Hi, and welcome to my blog Gothic Modernities. I graduated with my doctoral degree in English from the University of Texas at Arlington in 2022 after defending my dissertation, “Asian Modernities: The Historical Unconscious in Asian and Asian American Literatures.” This blog is a continuation of the ideas I presented in my dissertation about alternative modernities but with a broader scope that encompasses my analysis of artifacts, travel to cemeteries or historical sites, and explication of poetry and other literary works. Since graduating, other topics have drawn my interest and may appear in this space, including language diversity, primates, and gothic subcultures.

My site banner comes from one of my favorite paintings by John William Waterhouse, called “Mariana in the South,” completed in 1897 and inspired by Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem of the same name. I perceive the moment captured in this painting as one of self-reflection, of confronting one’s inner space, in all its shadows.

In modern life, we share in the shadows. We are entwined in systems of darkness and light. Many of us contribute to a capitalist economy in order to live. In Capital: Volume 1, Karl Marx describes “the vampire thirst for the living blood of labour,” further commenting that “the vampire will not lose its hold on him ‘so long as there is a muscle, a nerve, a drop of blood to be exploited’” with the inclusion of a quote from Friedrich Engels. I am interested in exploring the inner darkness that develops as a response to this and other forces of exploitation in modern society.

This, then, is my definition-in-progress of gothic modernities: responses of self-reflection, confrontations with and articulations of inner darkness that mirror or refract vampiric systems of exploitation such as colonization or capitalism.

If you wish to keep exploring, please continue along this corridor.