Did you know that the South College Library provides students, faculty, and staff access to over 100,000 ebooks? October is officially Spooky Season, so let’s get into the spirit with books about the paranormal, occult, and downright scary.
Spooky Season
Theorising the Contemporary Zombie by
Publication Date: 2022
Zombies have become an increasingly popular object of research in academic studies and, of course, in popular media. Over the past decade, they have been employed to explain mathematical equations, vortex phenomena in astrophysics, the need for improved laws, issues within higher education, and even the structure of human societies. Theorising the Contemporary Zombie defines zombiism as a means of theorizing and examining various issues of society in any given era by immersing those social issues within the destabilizing context of apocalyptic crisis; and applying this definition, the volume considers issues including gender, sexuality, family, literature, health, popular culture and extinction.
A History of the Vampire in Popular Culture by
Publication Date: 2021
An exploration of the continuing appeal of vampires in cultural and social history. Our enduring love of vampires—the bad boys (and girls) of paranormal fantasy—has persisted for centuries. Author Violet Fenn takes the reader through the history of vampires in “fact” and fiction, their origins in mythology and literature, and their enduring appeal on TV and film. The book delves into the sexuality—and sexism—of vampire lore, as well as how modern audiences still hunger for a pair of sharp fangs in the middle of the night.
Haunted Homes by
Publication Date: 2021
Haunted Homes is a short but groundbreaking study of homes in horror film and television. While haunted houses can be fun and thrilling, Hollywood horror tends to focus on haunted homes, places where the suburban American dream of safety and comfort has turned into a nightmare. From classic movies like The Old Dark House to contemporary works like Hereditary and the Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House, Dahlia Schweitzer explores why haunted homes have become a prime stage for dramatizing anxieties about family, gender, race, and economic collapse. This lively and readable study reveals how and why an increasing number of films imagine that home is where the horror is.
Haunted Kansas by
Publication Date: 2023
Who's that? Is someone there? A whisper of air brushes your cheek. Then all is still. Maybe it was just the wind. Or maybe it wasn't....The evanescent apparitions of these tales have frightened and at times amused Kansans throughout the state's long history. Yet this is the first book to capture for posterity the lively antics of the state's ghostly denizens. Besides preserving a colorful and imaginative, if intangible, side of the state's popular heritage, Heitz supplies ghost-storytellers with ample hair-raising material for, well, eternity. Maybe that person breathing softly behind you has another such story to share. Oh, no one's there? Perhaps it really was just the breeze off the prairie.
Witchcraft and Adolescence in American Popular Culture by
Publication Date: 2022
In the decades since the Second World War, the teenage witch has emerged as a major American cultural trope. Appearing in films, novels, comics and on television, adolescent witches have long reflected shifting societal attitudes towards the teenage demographic. At the same time, teen witches have also served as a means through which adolescent femininity can be conceptualized, interrogated and reimagined. Drawing on a wide theoretical framework—including the works of Deleuze and Foucault as well as recent new materialist philosophies—this book explores how the adolescent witch has evolved over the course of more than seventy years.
Vampirology by
Publication Date: 2021
Our fascination with the vampire myth has scarcely diminished since Bram Stoker's publication of the classic Dracula tale in 1897, but how much of the lore is based in fact and can science explain the origins of horror's most famous fiend? Vampirology charts the murky waters of the vampire myth – from stories found in many cultures across the globe to our sympathetic pop-culture renditions today – to investigate how a scientific interpretation may shed light on the fears and phenomena of the vampire myth.
You can find these and more through the South College Library’s digital collection on the library website.