Inaugural Southern Gothic Lecture Series: “The Rougarou and the Rise of the Cajun Ecogothic” 

The O'Connor Institute is kicking off the Inaugural Southern Gothic Lectures Series! Join us for this interdisciplinary series of discussions among the fields of literature, environmental studies and southern studies.

Sara L. Crosby hails from an island off the coast of Louisiana. She's a professor of English at The Ohio State University at Marion where she teaches classes on everything from early American literature to pop culture to environmental writing. She has authored two monographs about poisonous women in 19th century American literature and a number of essays, including “Gothic in an Age of Environmental Crisis” (for the third volume of Cambridge’s History of the Gothic) and “American Soil, Louisiana Dirt: The Metaphor Enabling the Sacrifice Zone” and “Beyond Ecophilia: Edgar Allan Poe and the American Tradition of Ecohorror” (for ISLE). Her current book project investigates why the U.S. is allowing South Louisiana to wash away—specifically, how the interplay between extractive interests (like the petroleum industry) and American popular culture’s representation of South Louisiana as a place of ecohorror has and continues to enable this unnatural disaster. Her talk will discuss the Cajun folklore werewolf-like character, the rougarou. 

Refreshments will be provided thanks to the Office of the Provost.