Presentation at University of Sunderland, 9th February

I will be presenting a paper based on my recent Sexuality and Culture journal article at the University of Sunderland on 9th February.

Centre for Research in Media and Cultural Studies
The Barbour Room (233)
The Media Centre St Peter's Campus
5.30-7.00pm

Here is the abstract for the paper:

Torture Born: Representing Pregnancy and Abortion in Contemporary Survival-Horror

In proportion to the increased emphasis placed on abortion in partisan political debate since the early 2000s, there has been a noticeable upsurge in cultural representations of abortion. This paper charts ways in which that increase manifests in contemporary survival-horror. This paper contends that numerous contemporary survival-horror films foreground pregnancy. These representations of pregnancy reify the pressures that moralistic, partisan political campaigning places on individuals who consider terminating a pregnancy. These films contribute to public discourse by engaging with abortion as an individual, emotional matter, rather than treating abortion solely as a matter of political principle. This paper will posit that survival-horror—a genre that has been roundly disparaged by critics—makes an important contribution to sexual-political discourse: these films use horror to articulate “the things we cannot say” about abortion.