Seeking Black Girls’ Liberation in Horror

Hosted by the Humanities Center and featuring graduate fellow, Hebah Uddin. This project engages with horror as a place of survival for Black girls, challenging the presumption that horror as a genre can only further traumatize this jeopardized demographic, and instead framing it as a source of empowerment and strength. Rather than treating horror as shock or spectacle, it focuses on how it functions over time, as a way for young readers to name fear, confront violence, and imagine themselves as capable of enduring it. By recovering a neglected archive of Black women’s children’s and young adult horror, this project offers a radical rethinking of literary history, bringing attention to traditions that have long existed outside the canon. Respondents include Kaliane Ung, from French and Italian + Dr. Lashon Daley, Director of Children's Literature Program and Director of National Center for the Study of Children's Literature, and Assistant Professor, Department of English & Comparative Literature, San Diego State University. This event will be hybrid, so you can attend it either in person in 602 CL or via Zoom as you prefer. Precirculated material for this colloquium will be available here about two prior to the event.