Exploring the Roots of the Scary Season: The History of Horror

Autumn marks the end of the harvest and the beginning of the spooky season, celebrated through the syncretic traditions of life and death found in both Día de los Muertos and Halloween. From the dawn of time, people have shared scary stories—fairy tales about lost children, legends of ghosts and monsters—tales found across cultures and throughout history. In contemporary culture, horror as we know it began to take shape in the eighteenth century with the rise of the Gothic novel. Since then, the genre has evolved alongside cultural shifts: from Romanticism’s intense emotional focus to the strict morality of the Victorian era, with its anxieties about disease, class, racism, and the boundaries of reason. These influences continue to shape horror today, from classic slasher films to the many subgenres that define the field. Like all modern genres, horror is deeply rooted in print culture and the social and political changes that followed the scientific and industrial revolutions. 

In this session, we will explore the evolution of the scary, the shocking, and the monstrous—looking at how horror examines themes of difference in both print and film, its enduring popularity, and why the genre remains such a powerful space for exploring cultural and political anxieties.

Michael Budd, Ph.D., is the author of “The Sculpture Machine: Physical Culture and Body Politics in the Age of Empire” (Macmillan U.K./N.Y.U. Press 1997). He has written for scholarly and popular venues, including the International Journal of Sport History, and Afterimage. Michael’s current research focuses on global consumer identity and the national body in relation to technology, memory, violence and authoritarian ideas. He earned his B.S. degree from the University of Oregon and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Modern European history from Rutgers University. He is a professor in Salve Regina University’s history department and the humanities Ph.D. program.