Memory and the Gothic Aesthetic in Film

"Through a number of pertinent, and in many instances canon-expanding, case studies that unite form, history and meaning, this book offers a nuanced reframing of the Gothic mode on film from the 1920s to the 1950s through the notion of memory. Jacob Ramalho takes the reader on a rewarding journey to the itinerant, border-crossing and tactile heart of cinematic darkness." -Xavier Aldana Reyes, author of Gothic Cinema (2020) "Joana Jacob Ramalho’s revelatory book proposes a radical new reading of the gothic in its filmic incarnations that roots its aesthetic in histories of exile and dislocation and memory. Ramalho teaches us that the surface of these films spanning across time, space, and genre is political, and her book generates not only a brilliantly original interpretation of the aesthetics and cultural work of the transnational filmic gothic but also a model for the reading of the deep meanings that reside in objects and forms and affects. Ramalho’s dazzling book is simultaneously beautifully written and profound and shall be significant to the multidisciplinary study of the gothic and the study of film." -Lee Grieveson, author of Cinema and the Wealth of Nations (2018) This open access book defines the cinematic Gothic as an aesthetics of memory and exile. Guided by three intersecting concepts – memory, travelling, and touch – it suggests that the cross-border movements of exiles, émigrés, and professional travellers had a crucial impact on the emergence, development, and dissemination of the Gothic. This approach expands the canon to overlooked films, filmmakers, and national traditions. Drawing on film, memory, and gothic studies, the book urges the reader to think across other disciplines, including phenomenology, neurology, cognitive neuroscience, and disability studies. From hands to pianos, accordions, gloves, amnesia, and wounded bodies, the volume proposes a reappraisal of the Gothic by redrawing its scope, retracing its origins, and refocusing attention on surfaces as sites of socio-political meaning. Joana Jacob Ramalho is Lecturer (Teaching) at University College London. Her publications include work on thing theory, radical humour in punk cabaret, gothic musicals, and Ludwig II of Bavaria.