Joshua B. Tuttle

Professional Bio

I am interested in "spooky literature," considered broadly. This includes Gothic literature and its emergence out of the early modern period, ghost stories, weird fiction, horror literature, and folklore.

My dissertation explores the participatory process by which our understanding(s) of the Gothic have been negotiated across time. This process is very much ongoing, and my project traces this history from the beginning of the long eighteenth century to the present. On the early side of this history, the conceptual participants adopted and invoked early modern precedents, while on the later side I show how the Gothic was renegotiated, re-mediated, and taken up in the context of tabletop roleplaying games beginning in the late twentieth century. This participatory process of generic and conceptual negotiation, my research suggests, becomes ever more diffuse over time.

My theoretical articulation of the "Spooky" in terms of form, affect, and effect in horror literature, as distinct from the registers of fear, terror, the eerie, etc., was recently published in the Journal for the Fantastic in the Arts as "Dancing in the Ruins: Toward an Affect-Narratology of the Spooky."

I also run an informal reading group called The Spooky Society. Sometimes I post meeting notes, Spooky Things I find interesting, reviews, or generic musings on our website (www.spookyscarysociety.com). (Not much has been posted recently due to COVID and other pressures, but meetings have resumed as of 2022.)

I believe that university life requires that people with diverse viewpoints and perspectives encounter each other in an environment where they feel free to speak up and challenge each other. I am concerned that many academic fields and universities currently lack sufficient viewpoint diversity. I support viewpoint diversity, mutual understanding, and constructive disagreement in my academic field, my institution, my department, and my classroom.