Gender and the Nuclear Family in Twenty-First-Century Horror

Kimberly Jackson is Associate Professor of English and Chair of the Department of Language and Literature at Florida Gulf Coast University, USA. She is the author of Technology, Monstrosity, and Reproduction in Twenty-First Century Horror (Palgrave, 2013). Her work has been published in such journals as Victorian Literature & Culture, Horror Studies, and Theory, Culture, and Society, as well as numerous edited volumes.

"This book offers a fresh theory on one of the horror genre's most recent permutations, a rewriting of the family horror that has marked its narratives since the late 1960s. Jackson elegantly argues that these new films represent a transitional moment in the representation of the family, in which 'patriarchal culture' finds itself 'trapped between a future it cannot envision and a past it cannot forget.' The chapters offer insightful and far-reaching readings of films about which (due to their newness) little has been written. Gender and the Nuclear Family in Twenty-First-Century Horror is sure to set the stage for further scholarly and popular discussions of family horror." - Aviva Briefel, Professor, English, Cinema Studies, Bowdoin College, USA

• Introduction: The "Post'" Era: Defining Post-Patriarchy and Post-Feminism 1. Impossible Womanhood and Post-Feminist Hegemony in Bertino's The Strangers and Pierce's Carrie2. Like Son, Like Father: Tracing the Male Possession Narrative through Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense, Koepp's Stir of Echoes, and Wan's Insidious and Insidious 23. Family Horror and Media Saturation in Verbinski's The Ring and Derrickson's Sinister4. Returning to the Archaic Mother: Collet-Serra's Orphan, Muschietti's Mama, and Flanagan's OculusConclusion