Suburban Gothic in American Popular Culture

BERNICE M. MURPHY is Lecturer in Popular Literature at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. She edited the collection Shirley Jackson: Essays on the Literary Legacy (2005) and is co-founder/editor of the online Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies.

• Acknowledgements Introduction: Welcome to Disturbia The House Down the Street: The Suburban Gothic in Shirley Jackson and Richard Matheson Conjure Wife: The Suburban Witch Aliens, Androids and Zombies: Dehumanisation and the Suburban Gothic 'You Son of a Bitch! You Only Moved the Headstones!': Haunted Suburbia Don't Go Down To The Basement!: Serial Murder, Family Values and the Suburban Horror Film 'Ah, But Underneath…': Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Desperate Housewives Conclusion: The End of Suburbia? Notes Bibliography Filmography Index

'[A] lively and accessible study [...] [This book] will be of use to both researchers and students, thanks to the deft way [Murphy] handles the interaction betweeen intellectual history, suburban studies and popular culture. [...] Murphy's most pertinent insights come from her discussion of the economic and racial dimensions of suburban gothic texts [...] these issues only manifest in genre texts occasionally and Murphy's alertness to them is one of the study's major strengths.' - Cara Rodway, The Journal of American Studies