Collects essays from critics looking at the many ways the horror anthology series intersects with and comments on contemporary American social, political and popular culture. Chapters apply a cultural criticism framework to examine how the first eight seasons of AHS engage with American history, contemporary ideologies and social policies.

Table of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Cameron Williams Crawford and Leverett Butts Part I. History and Folklore Asylum: Taboos and Transgressions in U.S. History Erin Guydish Buchholz Where Myth Meets History: Discursive Haunting and the Resurrection of Marie Laveau in Coven Rita Mookerjee Coven’s LaLaurie and Laveau: Contemporary Narratives of Southern Gothicism, Folklore and Nineteenth-Century New Orleans Tammie Jenkins Apocalypse and the Devil We Leverett Butts Part II. Space and Place Derridean Hauntology as Cultural Praxis: The Strange Case of Murder House Jonathan Greenaway The Psychiatric Clinic in Horror Cinema and TV: Asylum Antonio Sanna The Swampy Boundaries of “Otherness” in Freak Show and Roanoke Cameron Williams Crawford The ­Meta-Carnival: Monsters and Mothers in Freak Show Jennifer K. Cox Part III. Identity Politics The ­Mother-Witch and Witch as Mother in Coven Sarah Foust Vinson Wear Something Black: Fashion and Fierce Femininity in the Witch Drag of Coven Michelle L. Pribbernow Destructive Leadership in Coven, Freak Show and Cult Corrine E. Hinton The Lesbian Gothic in Asylum and Hotel Tosha R. Taylor Appendix I. List of Episodes Appendix II. List of Major Characters About the Contributors Index