Miss Madelyn Schoonover

I am first year PhD student studying Euro-American and Indigenous American Gothic literature from the 1980's to present. In 2014 received my Bachelor of Arts in English Literature with a minor in Theatre Arts from Nebraska Wesleyan University in Nebraska, US. In 2016 I received my MLitt in the Gothic Imagination with Distinction from the University of Stirling, Scotland. My masters dissertation examined the effect of Reaganomics and Reagan-era socio-political rhetoric on American Gothic literature from the 1980's to present.

My PhD thesis focuses on the differing affects/effects of Indigenous ghosts in Euro-American and Indigenous American literature with an emphasis on world-systems theory and decolonial Gothic. I argue that Gothic Studies does not yet understand or articulate the differences in cultural context that make Indigenous ghosts by Indigenous writers differ so wildly from Indigenous ghosts by Euro-American writers.

Decolonial Gothic, Indigenous literature, postcolonial Gothic, American literature, horror film, world-systems theory, true crime, masculinity studies, eco-Gothic, decolonizing the curriculum, Marxist studies, vampires, folk horror