View Document


Bleeding All Over the Shelves and Tracking It Out Into the World: Theorizing Horror in Indigenous North American Literature
Department: English & Philosophy
ResourceLengthWidthThickness
Paper000
Specimen Elements
Pocatello
Unknown to Unknown
Hogan D. Schaak
Idaho State University
Dissertation
No
6/26/2025
digital
City: Pocatello
Doctorate
This dissertation theorizes horror in contemporary Indigenous North American literature as it relates to the history of the white supremacy in North American subjectivity coded within gothic and horror literature. I examine contemporary Indigenous North American fiction alongside early American literature written by White men as well as gothic and horror literature written in the time between then and now by various, influential authors. I argue that the North American gothic and horror traditions help shape a white supremacist subjectivity native to White North America. I then theorize Indigenous intervention in the North American gothic and horror traditions present within contemporary Indigenous North Americans literature by exploring the racism inherent in various subfields of horror including studies that pertain to ghosts, monsters, and the body in North America. Finally, I theorize various ways to approach teaching horror in Indigenous North American literature. I hold that horror in Indigenous North American literature reveals various antiracist Indigenous North American subjectivities which rework the gothic and horror tropes underlying the white supremacy of White North American subjectivity by highlighting the various histories that gothic and horror have traditionally erased. I ground this argument in Gerald Vizenor’s theory of transmotion as well as a wide variety of scholarship on the narrative structures of gothic and horror literature. I utilize theories of subjectivities, regenerative violence, racial representationalism, and more as I argue that Indigenous North American authors engaging with horror in their fiction address and respond to the white supremacy coded with the North American gothic and horror tradition in a way that is at once resistant and non-essentializing. I argue that, because the white supremacist North American subjectivity that represses considerations of racism in North America has been largely constructed in gothic fiction and reworked in horror, it should come as no surprise that horror is where contemporary Indigenous North American authors are currently writing. This work joins an ongoing and robust conversation around Indigenous North American engagement with genre fiction, introducing considerations of the gothic and horror to the terrain that has already begun to be mapped in science fiction and fantasy studies. Key Words: Indigenous North American, horror, gothic, ghosts, monsters, survivance, transmotion, Stephen Graham Jones, Gerald Vizenor, Cherie Dimaline, Darcie Little Badger, Louise Erdrich, A.A. Carr, LeAnne Howe, Owl Goingback, Charles Brockden Brown, Stephen King, TribCrit, body gothic, gore

Bleeding All Over the Shelves and Tracking It Out Into the World: Theorizing Horror in Indigenous North American Literature

Necessary Documents

Paper

Document

Information
Paper -Document

2008 - 2016 Informatics Research Institute (IRI)
Version 0.6.1.5 | beta | 6 April 2016

Other Projects