Description: While the undisputed heyday of folk horror was Britain in the 1960s and 1970s, the genre has not only a rich cinematic and literary prehistory, but directors and novelists around the world have also been reinventing folk horror for the contemporary moment. This study sets out to rethink the assumptions that have guided critical writing on the genre in the face of such expansions, with chapters exploring a range of subjects from the fiction of E. F. Benson to Scooby-Doo, video games, and community engagement with the Lancashire witches. In looking beyond Britain, the essays collected here extend folk horror's geographic terrain to map new conceptualisations of the genre now seen emerging from Italy, Ukraine, Thailand, Mexico and the Appalachian region of the US.
Brief description: Ruth Heholt is associate professor of dark economies and gothic literature at Falmouth University. She is the author of Catherine Crowe: Gender, Genre and Radical Politics.
Review Quotes: From Lancashire to Appalachia, from Thailand to Ukraine, from typography to Scooby-Doo, via human sacrifice. In Folk Horror: New Global Pathways, Keetley and Heholt curate a vital addition to the field of folk horror studies, which takes the form beyond its British roots and examines its global manifestations and thematic interconnections. This is essential reading.