Time for a little personal information that’s very relevant to horror cinema! So: as you may know (if you’ve read our About page), I am a Cinema & Media Studies major at a small liberal arts college who’s only months away from graduation. In order to graduate, every student here has to do a comprehensive senior project – colloquially known as “comps.” Well, I submitted my proposal a few weeks ago, it was accepted, I met with the faculty committee today, and it’s decided: I’m compsing on horror movies!
Tentatively entitled “The Sexual Dynamics of American Horror Films, 1942-2002,” my comps project goes into a lot of the same subject matter that I regularly tackle here at Pussy Goes Grrr. Here’s my abstract, summing up what I plan to research:
Basing my arguments theoretically in the work of Barbara Creed, Carol J. Clover, and other horror film scholars, I will perform a close analysis of four horror films, each of which links violence with female sexuality. By comparing the natures of these links, I will reach conclusions about the representations of femininity within the horror genre.
Those four films are the ones you see above: Cat People, The Haunting, Carrie, and May! The finished paper will be 25-30 pages long, and so the next five months will be filled with hard work (and possibly diminished blogging), but hey, those are the costs of success in academia. (OK: that, and about $50,000 a year.) I’m super-excited to get working on it! I love studying the things I love!
In conclusion, thanks for being a reader. This blog has certainly played a big role in getting me to this point, and your interest and support have been crucial. Hearts and kisses for everyone!
I’ve been meaning to ask you what your comps will be on. This looks awesome. I doubt I’ll be in Minnesota when you’re presenting it, but I’d love to hear more about it once it starts all coming together!
I did my dissertation on pretty much this exact same topic, I find it so interesting. I focused on different types of female representations though, mainly using Hitchcock, Carrie, Ginger Snaps, Alien and Jennifer’s Body.
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