Homeownership is integral to the mythology of the so-called American Dream, and the right to property has been a thematic device in horror since The Castle of Otranto. With the promise of stability, autonomy, comfort, and a path towards upward mobility, the house is not merely a financial asset but a representation of our identity and our place in society. But what happens when malevolent forces shatter that illusion of power and safety and the dead won’t give up the deed? When does the private home become a haunted house? With films like The Amityville Horror, The Haunting in Connecticut, Dark Water, and His House, this talk will examine the role homeownership plays in horror both as aspirational bait and financial trap.
Please note these are live events – they cannot be downloaded and watched later, so please be sure you are available at the time and timezone the classes are being offered in before registering.
Leila Taylor, author of Darkly: Black History and America’s Gothic Soul is a writer and designer whose work is focused on the gothic in Black culture and horror. Her work has been published in The Journal of Horror Studies, The New Urban Gothic: Global Gothic in the Age of the Anthropocene, and The Repeater Book of the Occult. She has given talks for the International Gothic Association in Mexico and the U.K., Morbid Anatomy and Night of Philosophy in New York. She received a Masters in Fine Arts from Yale University and an MA in Liberal Studies at The New School for Social Research. She lives in Brooklyn, New York where she is Creative Director for Brooklyn Public Library.
