Julie Staugaard Kolbeck

My PhD project is an eclectic and cross aesthetic literary study of female monstrosity and materialism in the 21^stcentury Nordic ecohorror. It is also twofold: firstly and thematically, I wish to study the representation of female monstrosity in the ecohorror subgenre through ecocritical, affect theoretical and materialistic perspectives, drawing on theorist such as Timothy Morton, Bruno Latour, Donna Haraway, Jane Bennett, Karen Barad, Elizabeth Grosz, Sara Ahmed and Sianne Ngai. Secondly and methodologically, I aim to instigate a new and post critical approach to literary studies, and particularly to horror research, in which I am not solemnly concerned with what ecohorror is, but rather what it does. My project therefore also investigates the processes between reader and art work, and takes a great interest in the ways horror materializes, embodies and affects ordinary lay-readers, prompting social, political, and cultural (inter)actions outside the realm of fiction and into everyday life. In this endeavor, I have allied myself with Rita Felski, Toril Moi and Eve Sedgwick, amongst others, who all seek to rethink traditional ways of literary criticism.