About the Editors:
Caroline Joan (Kay) Picart is currently an Associate Professor of English and Courtesy Associate Professor of Law at Florida State University.

Cecil Greek is Associate Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida State University.

What prompts this anthology is an explosion of books and films that link violence, images of “monstrosity,” and Gothic modes of narration and visualization in American popular culture, academia, and even public policy. As Mark Edmundson notes, “Gothic conventions have slipped over into ostensibly nonfictional realms. Gothic is alive not just in Stephen King’s novels and Quentin Tarantino’s films, but in the media and renderings of our political discourse, in modes of therapy, on TV news, on talk shows like Oprah, in our discussions of AIDS and of the environment. American culture at large has become suffused with Gothic assumptions, with Gothic characters and plots.” Nevertheless, there have been few critical anthologies aimed at an interdisciplinary approach focusing specifically on the complex continuum of fact and fiction, involving a dialogue that moves across the humanities (film criticism, cultural studies, rhetoric) and the social services (communication, criminology, sociology) in exploring this phenomenon.

The FDU Press has particular strengths in literary studies, world history and politics, biography, film, ethnic studies, sociology, the Civil War, art, religion, local history, and urban studies.