As in many of the works in the exhibition The House Imaginary, the house is a central motif in Gothic novels. It is often a place with memories and secrets rather than a safe haven. Katherine D. Harris will trace this theme from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), which introduced a dangerous and soulless monster into the genre’s decrepit and decaying castles, on through twentieth-century novels such as Stephen King’s The Shining or Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves, in which evil exists not within the individual but instead within a seemingly benign space that ultimately amplifies its inhabitants’ propensity toward evil. Harris is an associate professor of literature at San José State University and author of Forget Me Not: The Rise of the British Literary Annual.

Lunchtime Lectures take place on the first Wednesday of each month in the Charlotte Wendel Education Center. Visitors are welcome to bring food and beverages. 

This lecture is presented in partnership with SJSU in celebration of the Bicentennial of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein publication. More information about other Bicentennial programs can be found here: frankenstein200yrs.wordpress.com