Examines and interrogates the concept of the 'uncanny', and the cultural contexts which allow such experiences of disorientation and alienation.This book includes translation of Ernst Jensch's seminal essay, "On the Psychology of the Uncanny" (1906) - first time this has been available in English. A timely collection - the term 'uncanny' has become confused in critical theory, and this book helps clarify what it means in contemporary culture. It has a broad appeal and illustrates the range and influence of the 'uncanny' in current research in the humanities and beyond (contributors work in a range of fields, from film studies, literary theory, to history and cultural studies).It includes well-known contributors such as Julian Wolfreys, David Punter and Roger Luckhurst.This book explores the sense in which the uncanny may be a distinctively modern experience, the way these unnerving feelings and unsettling encounters disturb the rational presumptions of the modern world view and the security of modern self-identity, just as the latter may themselves be implicated in the production of these experiences as uncanny.

Examines and interrogates the concept of the 'uncanny', and the cultural contexts which allow such experiences of disorientation and alienation.This book includes translation of Ernst Jensch's seminal essay, "On the Psychology of the Uncanny" (1906) - first time this has been available in English. A timely collection - the term 'uncanny' has become confused in critical theory, and this book helps clarify what it means in contemporary culture. It has a broad appeal and illustrates the range and influence of the 'uncanny' in current research in the humanities and beyond (contributors work in a range of fields, from film studies, literary theory, to history and cultural studies).It includes well-known contributors such as Julian Wolfreys, David Punter and Roger Luckhurst.This book explores the sense in which the uncanny may be a distinctively modern experience, the way these unnerving feelings and unsettling encounters disturb the rational presumptions of the modern world view and the security of modern self-identity, just as the latter may themselves be implicated in the production of these experiences as uncanny.

JO COLLINS teaches in the Cultural Studies and English and American Literature departments at the University of Kent at Canterbury, UK. Her thesis examined the use of gothic tropes in colonial literature and travel writing, and she is currently reworking this for publication. She has also published articles on colonial Australian women writers. JOHN JERVIS teaches Cultural Studies at the University of Kent at Canterbury, UK. He has previously published Exploring the Modern: Patterns of Western Culture and Civilisation (1998) and Transgressing the Modern: Explorations in the Western Experience of Otherness (2000). He is currently writing a book provisionally entitled Sensational Subjects: Modernity and the Spectacle of Feeling. SCOTT BREWSTER Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Central Lancashire, UK ELISABETH BRONFEN Professor of English and American Literature at the University of Zurich, Switzerland JAMES DONALD Professor of Film Studies at the University of New South Wales, Australia TOM GUNNING Professor of Media and Film Studies at the University of Chicago, USA ROGER LUCKHURST Senior Lecturer in English at Birkbeck College, University of London, UK DAVID PUNTER Professor of English Literature at the University of Bristol, UK MICHAEL SALER Professor of History at the University of California (Davis), USA ROY SELLARS Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Southern Denmark, Kolding JULIAN WOLFREYS Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Loughborough, UK