Submission Date

7-19-2024

Document Type

Paper- Restricted to Campus Access

Department

African American and Africana Studies

Faculty Mentor

Patricia Lott

Second Faculty Mentor

Edward Onaci

Project Description

What makes something horrific? Does history play a significant role in the perception of horror? How have Black creatives used the horror genre, particularly the films and literary texts collectively called “Horror Noire,” to contend with the communal traumas caused by psychological warfare and nonconsensual scientific experimentation? To address these central questions, I closely watch and critically analyze films such as They Cloned Tyrone (2023), directed by Juel Taylor, and Get Out (2017), directed by Jordan Peele. Furthermore, I will be analyzing scholarly literature such as Robin R. Means Coleman’s Horror Noire: A History of Black American Horror from the 1890s to Present (2023), Orisanmi Burton’s Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt (2023) and Walter Johnsons’ “Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market” as these texts offer a historical and speculative perspectives on Black experiences and resilience. The films and texts will be looked at through a lens that uses an interdisciplinary approach that combines Historical Analysis, Cultural Theory, Media Studies and Black Feminist Theory. I highlight how Horror Noire portrays the complexities of black trauma. My research exemplifies novelist and cultural theorist Tananarive Due's claim that “Black history is Black horror” (Horror Noire, 2019) The ultimate goal of this project is to amplify how Black creatives shape representations of black trauma, challenge dominant narratives about blackness and Black people, and foster empathy and solidarity among Black viewing and reading publics.

Comments

Presented during the 26th Annual Summer Fellows Symposium, July 19, 2024 at Ursinus College.

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