Re-Imagining the Victim in Post-1970s Horror Media

Dr. Madelon Hoedt is an independent scholar based in the Netherlands. Her research into horror and the Gothic focuses on narrative and embodied experiences, specifically in live performance and video games. Previous publications include Narrative Design and Authorship in Bloodborne: An Analysis of the Horror Videogame (McFarland, 2019); “Gothic Drama and the Uncanny Stage” and “Immersive and Pervasive Performance” (Palgrave Gothic Handbook series, 2020). Marko Lukic is a professor in the English Department at the University of Zadar, where he teaches various courses in American literature, popular culture, and cultural theory. His research interests include the contemporary horror genre and its connection to human spatiality. Recent publications include Geography of Horror: Spaces, Hauntings and the American Imagination (Palgrave 2022), and chapters Heterotopian Horrors and Dark Urbanity (Palgrave Gothic Handbook series, 2020).

• Introduction: Theorizing the Victim, Marko Lukic,Opening the Gate: Reconfiguring the Child Victim in Stranger Things, Lindsey Scott,Black Death: Black Victims in 1980s Teen Slashers, Todd K. Platts,Beyond Binaries: The Position of the Transgender Victim in Horror Narratives, Irena Jurkovic,Through the Looking-Glass: The Gothic Victim in Jordan Peele's Us, Ljubica Matek,Postmortem Victimhood: Necrovalue in Phantasm and Dead and Buried, Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns,The Sad Killer, Perpetuating Spaces, Trauma and Violence Within the Slasher Genre, Marko Lukic, If this is the last thing you see... that means I died: A Taxonomy of Camera-Operating Victims in Found Footage Horror Films, Peter Turner,Victimhood and Rhetorical Dialectics within Clive Barker's Faustian Fiction, Gavin F. Hurley,Pain Index, Plain Suffering and Blood Measure: A Victimology of Driving Safety Films, 1955-1975, Michael Stock,Biolithic Horror: Stone Victim/Victimisers in Resident Evil Village, Merlyn Seller,The Potential Victim: Horror Roleplaying Games and the Cruelty of Things, Ian Downes, Bibliography, Filmography.