Date of Award
Spring 2026
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
English
First Advisor
Dr. Rachael Falu
Second Advisor
Dr. Katie Owens-Murphy
Abstract
Octavia Butler’s Afrofuturistic, gothic horror, neo-slave narrative Kindred (1979) vividly illustrates the story of a woman, Dana, involuntarily time-traveling from her home in 1976 Los Angeles, California, to a plantation in 19th-century Maryland. The interactions that she has with her ancestors, such as Alice, a free Black woman, and Rufus, a white man who enslaves Alice, leave Dana mentally and physically scarred. The 20th-century novel is meant to graphically reflect on the horrors of enslavement and the mental and physical effects that Black people endured/still endure because of it (i.e., grief, racial violence, and post-traumatic stress disorder). Furthermore, the novel’s theme of disrupting or haunting the present by summoning the past is one that 21st- century authors like Charlotte Nicole Davis also incorporate in their works. Davis's short gothic horror neo-slave narrative, “Fox Hunt,” depicts how the sins of the past are resurrected through traditions and how Black women are expected to endure this cycle of harm. Featured in The Black Girl Survives in This One (2024), the story revolves around Flex who is essentially meant to participate in the same tradition that her enslaved ancestors have been forced to be a part of: a racist version of hide-and-seek where she will be killed if captured by the “hunters.” In both of these texts, there are no mythical or Lovecraftian creatures to terrorize the protagonists; only the concepts of American history haunting the present and surviving Black woman/girlhood are used to establish the element of horror. Ultimately, this thesis aims to compare Kindred and “Fox Hunt” in two ways: 1. by examining how the idea of hiding from and being sought out by danger because of Blackness manifests in both 20th and 21st century texts; and 2. by highlighting how psychological horror is established through the repetition of Black history and how Black women must use cunning and hyper-vigilance to survive because of it.
Recommended Citation
Beckwith, Destini S., ""Black History is Black Horror": Hauntology and Cultural Trauma in 20th and 21st Century Black Women's Gothic Horror" (2026). Theses. 51.
https://roar.una.edu/theses/51
Included in
African American Studies Commons, American Literature Commons, Black History Commons, Comparative Literature Commons, Fiction Commons, Literature in English, North America, Ethnic and Cultural Minority Commons, Other American Studies Commons, Other Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Women's Studies Commons
