Public engagement

Sundays with Frankenstein

‘Sundays with Frankenstein’ is an ongoing 15-week series, held over Zoom, which dissects, annotates, and anatomises Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Based at The Rosenbach, the series also looks at aspects of the museum’s collections that relate to the novel and at pages from Shelley’s manuscript.

Co-hosts include Dr Lauren Nixon, co-organiser of Sheffield Gothic who was awarded her PhD in 2020, and Mary Going, also Sheffield Gothic co-organiser and current PhD researcher at the University of Sheffield.

See the Rosenbach website for more information, and catch previous episodes of ‘Sundays with Frankenstein’ on YouTube.

Maisha Wester, ‘Racial Nightmares in American Horror Films’, a lecture for Romancing the Gothic, January 2021

Maisha Wester’s guest lecture for Romancing the Gothic, a series of online classes on all aspects of the Gothic, was titled ‘Who’s the Monster?: Racial Nightmares in American Horror Films’, and looked at Candyman (original), Amityville Horror (remake), Skeleton Key and Bag of Bones.

Find the recording of her talk on YouTube.

Sheffield Gothic

Sheffield Gothic is a collective group of Postgraduate Students at the University of Sheffield with a shared interest in all things Gothic. The Group is part of The Centre for the History of the Gothic, and helps to organise events hosted by the Centre, as well as creating and organising the Gothic Reading Group and running a popular Gothic blog.

Attendance and membership is completely open and everyone is free to suggest texts or films for discussion. Find out more information on their website.

Gothic Tours

The Gothic Tours project develops and maintains an annotated map of country homes, and other sites of historic interest, which have played an important part in shaping the Gothic imaginary from the eighteenth century to the present day.

The site identifies places to visit and includes brief accounts of their significance to the Gothic tradition. The map has been put together by members of The Centre for the History of the Gothic at the University of Sheffield and will be periodically updated to include new sites of interest. We will be developing the map to include places throughout the UK.

Visit the Gothic Tours map.

‘Gothic and the Hermeneutics of Isolation‘, The Cambridge University Press Blog, 2020

Professor Angela Wright wrote this piece for The Cambridge University Press blog in 2020, about Gothic Literature and the Pandemic.

‘Beyond Belief: Frankenstein’, BBC Radio 4 programme, 2018

Professor Andrew Smith participated in the BBC Radio 4 programme, ‘Beyond Belief’, on an episode about Frankenstein, discussing the novel’s religious content.

The programme is available in full on the BBC Radio 4 website.

‘Frankenstein at 200 and why Mary Shelley was far more than the sum of her monster’s parts‘ The Conversation, 2018

Angela Wright wrote this piece for The Conversation in 2018, about Mary Shelley.

‘Frankenstein in Dundee’, BBC Radio Scotland programme, 2018

Angela Wright participated in BBC Radio Scotland’s programme, ‘Frankenstein in Dundee’ in 2018, discussing Mary Shelley’s time in Dundee and its influence on her seminal novel, Frankenstein.

More information and clips from the programme are available on the BBC Radio Scotland website.

Frankenstein Festival, Matlock Bath, 2018

The Frankenstein Festival was held in Matlock Bath in 2018, and featured a range of events, including a film presentation of Frankenstein (1931), a lecture about Mary Shelley’s novel, and a short story competition. The winning entries to the competition were read in the Caves of Abraham.

The Future of Gothic Studies: A Gothic Networking Day, July 2016

The Centre for the History of the Gothic is hosted a networking day for postgraduates, early career researchers, and academic staff interested in the development of Gothic Studies.

The networking day took place on 8 July from 11am to 5.30pm and featured:

• Presentation from Professor Angela Wright and Dr Andrew Smith, Co-Directors of the Centre for the History of the Gothic

• Guest talk from visiting academic Dr Enrique Ajuria Ibarra (Fundación Universidad de las Américas Puebla)

• Roundtable / panel discussion on the future of Gothic Studies and developing research through public engagement and interdisciplinary studies

• Collaborative networking opportunities for Gothic Centres

• “Getting Published”: A presentation on academic publication by Dr Andrew Smith

• Reimagining the Gothic Research Award Presentation

• Networking reception

The Centre for the History of the Gothic Short Story Competition, 2016

The Centre for the History of the Gothic is hosted a short story competition based on the 1816 story competition which inspired Frankenstein. Entries were recommended to begin with the following line from Frankenstein: “It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils.”