CLIC nodigt jullie graag uit voor de eerstvolgende WOLEC-sessie die plaatsvindt op vrijdag 22 mei van 12:00 tot ten laatste 13:30 in C2.07a. Spreker Aya Chriaa (VUB) zal een lezing geven met als titel: "The 21st-Century American Nightmare: New Forms of Monstrosity in Black American Horror Literature (2014-2025)".
Aya Chriaa holds a master’s degree in Linguis cs and Literary Studies from the University of Ghent (2024) and is a teaching assistant in Linguis cs and Literary Studies at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, where she is a member of the Centre for Literary and Intermedial Crossings (CLIC). She is applying for funding for a PhD project on Contemporary Black American Horror Literature under supervision of Prof. Bekers and Prof. Caracciolo.
De voertaal is het Engels. Een broodjeslunch wordt voorzien. We vragen u om uw aanwezigheid ten laatste tegen 19 mei via deze link te bevestigen. Voor meer informatie over WOLEC, klik hier.
Tot dan!
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CLIC is excited to invite you to the next WOLEC session, taking place on Friday 22 May from 12:00 till 13:30 in room C2.07a (building B, 2nd floor, room 7a). Aya Chriaa (VUB) will give a lecture titled: "The 21st-Century American Nightmare: New Forms of Monstrosity in Black American Horror Literature (2014-2025)".
Aya Chriaa behaalde in 2024 een masterdiploma Taal- en Letterkunde aan de Universiteit Gent en is onderwijsassistent Taal- en Letterkunde aan de Vrije Universiteit Brussel, waar ze lid is van het Centre for Literary and Intermedial Crossings (CLIC). Momenteel werkt ze aan een beursaanvraag voor een doctoraatsproject over hedendaagse Black American Horror Literature onder begeleiding van prof. Bekers en prof. Caracciolo.
The lecture will be held in English. A sandwich lunch will be provided. We ask you to confirm your presence via this link by 19 May. For more information about WOLEC, click here.
We hope to see you there!
Abstract
In the wake of the 2014 Ferguson protests and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, Horror has emerged as a popular genre among Black American artists to address anti-Black violence, racialized fear, and political pessimism in the 21st-century United States (Wester 2025). As a genre, Horror has mainly sought to expose society's deepest fears and cultural anxieties through the unknown and the figure of ‘the Other’ (Borrowman et al. 2010). Yet in doing so, it has historically reduced racial and social minorities to figures of monstrosity, projecting cultural anxieties about race, gender, and sexuality onto marginalized bodies (Halberstam 1995: 2). While Black writers have long contested these racialized logics (Wester 2019: 53-54), “Black Horror” has in the 21st century achieved remarkable popular attention, especially through films such as Jordan Peele’s Get Out (2017) and Us (2019) and Misha Green’s television series Lovecraft Country (2020). Yet this recent upsurge of Horror narratives by Black artists extends well beyond the screen. This presentation offers an introductory exploration of the literary dimensions of that reclamation, tracing how contemporary Black American writers (e.g. Tananarive Due, Rivers Solomon, Victor LaValle etc.) are mobilizing the thematic, formal, and stylistic conventions of Horror to confront systemic racism, misogynoir, and intersecting forms of oppression (Sottosanti 2025) – creating, in the process, a poetics adequate to capture the socio-political conditions that haunt Black life in today’s U.S. society.