Transatlantic approach: This project explores British and American texts in conversation together. Use of archival materials, which is relatively unusual within Gothic studies, and even in literary studies more generally. A focus on poetry, drama, and periodical writing, genres that are often ignored in the study of the Gothic. A focus on women’s work (both on the labor of women and on texts by women). A focus on local Gothic (especially in Lowell and Manchester), with a connection to larger international trends of the genre.

Emerging from the wreckage of the outside world, Pencil and Nickel at last stand before the symbol of their desperate search-the fabled "Aluminum Tower."

Reunited after their separate journeys, Pencil and Nickel encounter a new brand of aesthetic fascism when they enter a decaying industrial metropolis where beauty is shunned and ugliness is celebrated.

In the aftermath of a deadly bombing, fugitive lovers Pencil and Nickel are suddenly separated and left to their own devices in an increasingly hostile new world. Embarking on a desperate search for his lost companion, Pencil encounters a sculptor and her garden of earthly delights, while Nickel finds herself in an institution where the injured and insane aren't easily differentiated.

For over two hundred years, the Gothic has remained fixed in the European and American imaginations, steadily securing its position as a global cultural mode in recent decades. The globalization of Gothic studies has resulted in the proliferation of new critical concepts and a growing academic interest in the genre. Yet, despite its longevity, unprecedented expansion, and accusations of prescriptiveness, the Gothic remains elusive and without a straightforward definition. Gothic Peregrinations: The Unexplored and Re-explored Territories looks at Gothic productions largely marginalized in the studies of the genre, including the European absorption of and response to the Gothic. This collection of essays identifies landmarks and ley lines in the insufficiently probed territories of Gothic scholarship and sets out to explore its unmapped regions. This volume not only examines Gothic peregrinations from a geographical perspective but also investigates how the genre has been at odds with strict demarcation of generic boundaries. Analyzing texts which come from outside the Gothic canon, yet prove to be deeply indebted to it, like bereavement memoirs, stories produced by and about factory girls of Massachusetts, and the Mattel Monster High franchise, this volume illuminates the previously unexplored fields in Gothic studies. The chapters in this volume reveal the truly transnational expansion of the Gothic and the importance of exchange – exchange now seen not only as crucial to the genre’s gestation, or vital to the processes of globalization, but also to legitimizing Gothic studies in the global world.