"Disability in Contemporary Horror Cinema" Lecture and Discussion with Professor Angela Smith

The UCSB Graduate Center for Literary Research and the Disability Studies Initiative are delighted to present a two-part remote lecture and discussion on"Disability in Contemporary Horror Cinema." 

Horror movies have long exploited ableist representations of disability. The genre's monsters are often violent, threatening, or vengeful creatures with histories of trauma, disordered minds, or physical deformity, while the genre's defining affects -horror, disgust, and fear-are tied to reductive, misleading, and negative disability images and stories. These talks consider examples of recent horror films that continue this tradition. But they also address other recent movies that offer more complex imaginings of disability. Some of these texts foreground plucky disabled characters who survive traumatic experiences, and others envisage disabled communities in which shared vulnerability and openness to mutation enable human continuity.

Angela Marie Smith is Associate Professor of English and Gender Studies and director of Disability Studies at the University of Utah. Her research examines disability representation and affects in cinema, television, and online media. She is the author of Hideous Progeny: Disability, Eugenics, and Classic Horror Cinema (Columbia University Press, 2012).

Event Schedule:

11:00 am-12:15 pm: Lecture and discussion of Tod Browning's 1932 film, Freaks

1 pm-2 pm: Talk on disability and contemporary horror media, centered around John Krasinski's 2018 film, A Quiet Place

For more information on where to view these films, please contact Catherine Nesci catherine.nesci@ucsb. edu