Line Henriksen: The Digital Gothic. Rethinking Ethics, Media and Monsters in a Digital Age

Welcome to a K3 seminar with Line Henriksen, Post-Doctoral Researcher in Media and Communication Studies, K3.

At the seminar, Line will present the research project she works on while at K3. The title of the talk is: The Digital Gothic. Rethinking Ethics, Media and Monsters in a Digital Age

The seminar will take place at 10.15-12.00 on December 1. It will be an online seminar. Please join here: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/65464972230).

Below you will find an abstract for the talk and a short biography of Line:

Abstract

Recent years have seen a proliferation of online stories that combine the Gothic – a literary genre preoccupied with the supernatural and the unknown, usually expressed through the manifestations of monsters and ghosts – and the digital. Such narratives, here referred to as the Digital Gothic, primarily revolve round the supposed risks of copying, sharing and responding to digital files. Considering how monsters traditionally embody a given moment’s cultural anxieties, what anxieties regarding the uses of digital technologies might the monsters that haunt digital media indicate? Further still, considering how the current moment is marked by vast, abstract events such as climate change and pandemics, can the monsters of digital media teach us how to relate to such anxiety-inducing yet ghostly terrains? Through analyses of digital ghost stories and tales of monsters as well as through the framework of hauntology – an otology of hauntings –  I explore the digital gothic not as a contained phenomenon, but as a product of and response to its contemporary (haunted) moment.

Bio:

Line Henriksen is a postdoctoral researcher at the School of Arts and Communication, Malmö University, and affiliated with MEDEA Lab. She holds a PhD in Gender Studies from Linköping University, and an MA in Modern Culture and Cultural Communication from the University of Copenhagen. She is currently working on the research project ‘The Digital Gothic: Rethinking ethics, media and monsters in a digital age’ funded by The Crafoord Foundation, and she is co-organizer and co-creator of the project ‘Monsters of the Anthropocene’ at the Oslo School of Environmental Humanities. Her research interests revolve around subjects such as monster theory, hauntology, creative methods and digital storytelling, and she is co-founder of the international research and art network The Monster Network.

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