Publications and Further Research Outputs
Peer-Reviewed Publications
American Serial Killers in, editor(s)Vivien Miller and James Campbell , The Routledge History of Crime in America, London, Routledge, 2024, pp215 - 230, [Bernice M. Murphy]
'Black Boxes: Tradition and Human Sacrifice in American Folk Horror' in, editor(s)Dawn Keetley and Ruth Heholt , Folk Horror: New Global Pathways, Cardiff, University of Wales Press, 2023, pp127 - 143, [Bernice M. Murphy]
Bernice M. Murphy, The California Gothic in Fiction and Film, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2022, 1 - 314pp
'Going to Extremes: The Gothic in the Twentieth-Century' in, editor(s)Bernice Murphy and Sorcha Ni Fhliann , Twentieth-Century Gothic, Edinburgh, 2022, pp1 - 12, [Bernice M. Murphy and Sorcha Ni Fhliann]
Folk Horror in, editor(s)Mark Storey and Stephen Shapiro , The Cambridge Companion to American Horror, Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press, 2022, pp139 - 153, [Bernice M. Murphy]
'Masks of Sanity: Psychopathy and the Twentieth-Century Gothic' in, editor(s)Bernice M. Murphy and Sorcha Ni Fhliann , Twentieth-Century Gothic, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2022, pp213 - 227, [Bernice M. Murphy]
Bernice M. Murphy and Sorcha Ni Fhlainn, Twentieth-Century Gothic, Edinbugh, Edinbugh University Press, 2022, 1 - 324pp
Psychoanalysis and the Popular Gothic in, editor(s)Catherine Spooner and Dale Townshend , The Cambridge History of the Gothic Volume 3, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2021, pp180 - 198, [Bernice M. Murphy]
Hideous Doughnuts and Haunted Housewives: Gothic Undercurrents in Shirley Jackson's Domestic Humor in, editor(s)Jill Anderson and Melanie Anderson , Shirley Jackson and Domesticity: Beyond Hill House , New York, Bloomsbury, 2020, pp7 - 26, [Bernice M. Murphy]
Place, Space, and the Reconfiguration of "White Trash" Monstrosity in, editor(s)Dawn Keetley , Jordan Peele's Get Out: Political Horror, Ohio, Ohio University Press, 2020, pp72 - 86, [Bernice M. Murphy]
'We Will Have a Happy Marriage if It Kills Him": Gillian Flynn and the Rise of Domestic Noir in, editor(s)Bernice M. Murphy and Stephen Matterson , Twenty-First Century Popular Fiction, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2018, pp158 - 169, [Bernice M. Murphy]
Bernice M. Murphy, Hereditary and Sharp Objects, The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studis, 17, 2018, p179 - 185
'The Have Risen Once: They May Rise Again": Animals in Horror Fictiion in, editor(s)Laura Kremmel and Kevin Corstorphine , The Handbook to Horrror Literature, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, pp257 - 273, [Bernice M. Murphy]
'We Needed to Get a Lot of White Collars Dirty"" Apocalypse as Opportunity in Max Brook's World War Z" in, editor(s)Bernice M. Murphy and Stephen Matterson , Twenty-First Century Popular Fiction, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2018, pp193 - 205, [Bernice M. Murphy]
Twenty-First Century Popular Fiction , Bernice M. Murphy and Stephen Matterson (editors), 1st, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2018
'Changing the Story': Popular Fiction Today in, editor(s)Bernice M. Murphy and Stephen Matterson , Twenty-First Century Popular Fiction, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2018, pp1 - 9, [Bernice M. Murphy and Stephen Matterson]
Bernice M. Murphy, Key Concepts in Popular Fiction, 1st, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2017, 1 - 150pp
White Settlers and Windigoes: Teaching Monstrosity Within the American Gothic Narrative in, editor(s)Adam Golub and Heather Hayton , Monsters in the Classroom, North Carolina, McFarland, 2017, pp114 - 128, [Bernice M. Murphy]
Bernice M. Murphy and Edwina Keown, "Uncanny Irish-American Relations: Elizabeth Bowen and Shirley Jackson", The Green Book: Writings on Irish Gothic, Supernatural and Fantastic Literature , (9), 2017, p57 - 84
Bernice M. Murphy, 'Wheels of Tragedy': Death on the Highways in Carnival of Souls and the Highway Horror Film, Forum: University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Culture and the Arts, 24, 2017, p1-12
'Girl Anachronism: We have Always Lived in the Castle and the Depiction of Adolescent Psychosis in Excision (2012) and Stoker (2013)' in, editor(s)Melanie Anderson and Lisa Kroger , Shirley Jackson: Influences and Confluences , London, Routledge, 2016, pp183 - 200, [Bernice M. Murphy]
Pennywise Dreadful: The Journal of Stephen King Studies , https://pennywisedreadful.wordpress.com/, Online, Wordpress, [Editorial Board Member], 2016
, 'Horror Fiction From the Decline of Universal Horror to the Rise of the Psycho Killer' in, editor(s)Xavier Aldana Reyes , Horror: A Literary History, London, British Library, 2016, [Bernice M. Murphy]
Cities of the Insane: The Asylum as Ruin in Recent American Horror Narratives' in, editor(s)Dara Downey, Ian Kinane and Elizabeth Parker , Landscapes of Liminality , London, Rowman and Littlefield , 2016, pp49 - 70, [Dr Bernice M. Murphy]
"It's Not the House That's Haunted": Demons, Debt and the Family in Peril in Recent Horror Cinema in, editor(s)Murray Leeder , Cinematic Ghosts: Haunting and Spectrality from Silent Cinema to the Digital Era, London/New York, Bloomsbury Academic, 2015, pp235 - 253, [Bernice M. Murphy]
Bernice M. Murphy, The Highway Horror Film, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, 1 - 144pp
Bernice M. Murphy, The Rural Gothic in American Popular Culture: Backwoods Horror and Terror in the Wilderness., 1st, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan , 2013, 1 - 257pp
The Beautiful Stranger and the Inconceivable Alien: The Body Replacement Narrative in 1950s American Science Fiction. in, editor(s)Darryl Jones and Gerald Dawe , Beautiful Strangers: Ireland and the World of the 1950s, Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2013, pp113 - 131, [Bernice M. Murphy]
'Children Misbehaving in the Walls!' Or, Wes Craven's Suburban Family Values in, editor(s)Sue Zlosnik and Agnes Andeweg , Gothic KInship, Manchester, Manchester Univesity Press, 2013, [Bernice M. Murphy]
"Identical Boxes Spreading Like Gangrene": Defining the Suburban Gothic in, editor(s)Charles Crow , A Companion to American Gothic, Chichester, John Wiley and Sons, 2013, [Bernice M. Murphy]
Bernice M. Murphy, "How Will I Explain Why We Live Behind a Wall?" La Zona (2007) as Suburban Gothic Narrative., ILHA do DESTERRO: A Journal of English Language, Literatures in English and Cultural Studies, 62, 2012
"Imitations of Life: Zombies and the Suburban Gothic" in, editor(s)Sarah Lauro and Deborah Christie , "Better Off Dead": The Evolution of the Zombie as Post Human, New York, Fordham University Press, 2011, pp216 - 239, [Bernice M. Murphy]
"All that Zombies Allow: Reimagining the 1950s in Fido and Far From Heaven" in, editor(s)Darryl Jones, Elizabeth McCarthy and Bernice M, Murphy , It Came From the 1950s! Popular Culture, Popular Anxieties, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, pp216 - 234, [Bernice M. Murphy]
Bernice M. Murphy, Elizabeth McCarthy, Darryl Jones, IT Came From the 1950s: Popular Culture, Popular Anxieties, 1st, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, 256pp
"Hideous Doughnuts and Haunted Housewives: Gothic Undercurrents in Shirley Jackson's Domestic Fiction" in, editor(s)Helen Conrad O'Brien and Julie Anne Stevens , A Ghostly Genre: Essays on Short Supernatural Fiction, Dublin, Four Courts, 2010, pp229 - 251, [Bernice M. Murphy]
Sorcha Ni Fhlainn(ed.), "American Parricide: Murderous Children in the Work of Shirley Jackson and Lionel Shriver", Oxford, terdisciplinary Press E-Book, 2009
Bernice M.Murphy, The Suburban Gothic in American Popular Culture, First, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, 1 - 236pp
"I Am God": The Domineering Patriarch in Shirley Jackson's Gothic Fiction in, editor(s)Ruth Anolik , Horrific Sex: Essays on Sexual Differemce in Gothic Literature, North Carolina, McFarland, 2007, pp135 - 150, [Bernice M. Murphy]
"Dead Ends: The Decline of the recent American Horror Movie" in, editor(s)Kate Hebblethwaite and Elizabeth McCarthy , Fear: Essays on the Meaning and Experience of Fear, Dublin, Four Courts, 2007, pp188 - 200, [Bernice M.Murphy]
The Irish Journal of Horror and Gothic Studies, 1, (2006), Bernice M. Murphy and Elizabeth McCarthy, [eds.]
Editor: Bernice M. Murphy, Shirley Jackson: Essays on the Literary Legacy, 1, North Carolina, McFarland and Company, 2005, 1 - 303pp
Non-Peer-Reviewed Publications
'It is a Wonderful Pleasure to Write to You...' in, editor(s)Laurence J. Hyman , The Letters of Shirley Jackson, New York, Random Houuse, 2021, ppxvii - xxxii, [Bernice M. Murphy]
Bernice M.Murphy, 'Beyond Midsommar: Folk Horror in Popular Fiction', 2019, -
Bernice M. Murphy, 'Not a Place Fit for People: Shirley Jackson and The Haunting of Hill House', The Irish Times, (November 10th), 2018
Bernice M. Murphy , 'The Last Broadcast: Christine and Carnival of Souls', Review of Christine (2016), Horror Homeroom, 2017
Bernice M. Murphy, Death on the Roads: Defining the Highway Horror Film, 2017, -
Bernice M. Murphy, 'Girl Trouble: The Blackcoat's Daughter', Review of The Blackcoat's Daughter, Horror Homeroom, 2017
Bernice M. Murphy, ''Short, Sharp Shocks'', The Stinging Fly Winter 2016-17: Fear and Fantasy Issue, Ireland, 2016, 86 - 89
Lost Souls of Horror and the Gothic: Fifty-Four Neglected Authors, Actors, Artists and Others , Bernice M. Murphy and Elizabeth McCarthy (Editors), 1st, North Carolina, McFarland, 2016, 1 - 248pp
Bernice M. Murphy, Good Grief: Bereavement and the Horror Film, 2015, -
Bernice M. Murphy, "The Suburban Gothic in CInema: Top 10", 2015, -
'You Mean they Ate Each Other Up?' The Shining as Wendigo Narrative. in, editor(s)Danel Olson , The Shining: Studies in the Horror Film, Centipede Press, 2015, [Bernice M. Murphy]
Bernice M. Murphy, Citadel: Review and Interview with Ciaran Foy., The Green Book: Writings on Irish Gothic, Supernatural and Fantastic Literature, 1, (1), 2013, p82 - 89
Beaumont, Charles, The Hunger and Other Stories, 2013, - v-xiii
"Never Take a Psychic to a Bad Place" The Haunted House in Modern American Fiction in, editor(s)Claire Whitehead , Critical Insights: The Fantastic, EBSCO, 2012, [Bernice Murphy]
Bernice M. Murphy, "The Dead Arose and Appeared to many": The Unstoppable Rise of Zombie Lit, Trinity Literary Review, 1, (1), 2012, p37 - 43
Bernice M. Murphy, Road Trips to the End of the World, 2012, -
"You Space Bastard! You Killed my Pines!" Back to The Future, Nostalgia and the Suburban Dream." in, editor(s)Sorcha Ni Fhlainn , It's About Time: Essays on Back to The Future, North Carolina, McFarland, 2010, [Bernice M. Murphy]
"Shaggy Dog Stories: Jonathan Carroll's White Apples as Unconventional After Life Fantasy" in, editor(s)Danel Olson , Twenty-First Century Gothic, Scarecrow Press, 2010, pp584 - 600, [Bernice M. Murphy]
"Stephen King", Wanda and James Giles, The Dictionary of Literary Biography: American popular fiction writers, 350, BCL, 2009, pp176 - 193, [Bernice M. Murphy]
"Who Am I When I Am Transported: Post-Colonialism in Peter Carey's Jack Maggs", Ian MacKean, The Essentials of Modern Literature in English, Post-1914, London, Hodder Arnold, 2004, [Bernice M. Murphy]
Research Expertise
Description
My research spans three overlapping areas. I am an expert on American writer Shirley Jackson (1916-1965). I edited the first essay collection dedicated to her work (2005); have published numerous book chapters on Jackson, and was academic consultant to The Selected Letters of Shirley Jackson (Penguin Random House, 2021). I have in recent years been working towards making Trinity an internationally recognised centre for Jackson studies. I was awarded a Provost's PhD award for my project, `Shirley Jackson: Beyond Hill House' in 2018, and along with my (then) PhD student Janice Deitner and my colleague Dara Downey, co-organised a successful online symposium dedicated to Jackson in December 2021 and 2022. I also specialise in American horror and Gothic studies and have published four monographs in this area: The Suburban Gothic in American Popular Culture (2009), The Rural Gothic in American Popular Culture (2013), The Highway Horror Film (2014) and The California Gothic in Fiction and Film (2022), which won the 2024 Society for the Study of the American Gothic award for Best Monograph. I have also (with Sorcha Ni Fhlainn) edited the volume Twentieth-Century Gothic (2022). My research output also encompasses Popular Literature as a broader subject area. My textbook Key Concepts in Contemporary Popular Fiction was published in 2017 and (with Stephen Matterson) I edited the collection Twenty-First Century Popular Fiction (2018). I am currently co-editing The Cambridge Companion to True Crime with my colleague Clare Clarke, and have just started work on a new, Shirley Jackson-related book. Conferences: I have presented my research at numeous national and international conferences, including numerous International Gothic Association (IGA) biannual conferences; the 2012 Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association annual conference held in Boston, and the 2019 ASLE conference held at the University of California, Davis. I have given keynote addresses at conferences including the July 2018 IGA, the `Madness in Popular Culture" conference held at Edinburgh University in May 2018, and `Folk Horror in the Twenty-First Century" (Falmouth, UK, September 2019). In November 2024 I was a guest speaker and panellist at the 'Festival de Gènres Fantastàstics de Barcelona'. Publications: Monographs: The California Gothic in Fiction and Film, Edinburgh University Press, submitted. The Highway Horror Film. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. The Rural Gothic in American Popular Culture. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. The Suburban Gothic in American Popular Culture, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Editions: (Academic consultant), The Letters of Shirley Jackson, edited by Laurence Jackson Hyman, Random House: New York, 2021. Edited Collections: (Edited with Sorcha Ni Fhlainn), Twentieth Century Gothic, EUP, 2022. (Edited, with Stephen Matterson), Twenty-First Century Popular Fiction. Edinburgh University Press, 2018. (Editor, with Elizabeth McCarthy), Lost Souls of Horror and the Gothic. North Carolina: McFarland, 2016. (Editor, with Elizabeth McCarthy and Darryl Jones) It Came From the 1950s: Popular Culture, Popular Anxieties, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. (Editor) Shirley Jackson: Essays on the Literary Legacy, North Carolina: McFarland, 2005. Textbooks: Key Concepts in Contemporary Popular Fiction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017.Projects
- Title
- The California Gothic in Fiction and Film
- Summary
- This monograph explores the ways in which the dark side of the 'Golden State' has been depicted in contemporary fiction and film.
- Funding Agency
- TCD Arts and Social Sciences Benefaction Programme
- Date From
- 2018
- Date To
- 2022
- Title
- Key Concepts in Contemporary Popular Fiction
- Summary
- This short introduction to key concepts and terms within contemporary popular fiction studies for Edinburgh University Press was published in January 2017. The book is particularly targeted at undergraduate and postgraduate students.
- Title
- The Highway Horror Film
- Summary
- I have recently completed a short monograph for the Palgrave Pivot series. There is an increasing interest in the relationship between space/environment and the individual in relation to horror and gothic studies. I argue that the anxieties articulated in the 'Highway Horror Film' reflect profound unease about the impact that the rapid transformation of American society in the years following World War II had upon both the individual and society at large.
- Date From
- June 2013
- Date To
- December 2013
- Title
- The Rural Gothic in American Popular Culture: Backwoods Horror and Terror in the Wilderness,
- Summary
- This monograph examines the role that rural surroundings/the wilderness play in American Horror and Gothic narratives from the beginning of European settlement to the present day. The book is was published in October 2013.
- Funding Agency
- Trinity Arts and Social Sciences Benefaction Fund
- Date From
- January 2010
- Date To
- April 2013
- Title
- Lost Souls: Horror and the Gothic Genres Forgotten and Neglected Personages
- Summary
- Along with Elizabeth McCarthy, I am currently editing this essay collection, which consists of 60 short essays on neglected and forgotten figures who have made an under appreciated contribution to the horror and Gothic genres. The book will be published by McFarland in 2016.
- Date To
- 2016
Recognition
Representations
External examiner for a PhD thesis on Suburban Gothic at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, UK.
External Examiner for PhD thesis on 'Agricultural Gothic' at Durham University.
External Examiner for PhD thesis on Shirley Jackson at the University of Montreal.
External Examiner for a PhD on Shirley Jackson at the University of Cardiff.
External Examiner for a PhD on the work of horror writer Thomas Ligotti at Manchester Metropolitan University.
External Examiner for PhD on American Popular Conspiracy Fiction at Stirling University, Scotland.
Awards and Honours
'Society for the Study of the American Gothic' 2024 Award for Best Scholarly Monograph on the American Gothic
Elected a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin
IRCHSS Government of Ireland Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship
Arts and Social Sciences Benefaction Fund, 2,000 awarded towards research costs for 'California Gothic'
Arts and Social Sciences Benefaction Fund, 3,000 awarded towards research costs for 'The Rural Gothic in American Popular Culture' '
Provost's PhD Project Award
Leverhulme Post-Doctoral Fellowship (declined in favour of IRCHSS fellowship)
Trinity College Postgraduate Award
Memberships
Member of the International Gothic Association (IGA)
Member of the Irish Association of American Studies (IAAS)