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About this blog

Always Halloween and Never Thanksgiving

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Where I am online:

Website: http://amyhsturgis.com Mastodon: http://universeodon.com/@drahsturgis Twitter: http://twitter.com/drahsturgis Dreamwidth: http://eldritchhobbit.dreamwidth.org
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Visit Hill House with me in October 2024!

Just in case you’d like your October to be extra haunted, I’ll be back in SPACE (Signum Portals for Adult Continuing Education) online with Signum University. Voting is now open for my October module, The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. Early voters will determine when our live discussions will meet online. I had so much fun with this before, we’re doing it all over again! More information is here.
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Vernon Press - Call for Book Chapters: Edited volume on Star Trek and Star Wars

Vernon Press - Call for Book Chapters: Edited volume on Star Trek and Star Wars: Call for Abstracts Edited volume on Star Trek and Star Wars Edited by Emily Strand, MA and Amy H. Sturgis, PhD Vernon Press The generations-spanning, multimedia franchises Star Trek and Star Wars will form the focus for this edited collection of scholarly essays. As venerable and evolving repositories of science fiction and fantasy storytelling, and as towering pillars of popular culture, both Star Trek and Star Wars inspire, transform, and even at times inflame their often overlapping fan bases. Together with the publisher, the editors seek proposals for essays exploring these franchises’ themes, narratives, characters, treatment of moral and philosophical dilemmas, religious or spiritual notions, and other aspects. (Abstracts for essays which compare or contrast the two franchises are also welcome.) Collected essays will offer insight — from a variety of disciplines and perspectives — on how these franchises contribute to popular culture and the tradition of speculative storytelling. Abstracts and subsequent essays should be academically rigorous yet accessible to the informed (even non-academic) reader. Abstracts of 300-500 words in length should be submitted, along with a brief biographical statement, by August 2, 2021. Authors of accepted papers will be notified by September 1, 2021, and paper drafts should be submitted by January 10, 2022. More information is here.
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Two Visits to Hill House!

I’ll be starting 2024 with two visits to Hill House! I’m joining SPACE (Signum Portals for Adult Continuing Education) online with Signum University. My first modules include The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (January) and its authorized sequel, A Haunting on the Hill by Elizabeth Hand (February). Registration is now open for January’s module. Voting is now open for February’s module. Here are more details. I hope to see you in SPACE! ALT ALT
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Two Upcoming Dark Academia Presentations

I’m delighted to say I’ll be giving two presentations this autumn on Dark Academia topics at academic conferences. Both events have online options, and I hope to see some of you there! I’ll be giving the talk “A Vanished Student Leaves a Haunted Space: An Unsolved Mystery and the Gothic Imagination on the Dark Academia Campus” at Perilous Realms and Haunted Spaces: New England Moot 2023 sponsored by Signum University in October. I’ll be presenting the paper “Consumed by the Campus: Dark Academia, the Gothic Imagination, and the Missing Student" at the Consuming the Gothic Conference sponsored by Sheffield Gothic in November. ALT ALT
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Tomorrow It Begins!

Tomorrow is October! This will be the fifteenth year I count down to Halloween with daily “spooky posts.” I hope you’ll join me. Throughout October I will also be rereading one of my all-time favorite books, Roger Zelazny’s A Night in the Lonesome October (1994). It recounts (from the point of view of the dog Snuff) the story of a very eventful October and has 31 chapters, one for every day of the month. In recent years I’ve started treating it as an advent calendar of sorts for Halloween. It’s simply brilliant.  Here are a few atmospheric quotes. “Such times are rare, such times are fleeting, but always bright when caught, measured, hung, and later regarded in times of adversity, there in the kinder halls of memory, against the flapping of the flames.” ― Roger Zelazny, A Night in the Lonesome October “I felt a strong desire to howl at the moon. It was such a howlable moon. But I restrained myself.” ― Roger Zelazny, A Night in the Lonesome October
“I took Jack his slippers this evening and lay at his feet before a roaring fire while he smoked his pipe, sipped sherry, and read the newspaper. He read aloud everything involving killings, arsons, mutilations, grave robberies, church desecrations, and unusual thefts. It is very pleasant just being domestic sometimes.” ― Roger Zelazny, A Night in the Lonesome October
And here’s one of my favorite passages. Snuff is describing Sherlock Holmes, disguised for his investigation as a woman, playing his violin with Romani travelers in their temporary camp:

“He played and he played, and it grew wilder and wilder–

“Abruptly, he halted and took a step, as if suddenly moving out of a dream. He bowed then and returned the instrument to its owner, his movements in that moment entirely masculine. I thought of all the controlled thinking, the masterfully developed deductions, which had served to bring him here, and then this ― this momentary slipping into the wildness he must keep carefully restrained ― and then seeing him come out of it, smiling, becoming the woman again. I saw in this the action of an enormous will, and suddenly I knew him much better than as the pursuing figure of many faces. Suddenly I knew that he had to be learning, as we were learning other aspects, of the scope of our enterprise, that he could well be right behind us at the end, that he was almost, in some way, a player – more a force, really ― in the Game, and I respected him as I have few beings of the many I have known.”   ― Roger Zelazny, A Night in the Lonesome October 
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This music mix is inspired by The Magic Ring by Baron de la...

This music mix is inspired by The Magic Ring by Baron de la Motte-Fouqué (1813, translated into English in 1825). Roughly half of the songs are authentic to the era in which the story is set, and two were written by historical figures who actually appear in the novel. I made this mix while editing this edition of the novel for Valancourt Books.
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The Last Dangerous Visions

On my latest “Looking Back at Genre History” segment on the StarShipSofa podcast (Episode 745), I discuss the New Wave in science fiction and the Dangerous Visions anthologies, including the newly-published The Last Dangerous Visions. ALT ALT
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The House of Night, Watchmen, and the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921

In my latest “Looking Back on Genre History” segment on the new episode of the StarShipSofa podcast, I talk about Ray Bradbury’s concept of science fiction as a “reflecting shield” by discussing The House of Night, Watchmen, and the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921. You can listen here. 
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The Button Field

I’m currently reading a fascinating book called The Button Field: A Novel by Gail Husch (2014). It’s based on an actual unsolved mystery, the disappearance of student Bertha Mellish from Mount Holyoke College in 1897. ALTALT
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