Dr. Mustafa Writes the Book on Blaxploitation Horror Films
Published: August 21, 2023.
Dr. Jamil Mustafa, professor of English Studies, has written his first book, The Blaxploitation Horror Film: Adaptation, Appropriation and the Gothic. This pioneering study demonstrates how conventional horror films adapt the archetypes of Gothic fiction, while Blaxploitation horror films appropriate them – not to exploit Black audiences, but to meet their needs. Considering the vampire, Frankenstein’s Creature, Jekyll/Hyde and the werewolf, the zombie and the evil spirit, Dr. Mustafa traces the sociocultural significance of these figures from classic Gothic texts to mainstream and Blaxploitation horror movies. In so doing, he employs and aligns theories of both adaptation and the Gothic.
"The Blaxploitation Horror Film" is the first book-length analysis of Blaxploitation horror films, and the first to explore how they engage not only Gothic fiction and film, but also issues of vital importance to American society and culture in the 1970s. These include race relations, the movements for civil and gay rights, the Vietnam War, illicit medical experimentation, and tensions between minorities and the police.
"The Blaxploitation Horror Film" is published in the United Kingdom by the University of Wales Press as part of their Horror Studies series, and distributed in the United States by the University of Chicago Press.
Also, Dr. Mustafa will be giving a featured Arts & Ideas presentation on the book in the Ideas Series. "The Blaxploitation Horror Film: Adaptation, Appropriation and the Gothic" will be presented from noon-1 p.m. September 27 in classroom SB-171 of the St. Charles Borromeo Center.
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