Professor Jacqueline Pearson
Research Interests
As the title suggests, this is an exploration of gender and sexuality in English and American novels and films featuring werewolves, and common themes and developments in this area since the revival/reinvention of the werewolf during the Gothic period of the 19th century. The werewolf has often been neglected by critical studies of horror and the Gothic, which is a shame as this is a very rich and rewarding area of research. My particular interest is the figure of the female werewolf, her rarity in comparison to the male werewolf, her status in society, particularly with the recent trend to include werewolf packs in fictions, and her abject status and relation to the symbolic order. Comparisons with other fictional monsters such as the vampire suggest that the werewolf, a monster that appears throughout thousands of years Western culture, points backwards into our distant past and represents a deeply primal, animalistic aspect of humanity.
Outside of werewolves, my research interests include monster theory in general, the horror film, the Gothic, and also feminist theory. I am also very interested in research into the graphic novel.
My e-mail address is Carys.Crossen@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk