Part I Theorizing American Gothic -- 1 The Progress of Theory and the Study of the American Gothic / Jerrold E. Hogle -- 2 Gothic, Theory, Dream / David Punter 3 American Ruins and the Ghost Town Syndrome / Martin Prochazka -- 4 American Monsters / Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock -- 5 Creation Anxiety in Gothic Metafiction: The Dark Half and Lunar Park / Sherry R. Truffin -- Part II Origins of American Gothic -- 6 The African American Slave Narrative and the Gothic / Teresa A. Goddu -- 7 Indian Captivity Narratives and the Origins of American Frontier Gothic / Matthew Wynn Sivils -- 8 Early American Gothic Drama / Benjamin F. Fisher -- 9 Charles Brockden Brown: Godfather of the American Gothic / Carol Margaret Davison -- 10 George Lippard and the Rise of the Urban Gothic / Chad Luck -- Part III Classic American Gothic and Its Legacies -- 11 New England Gothic / Faye Ringel -- 12 Descendentalism and the Dark Romantics: Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, and the Subversion of American Transcendentalism / Ted Billy -- 13 "Gigantic Paradox, Too ... Monstrous for Solution": Nightmarish Democracy and the Schoolhouse Gothic from "William Wilson" to The Secret History / Sherry R. Truffin -- 14 The Fall of the House, from Poe to Percy: The Evolution of an Enduring Gothic Convention / William Moss -- 15 Henry James's Ghosts / Andrew Smith -- 16 A Sisterhood of Sleuths: The Gothic Heroine, the Girl Detective, and Their Readers / Lynette Carpenter -- 17 They Are Legend: The Popular American Gothic of Ambrose Bierce and Richard Matheson / Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet -- Part IV American Gothic and Race -- 18 Is There an Indigenous Gothic? / Michelle Burnham -- 19 Gothic Transgressions: Charles W. Chesnutt, Conjure, and the Law / Justin D. Edwards -- 20 Undead Identities: Asian American Literature and the Gothic / Andrew Hock Soon Ng -- Part V Gothic Modern and Postmodern -- 21 I Am Providence: H.P. Lovecraft / Faye Ringel -- 22 Awful Mystery: Flannery O'Connor as Gothic Artist / Chad Rohman -- 23 Not a Refuge Yet: Shirley Jackson's Domestic Hauntings / Dara Downey -- 24 The Strange Case of Joyce Carol Oates / Gavin Cologne-Brookes -- 25 "Identical Boxes Spreading like Gangrene": Defining the Suburban Gothic / Bernice M. Murphy -- 26 The Cold War Gothic Poetry of Sylvia Plath / Kathleen L. Nichols and 27 Sexuality and the Twentieth-Century American Vampire / William Hughes -- 28 Why Stephen King Still Matters / Tony Magistrale -- 29 The Ghost of the Counterfeit Child / Steven Bruhm -- 30 Toni Morrison's Gothic: Headless Brides and Haunted Communes / Maisha L. Wester -- 31 When the Blood Trail Comes Full Circle: Cormac McCarthy's Gothic of Guilt / Ronja Vieth -- 32 Becoming-Girl/Becoming-Fly/Becoming-Imperceptible: Gothic Posthumanism in Lynda Barry's Cruddy: An Illustrated Novel / Ellen E. Berry -- 33 Gothic Self-Fashioning in Gibson's Novels: Nature, Culture, Identity, Improvisation, and Cyberspace / John Whatley -- 34 Contemporary Women's Gothic: From Lost Souls to Twilight / Gina Wisker -- 35 Apocalyptic Gothic / Arthur Redding -- Part VI Gothic in Other Media -- 36 The Darkest Nightmares Imaginable: Gothic Audio Drama from Radio to the Internet / Richard J. Hand -- 37 Film Noir and the Gothic / David Fine -- 38 The American Dream/The American Nightmare: American Gothic on the Small Screen / Carol Margaret Davison -- 39 Digital Games and the American Gothic: Investigating Gothic Game Grammar / Tanya Krzywinska -- Part VII American Gothic and World Gothic -- 40 Self-Fragmentation, Diseased Landscapes, and other Enigmatic Engagements: American Gothic and the Literatures of East and Southeast Asia / Andrew Hock Soon Ng -- 41 Fluid Bodies: Gothic Transmutations in Carlos Fuentes' Fiction / Antonio Alcala Gonzalez -- Let a New Gender In? American Responses to Contemporary Scandinavian Gothicism / Carol Siegel