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Dr Linnie Blake

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My profile

Biography

Academic and professional qualifications

I hold a BA(hons) First Class from the University of Warwick, an MPhil in English Literature 1880-1860 from the University of Oxford and a PhD from the University of Cambridge. 

Other academic service (administration and management)

Founding Head: The Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies

in 2013 I received University approval to establish a Centre for Gothic Studies at MMU.  As Centre Head, I was responsible for all aspectts of the Centre’s work - specifically the promotion of Gothic studies both nationally and internationally, working across all age ranges and levels of study – from sixth form to PhD and beyond. This entails the planning and delivery of Sixth Form Gothic Study Days, creative writing workshops, Continuing Professional Development courses, academic conferences and networking events.  The Centre also delivers the annual Gothic Manchester Festival and houses the postgraduate and early career academic journal Dark Arts.  Further information on the work of the Centre can be found at: https://www2.mmu.ac.uk/english/gothic-studies/ 

Public Engagement Fellow

As MMU Public Engagement Fellow, I was responsible for the creation, design and management of Moss Side Stories, a multi-media public engagement project with a widening participation brief. I continue to work for greater institutional engagement with the local community, specifically local youth and am involved with a number of third stream initiatives to that end. These have included the Manchester Gothic Festival (2013, 2014 and 2015), a week-long programme of events across the city. 

Programme Leader for English

For six years (2008-2013) I was responsible for the day to day management of the BA English programme, including the promotion of the programme at visit days and induction events, quality assurance monitoring and documentation, strategic planning, the production of student information materials relating to induction and option choice, the timetabling of teaching, the co-ordination of student extenuating circumstances claims and of the examinations process.

External examiner roles

Although I have served as external examiner for the Department of English at the University of Strathclyde and for the MLitt Gothic Imagination at the University of Stirling and have audited a number of programmes (at the Worcester and Strathclyde) I no longer undertake external duties. . 

Expert reviewer for external funding bodies

I am a member of the editorial board of the international peer-reviewed journal Horror Studies and the foremost journal in its field Gothic Studies. I sit on the Advisory Board of the book series Horror Studies (University of Wales Press) and was a founder and long-term member of the Editorial Board of the prestigious journal Angelaki: A Journal of the Theoretical Humanities. I review proposals for a range of international universities and for a number of journals.   

Editorial Board membership

I am a member of the Executive Board of the international peer-reviewed journal Horror Studies and sit on the Advisory Board of Dark Arts, a journal of postgraduate and early career research in the gothic. I was a founder-member of Angelaki: A Journal of the Theoretical Humanities and sat, for some years, on its Executive.

Get in touch

0161 247 1738
308 Geoffrey Manton Building
Please email for an appointment

Projects

From 2013, as Director of the Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies I co-convened the Gothic Manchester Festival (with Xavier Aldana Reyes).  This were major public engagement event that built collaborative relationships with a range of instutitions across the city (including the Manchester Art Gallery, John Rylands Library, Grimmfest Film Festival and Cornerhouse) and with the British Film Institute nationally.  Full details of the Gothic Studies Centre and Festivals are available on its page: https://www2.mmu.ac.uk/english/gothic-studies/ 

In 2008 I was awarded an MMU Public Engagement Fellowship to enable the planning and delivery of Moss Side Stories, a multimedia exhibition project that enabled the pupils of Manchester Academy to explore their own life stories in the form of poetry, prose, painting and video art through a series of professionally facilitated workshops. 

Teaching

Why study…

Over the course of the past decade there has been an explosion of interest in the Gothic as it manifests itself in a range of literary, filmic, televisual and popular cultural texts.  As a research specialist in Gothic film and literature I am interested in why this should be the case and what it has to tell us about the world we inhabit. For me, film and literature opens up a window on the time and place n which the film was made or the book was written.  It enables us to think more deeply about the role of mass culture in shaping how we think of ourselves and our world.  And in the case of disturbing or frightening texts, it enables us to think about the ways in which traumatic events (such as acts of violence) shape our society and our selves. Most significantly, I believe, it enables us to understand the ways in which the imperatives of global economics (and the ideologies that support the status quo) are experienced and may, in turn, be challenged. 

Postgraduate teaching

I am Pathway leader for MA: English Studies: The Gothic and teach on the Twentieth Century Gothic and Postmillenial Gothic units. I also supervise the Dissertation component of the degree. 

Subject areas

Film, Gothic Film and Literature, Horror Cinema

Supervision

I am engaged in the supervision of PhDs and MA dissertations in a variety of areas - from cult cinema, film fandom and horror cinema to Gothic theology, Gothic Contagion, Neovictorian Gothic and Documentary Cinema. I have a strong interest in the global dimensions of the Gothic and have supervised PhDs on Japanese A Bomb cinema and Thai Horror. I am currently supervising a PhD on Japanese Commodity Animism and Middle Eastern Gothic. 

Research outputs

Single Author Books

  • • The Wounds of Nations: Horror Cinema, National Identity and Historical Trauma. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008

Edited Collections
• Neoliberal Gothic: International Gothic of the Neoliberal Age. Ed. Linnie Blake & Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017.
• Digital Horror: Haunted Technologies, Network Panic and the Found Footage Phenomenon. Ed. Linnie Blake & Xavier Aldana Reyes. London: IB Tauris, 2016.
Chapters in Books

  • • ‘Neoliberal Gothic’ in The Edinburgh Companion to Twenty First Century Gothic. Eds. Maisha Wester and Xavier Aldana Reyes. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019.
  • The Monster in the Living Room: Gothic Television of the Neoliberal Age’ in The Edinburgh Companion to Gothic in the Arts. Ed. David Punter. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019.
  • • Blake, L. ‘Burning Down the House: Get Out, Signifying, and the Female Gothic’ in Jordan Peele’s Get Out: Political Horror. Ed. Dawn Keetley. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2020.
  • • ‘The Gothic Text in the Age of Neo-Liberalism, 1990‚ÄíPresent’ in The Cambridge History of the Gothic: Volume 3: The Gothic in the Twentieth and Twenty First Centuries. Ed. Catherine Spooner & Dale Townshend, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.
  • • “Consumed Out of the Good Land: The American Zombie, Geopolitics and the Post-War World.” American Gothic Culture: An Edinburgh Companion to the Gothic. Ed. Jason Haslam & Joel Faflak. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016. pp. 232-236.• “Gothic Rapture in the Hysterical Sublime?: Twin Peaks and the Origins of Neo-Liberal Gothic TV.” Return to Twin Peaks: New Approaches to Materiality, Theory, and Genre on Television. Ed. Catherine Spooner & Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. pp. 229-246.• “Digital Witnessing and Trauma Testimony in Ghost Game: Cambodian Genocide, Digital Horror and the Nationalism of New Thai Cinema,” Digital Horror: Haunted Technologies, Network Panic and the Found Footage Phenomenon. Ed. Linnie Blake & Xavier Aldana Reyes. London: IB Tauris, 2016. pp. 69-79.
  • • “Mark Hodder’s Burton and Swinburne Trilogy: Steam-Age Adventures in Neo-Liberal Liminality.” Technologies of the Gothic In Literature and Culture: Technogothic. Ed. Justin Edwards. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015. pp. 166-178
  • • “Vampires, Mad Scientists and the Unquiet Dead: TV Ubiquity and the Gothic’s Own Demise,” in PopGoth: Gothic in Contemporary Popular Culture Ed. Justin D Edwards and Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet. Basingstoke: Routledge, 2012. pp. 37-56.
  • • “New Labour New Horrors: Recent British Horror Cinema and the New Labour Project.” European Nightmares. Ed. Patricia Aylmer. London & Buffalo: Wallflower / Columbia University Press, 2012. pp. 77-87.
  • • “I am the devil and I’m here to do the devil’s work’: Rob Zombie, George Bush and the Limits of American Freedom.” American Horror after 9/11. Austen: University of Texas Press, 2011. pp. 186-99.
  • • “Edgar Allan Poe in Paris: The Flaneur, the Detournement and the Gothic Spaces of the Nineteenth-Century City.” Le Gothic. Ed. Avril Horner and Sue Zlosnik. London: Palgrave, 2008. pp. 38-49.
  • • ““Everyone Will Suffer” – National Identity and the Spirit of Subaltern Vengeance in Nakata Hideo’s Ringu and Gore Verbinski’s The Ring.” Monstrous Adaptations. Ed. Jay McRoy and Richard Hand. Manchester University Press, 2007. pp. 209-28.
  • • “Partly Truth and Partly Fiction: The Western, the City Movie and the American 1970s.”
  • American Visual Cultures. Ed John Beck and David Holloway. New York and London: Continuum, 2005. pp. 216-23.
  • • “Things to do in Germany with the Dead.” Nekromantik. Ed. Jorg Buttgereit. Berlin: Martin Schmitz Verlag, 2007.
  • • “Jorg Buttgereit’s Nekromantiks: Things To Do in Germany With the Dead.” Alternative Europe: Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945. Ed. Ernest Mathijs and Xavier Mendik. London and New York: Wallflower Press, 2004. pp. 191-203.
  • • “Another One for the Fire: George A Romero’s American Theology of the Flesh.” Shocking Cinema of the 1970s. Ed. Xavier Mendik. Intro. Michael Winner. Hereford: Noir Publishing, 2002. pp. 151-166.
  • • “Whoever Fights Monsters: The American Serial Killer and Jackson Turner’s Final Frontier,” The Devil Himself: Villains and Villainy in American Crime Fiction and Film. Ed. Stacy Gillis and Philippa Gates. Westport & London: Greenwood Press, 2002. pp. 197-212.

Press and media

Media appearances or involvement

I have made a number of contributions to podcasts and radio programmes over the course of my career including, most recently for BBC Radio 4’s Digital Human. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000p6fq

More significantly, the Gothic Manchester Festival garnered a considerable amount of media coverage from a range of local, national and international publications, as did the MMU’s MA English Studies: The Gothic, for which I am the Pathway Leader.  This coverage comprised features, news articles and interviews with myself as Centre Director: Coverage included:  

The Times Higher Education Supplement (24/10/13): www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/research-cluster-explores-all-things-gothic/2008348.article and (31/10/13): www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/comment/the-poppletonian/frankly-we-dont-care/2008562.article

The Independent (21/06/2013) www.independent.co.uk/incoming/studying-great-works-with-a-gothic-flavour-8663452.html and www.independent.co.uk/student/news/rocky-horror-university-centre-for-gothic-studies-opens-in-manchester-8902149.html

Daily Mail (09/08/13): www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2387676/Manchester-Metropolitan-University-launches-course-Gothic-horror-cash-Twilights-popularity.html

Manchester Evening News (09/08/13): www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/ghostly-goings-manchester-uni-offers-5692824 and www.mmu.ac.uk/news/news-items/2194

BFI’s press launch for their Gothic strand (27/06/2013)

Chosen topic for the ‘Ambassador Spotlight’ section of Visit Manchester’s research newsletter (26/06/2013)