From the fairytale evil stepmother, to historical figures like Elizabeth Bártory, and modern day horror icons like Annie Wilkes (Misery) and Laurie Strode (Halloween), we will explore how these characters reinforce and reconfigure hagsploitation themes such as female aging, waning power and transgression. Above all, we will showcase how the grandes dames of American Horror Story (Jessica Lange, Frances Conroy and Kathy Bates) breathed a formidable, dignified new life-force into the hag that would have made their predecessors proud.
Join us for a discussion of the changing flavors of the hag, and a celebration of disgraceful aging!
Dr. Katrin Seyler
Kat is a para-academic librarian with art historical training and a divergent (some say, deviant) brain which latches gleefully onto anything macabre and bizarre that history, art and popular culture have to offer. She is happiest in a plush cinema chair with a G&T in hand.
Antonia Grousdanidou
Briefly the tallest newborn in Athens, Antonia now lives and works in Berlin and Baltimore. Her
research over the years has included philosophy, institutional art history, urban planning, hardboiled detective fiction, vaporwave and now Weimar-era modernism and true crime.
