This publication is part of a wider project that aims to further Chloe Buckley and Catherine Spooner’s work on the Gothic in respectively children’s fiction (Buckley, 2019) and the “teen-marketing machine” of the post-millennial Gothic (Spooner, 2017: 84) by exploring the multifaceted connections between children and teenagers and contemporary Gothic productions. In that respect, young adults and children are to be understood as either the primary targets of those literary, television and film productions or as the fictional constructs around which the Gothic plot is articulated. Our project is therefore located at the crossroads of fan culture studies and generic studies, between reception and production, just like the contemporary Gothic productions we are interested in jeopardise the commonly assumed superiority of content (the Gothic story) over form (the Gothic look). Since recent Goth pop productions blur the lines between rewriting and ‘cashing in’ on over-used motifs, while relentlessly advocating for cultural and generic hybridity, one may wonder to what extent the child and teenage figure is both the herald and the consumer of this rebranding of Gothic popular culture.
The four pieces published in the present issue constitute the first step of this project as it focuses on Gothic TV series for teens as much as teens in Gothic TV series from 2000 till today. The contributions present in this volume discuss lost children, hunted and haunted children but also their antagonists – mad scientists, toxic mothers, absent fathers. They are also interested in the relationships between teens, space and time, exploring the liminal borders of haunted houses or on the contrary focusing on homeless children, wandering and nomadic teens.

Issue edited by Marine Galiné & Yannick Bellenger-Morvan

Reviewing Comittee:

Anne Besson – Université d’Artois
Justine Breton – Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne
Charlie Jorge Fernández – Université des Îles Baléares
Catherine Girodet – Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne
Xavier Giudicelli – Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne
Pauline Macadré – Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne
Sylvie Mikowski – Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne
Christine Prevost – Université de Lille