Gulf Gothic
Gulf Gothic examines haunted, secret-laden narratives that emerge from the gulfs between peoples all along the Gulf of Mexico and on both sides of the Rio Grande. The Gulf is presented as a single transnational region and as dynamic ground zero of North American (and global) cross-culturality and trauma. Responding to the long history of Mesoamerican writing, plantation systems, and racialized divides across the region, this study argues that gothic—with all its affect, undead figures, heavy weather, and hauntings—provides a powerful lens through which to awaken the kinds of gulf-traversing vision so necessary to us here and now.
Dolores Flores-Silva is a professor of Latin American literature and culture at Roanoke College and the author of The Cross and the Sword in the Works of Rosario Ferré and Mayra Montero (2009).
Keith Cartwright is chair of the Department of English at the University of North Florida and the author of Sacral Grooves, Limbo Gateways (2013) and Reading Africa into American Literature (2002).