Study States #2 – American Gothic

Francesca Woodman, Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island, 1975–1976 © Betty and George Woodman NB: No toning, cropping, enlarging, or overprinting with text allowed.

Discussion

For this session, we take a broad, transmedial look at the ‘American Gothic’ and what that term means both historically and presently. The (European) Gothic is such a broad, multivalent term with so many examples and definitions, so what could such a term mean when applied to the cultural landscape of America.

Francesca Woodman’s harrowing photographs of female forms and other hauntings are made all the more poignant given their provenance – Woodman committed suicide aged just 22. Her work shows a fixation of the female form, and on ideas of repression, paranoia, and anxiety with the domestic space.

Susan Sonde’s poem ‘American Gothic’ considers consumerism, tourism, decay, sex, and attributes such themes of everyday life to the Gothic title.