Reading Shirley Jackson in the Twenty-First Century Symposium: The House that Jackson Built

Organised by the School of English, Trinity College Dublin, and in association with the Trinity Long Room Hub, the event is run by three Trinity-based academics: Dr Dara Downey (Former IRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow based in the Long Room Hub and current Trinity Access Programme English tutor), Janice Deitner (TCD Provost’s PPA holder, School of English), and Dr Bernice Murphy TCD School of English), alongside fellow Jackson scholars Dr Rob Lloyd (Cardiff University), and Dr Luke Reid (Dawson College). In the run-up to “The House that Jackson Built,” Dr Dara Downey and Janice Deitner sat down with the Office of the Dean of Research to discuss the current landscape of Jackson scholarship and their ambitions for the upcoming event.

Though Jackson was an extremely prominent and commercially successful author during her lifetime, interest in her work declined considerably after her death in 1965. It was only in the last two decades that her writing began to receive extensive critical and public attention once again. She is now, as Deitner points out, a cultural touchstone: the outline of her cat-eye glasses is becoming more and more familiar, while her name is often invoked in relation to current events in the media. Trinity’s School of English has been instrumental in reviving critical interest, operating as a stronghold of Jackson research throughout this period. Downey is currently working on Writing Shirley Jackson: A Literary Life for Palgrave; Deitner’s doctoral research is on bodies and identity in Jackson’s work; while Murphy has been an internationally recognised Jackson scholar for over twenty years, consulting on The Letters of Shirley Jackson last year.

It’s perhaps not surprising that an author that was for a long time under-represented and ignored has found a home in Trinity: Downey points out that the School of English has championed research on popular literature, genre, horror and supernatural fiction. She notes that “this is one of the strengths of English in Trinity. If that wasn’t there we wouldn’t be doing what we’re doing. They’re not overly enchanted by the canon, and that has helped to make Trinity and Ireland a hub for Shirley Jackson studies.” Indeed, the convergence of research interests across the School has been key to the success of Jackson studies. Downey notes that it was thanks to meeting Dr Bernice Murphy, her colleague and fellow symposium organiser, back in 2002 that she became aware of Jackson in the first place.

Reading Shirley Jackson in the Twenty-First Century, moreover, is a direct result of Trinity’s support for current Jackson studies. Organising an academic conference was part of the requirements of Deitner’s Provost Award. Initially, the intention was an in-person event, however COVID requirements led to more imaginative planning. As Deitner observes, they had to step back and “recreate this for the situation we’re in now. And we came up with a hybrid, online event and a blog which is updated monthly, and we loved it so much we wanted to keep it going year round.” In addition, they have also set up a server on the instant messaging social platform Discord, where scholars and readers can discuss Jackson further.

It’s appropriate, then, that “The House that Jackson Built” is a unique event, much as Jackson is herself as a literary figure. In a condensed format, featuring three panels, the event will live up to its aim of being academically informed while public-facing. According to Downey, “while initially we were forced into this position, it rapidly became a good thing, as we could include people from all over the place.” These people include Jackson’s own family, as two of her sons and two grandchildren comprise the symposium’s first panel on Jackson’s literary estate. “We were already in a fortunate position to have links with Jackson’s oldest son,” she continues, “and once you have Shirley Jackson’s son on the line, we thought, what else can we do...?”

If Trinity is the right place, is the twenty-first century the right time? Is there a particular reason both Jackson and Jackson studies are having a resurgence? Deitner highlights that a key reason is Jackson’s family posthumously publishing collections of her stories and essays. Many of her novels are also finally back in print. Downey, meanwhile, argues that “there’s been something of a backlash against excessive newness. Now people are interested in finding something a little bit off-piste.” Jackson’s writing, she adds, “doesn't give us clear answers about anything: you end her books not knowing who to root for, I think that speaks to our fundamentally ambiguous post-truth moment.”

Indeed, the ambiguity of Jackson’s writing is key to both researchers’ fascination with her work. Deitner focuses on the “generic undecidability”: “how undecidable she is, you can’t really define what she’s doing even with her fictionalised autobiographical work. You see other genres creeping in, unexplained endings. I’m really fascinated by where she puts these gaps and why, and when criticism decides ‘this is what happens’ at the end of a book, but we don’t actually know.” Downey, meanwhile, mentions historian Silvia Federici’s argument that the removal of the supernatural mindset was part of colonization, capitalism and patriarchy. It led to a creation of boundaries that dismisses the supernatural as irrational. “One of the things I’ve noticed,” Downey says, “is male writers get away with blurring the boundaries of genre so much more: no one has any problem with Yeats reading tarot cards or Henry James writing ghost stories; he can still be the king of realism. But when Jackson does it it makes them uncomfortable. People want her to stay in one genre.”

“The House that Jackson Built” will be part of this challenge to rigid concepts of genre, which is evident in the symposium’s second panel. Jackson’s literary career closely predated what is generally referred to as the first wave of Folk Horror, and, just like Jackson, Folk Horror is currently having a resurgence. A panel featuring academics Kevin Corstorphine (Lecturer in American Literature, University of Hull) and Faye Ringel (Professor Emeritus, United States Coast Guard Academy) will investigate how Jackson’s writing has long influenced and continues to influence Folk Horror. Both Downey and Deitner comment on how fascinating it is to speculate on what Folk Horror would look like if Jackson hadn’t left us, “even if speculating is slightly pointless.”

But if speculating on non-existing texts is somewhat futile, “The House that Jackson Built” demonstrates that Jackson’s literary legacy is strong and enduring. Their third panel comprises two contemporary American writers, Paul Tremblay and Elizabeth Hand, alongside editor Ellen Datlow, whose recent horror anthology When Things Get Dark contains stories inspired by Jackson’s fiction. This will enable the symposium to explore how literature and scholarship are both expanding and moving away from the canon of better-known Jackson texts, namely her two novels The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived In The Castle and short story “The Lottery.” Deitner identifies two parallel trends happening at the same time: “lots of people are drawn to her familiar texts, and more Jackson scholars are bringing the lesser-known works into research.”

From listening to Deitner and Downey’s insights on the considerable amount of work happening in the research network around the event, including Downey’s recent W. A. Emmerson Lecture at the Long Room Hub for the Irish Association for American Studies and Deitner’s conversation with the editors of the newly founded Shirley Jackson Studies journal, it’s evident that this ambitious and imaginative second symposium is posed to bring fascinating new insights to a rapidly growing area of literary criticism.

Reading Shirley Jackson in the Twenty-First Century II: “The House that Jackson Built” will run from 4.30 to 8.00pm Irish Time on Wednesday the 14th of December. Registration is now open for the 2022 live Zoom event. The event is free and open to all, but registration is required. More information and a registration link can be found here.