Grace Fiser

Senior Project Advisor

Lori Martindale

Document Type

Project

Publication Date

Winter 2023

Keywords

Hicksploitation, Horror, Road Trip, Highway, Folk Horror, American Gothic, Liminality, Coming of Age, Magical, Realism, Abjection, Vampires

Abstract

Each culture has its folk landscape. In the folklore of Europe, there are the deep dark woods where fairies and hungry wolves lurk in between the trees. For Americans, there is the frontier, the unknown expanse of wide open space waiting to be conquered. Today that frontier is criss-crossed with miles and miles of roads that we spend hours driving to get from one place to another. It's no wonder our imaginations begin to wander. Road trip horror is a sub-genre defined by horror stories set for the majority of their duration on the highway or on one of its subsidiary stops. The way that America frames its folk landscape, the interstate highway system, within tales of horror reveals a great deal about how the American people deal with our troubled history and modern systems of oppressive power that are often pushed to the margins of the former American frontier, now brought to heel, or is it?

Department

Honors

Subjects - Topical (LCSH)

Folk horror fiction, American; Horror tales; Magic realism (Literature); Gothic fiction (Literary genre), American

Type

Text

Rights

Copying of this document in whole or in part is allowable only for scholarly purposes. It is understood, however, that any copying or publication of this document for commercial purposes, or for financial gain, shall not be allowed without the author’s written permission.

Language

English

Format

application/pdf

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