Dr Ruth Heholt

Dr Ruth Heholt, Associate Professor of Dark Economies and Gothic Literature

Ruth Heholt is associate professor of Dark Economies and Gothic literature at Falmouth University, UK and lead of the Dark Economies research group. She is author of Catherine Crowe: Gender, Genre, and Radical Politics (Routledge, 2020) and co-author of Gothic Kernow: Cornwall as Strange Fiction (Anthem Press, 2022). She is co-editor of several collections including Gothic Britain: Dark Places in the Provinces and Margins of the British Isles (2018), and Haunted Landscapes (2017). She has organised international conferences including Folk Horror in the Twentieth Century (Falmouth and Lehigh Universities 2019) and is editor of the peer reviewed journal Revenant: Critical and Creative Studies of the Supernatural. Revenant is dedicated to academic and creative explorations of the supernatural, the uncanny and the weird and can be found at revenantjournal.com. She is co-editor of the Gender and the Body book series and the Nineteenth Century and Neo-Victorian Cultures book series (Edinburgh University Press). Ruth is on the advisory and editorial boards of several scholarly associations, book series, and journals. She is a fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

External Links

Dr Ruth Heholt staff picture

Contact details

Telephone 01326 370705
Email ruth.heholt@falmouth.ac.uk

    Qualifications

    Qualifications

    Year Qualification Awarding body
    2009 PGCHE University College Falmouth
    2004 PhD University of Plymouth
    1997 BA (Hons) English University of Reading

    Membership of external committees

    Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

    Research Interests

    Research interests and expertise

    My research is based around the concept of the supernatural, masculinity and both contemporary and Victorian culture and literature. I am willing to consider supervising PhDs that cover any aspect of the supernatural or masculinity in literature or media.

    Research centre and group affiliations

    RANE Research Group

    Research Topics

    • Gothic Literature
    • Ghost Stories
    • Crime fiction
    • Supernatural studies
    • Gender studies
    • Victorian and Neo-Victorian studies

    Research Outputs

    Publications and research outputs

    Article

    Krzywinska, Tanya ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0744-4144 (2019) “Everything is True”: Urban Gothic meets the Chthulucene in Multiplayer Online Game, The Secret World.
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    Heholt, Ruth ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6963-6427 (2017) Ambivalent Ghosts: The Manifestation of the Supernatural in Ruth Rendell's Fiction. Contemporary Women's Writing, 11 (1). pp. 85-101. ISSN 1754-1484
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    Heholt, Ruth ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6963-6427 (2016) Introduction. The Luminary Journal, 7. ISSN 2056-9238

    Heholt, Ruth ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6963-6427 (2014) Science, Ghosts and Vision: Catherine Crowe's Bodies of Evidence and the Critique of Masculinity. 'Haunted Men' Victoriographies Special Issue, 4 (1). pp. 46-61. ISSN 2044-2416 Item availability may be restricted.
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    Heholt, Ruth ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6963-6427 (2012) Subversive Ghost Hunting: A-Technology, the Imagination and the Gothic Spaces of Most Haunted. Textus: English Studies in Italy, XXV (3). ISSN 1823-3967 Item availability may be restricted.
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    Book Section

    Krzywinska, Tanya ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0744-4144 (2021) Curses, Rites and Questionable Offerings. In: Global Folk Horror. University Press, unknown. ISBN not allocated as yet (Submitted)
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    Heholt, Ruth ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6963-6427 (2020) 'That Which Roars Further Out': Gardens and Wilderness in 'The Man Who Went Too Far' by E. F. Benson and 'The Man Whom The Trees Loved' by Algernon Blackwood. In: 'EcoGothic Gardens in the Long Nineteenth Century'. Manchester University Press, Manchester, pp. 82-98. ISBN 978-1-5261-4568-0 Item availability may be restricted.
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    Heholt, Ruth ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6963-6427 (2019) Ghost Stories. In: The Paalgrave Encylopedia of Victorian Women Writers. Palgrave Macmillan, Online. ISBN 978-3-030-02721-6 Item availability may be restricted.
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    Heholt, Ruth ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6963-6427 (2019) That Which Roars Further Out: Gardens and Wilderness in ‘The Man who Went too Far’ by E. F. Benson and ‘The Man Whom the Trees Loved’ by Algernon Blackwood. In: Uncanny EcoGothic Gardens. Manchester University Press, Manchester. ISBN unknown (In Press) Item availability may be restricted.
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    Heholt, Ruth ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6963-6427 (2018) 'Perverting the Family: Re-Working Victor Frankenstein’s Gothic Blood-Ties in Penny Dreadful'. In: 'Transmedia Creatures: Frankenstein's Afterlives'. Bucknell University Press, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. ISBN 978-1-6844-8060-9
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    Heholt, Ruth ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6963-6427 (2018) '"Powerful beyond all question": Catherine Crowe's novels of the 1840s'. In: 'From Bronte to Bloomsbury: Volume One, edited by Adrienne E. Gavin and Carolyn W. de la L. Oulto. British Women's Writing from Bronte to Bloomsbury, 1840-1940 . Palagrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, pp. 39-54. ISBN 978-3-319-78225-6
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    Heholt, Ruth ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6963-6427 (2018) The Hammer House of Cornish Horror: The Inversion of Imperial Gothic in The Plague of the Zombies and The Reptile. In: Gothic Britain: Dark Places in the Provinces and Margins of the British Isles. Gothic Literary Studies . University of Wales Press, Cardiff. ISBN 9781786832337
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    Heholt, Ruth ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6963-6427 (2018) Visible Yet Immaterial: The Phantom and the Male Body in Ghost Stories by Three Victorian Women Writers. In: The Victorian Male Body. Edinburgh Critical Studies in Victorian Culture . Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, pp. 148-170. ISBN 9781474428606
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    Heholt, Ruth ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6963-6427 (2016) Unstable Landscapes: Affect, Representation and a Multiplicity of Hauntings. In: Haunted Landscapes: Super-Nature and the Environment. Place, Memory, Affect . Rowman Littlefield, London, pp. 1-20. ISBN 9781783488810
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    Lloyd, Rebecca (2016) Haunting the Grown-Ups: The Borderlands of ParaNorman and Coraline. In: Haunted Landscapes Super-Nature and the Environment. Place, Memory, Affect . Rowman & Littlefield International, London, New York, pp. 199-214. ISBN 9781783488827 Item not available from this repository.

    Downing, Niamh (2016) 'Tender Bodies': Embracing the Ecological Uncanny in Jim Crace’s Being Dead. In: Haunted Landscapes: Super-Nature and the Environment. Place, Memory, Affect . Rowman & Littlefield, London. ISBN 9781783488810

    Heholt, Ruth ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6963-6427 (2016) Speaking of Seeing Ghosts: Visions of the Supernatural in the Tales of Catherine Crowe. In: Ghosts - Or the Nealy Invisible. ALPH: Approaches to Literary Phantasy . Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main, pp. 25-34. ISBN 9783631665664 Item not available from this repository.

    Heholt, Ruth ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6963-6427 (2014) "Look Closer": Sam Mendes's Visions of White Men. In: Sensational Pleasures in Cinema, Literature and Visual Culture: The Phallic Eye. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. ISBN 978-1-137-36363-3

    Conference or Workshop Item

    Heholt, Ruth ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6963-6427 (2022) Victorian Spectres of Nature: Catherine Crowe and the Consolation of the (im)Material Natural World. In: Other Futures, Other Worlds, Reading Peacemaking, Sustainability and Ecology Today Conference, 9-10 February 2022, Malaga University.
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    Heholt, Ruth ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6963-6427 (2019) Raising Crime from the Dead: Revenge and Retribution in ‘Real’ Ghost Stories. In: Captivating Criminality 6, June 2019, Universita Chieta-Pescara Italy. (Unpublished)
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    Heholt, Ruth ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6963-6427 (2015) Land of Myth and Magic: The Hammer House of Cornish Horror: The Plague of Zombies (1966) and The Reptile (1966). In: Les Studios Hammer: Laboratoire L’Horreur Moderne, Universite de Potiers, Universite de Paris Ouest.
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    Heholt, Ruth ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6963-6427 (2015) Barely There: The Victorian Ghost Story and the Un-Manly Body of the Male Phantom. In: Marginal Perceptions: Queer Voices In and Beyond Conventional, March 7 2015, University of Exeter, Penryn Campus.
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    Heholt, Ruth ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6963-6427 (2014) ‘The Hammer House of Cornish Horror: The Plague of Zombies (1966) and The Reptile (1966)’. In: Locating the Gothic, October 2014, Limerick University. Item not available from this repository.

    Heholt, Ruth ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6963-6427 (2014) ‘The Natural and the Super-Natural: Ghost dogs, Science and Sustainability in the Writings of Catherine Crowe’. In: British Association of Victorian Studies Annual Conference, September 2014, University of Kent. Item not available from this repository.

    Heholt, Ruth ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6963-6427 and Lloyd, Rebecca (2014) ‘Treasure into Trash: Ghostly Objects and the Horrors of Ghastly Ancestors in the Ghost Stories of Louisa Baldwin’. In: 'Treasure into Trash: Victorian Popular Fiction' Conference, July 2014, Senate House London. Item not available from this repository.

    Heholt, Ruth ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6963-6427 (2014) ‘Haunting Beyond the Outer Eye: Catherine Crowe’s Vision of the Unseen’. In: ‘Sights and Frights: Interdisciplinary Conference on Victorian Visual Culture, Horror and the Supernatural’, Jone 2014, University of Sussex. Item not available from this repository.

    Heholt, Ruth ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6963-6427 (2014) Subversion and Misplaced Desire: the Disintegration of the Normal and the Destruction of the Ordinary in Ruth Rendell’s Psychological Thrillers. In: Captivating Criminality: Crime Writing, Darkness and Desire, April 2014, Bath Spa University. Item not available from this repository.

    Heholt, Ruth ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6963-6427 (2014) ‘E F Benson, Sunny Landscapes, Dark Visions: The Cornish Ghost Stories of E F Benson’. In: Haunted Landscapes conference, March 2014, Falmouth University. Item not available from this repository.

    Book

    Heholt, Ruth ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6963-6427 and Parsons, Jo (2022) Women Writing Men: 1689-1869. Historical Women's Writing . Routledge, London. ISBN 978-1-032-22756-6 Item availability may be restricted.
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    Heholt, Ruth ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6963-6427 (2022) The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories by Algernon Blackwood, Introduction. Essential Gothic SF and Dark Fantasy . Flame Tree Press, London. ISBN 9781839648793 Item availability may be restricted.
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    Krzywinska, Tanya ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0744-4144 and Heholt, Ruth ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6963-6427 (2021) Gothic Kernow. Anthem Studies in Gothic Literature . Anthem Press, London. ISBN 9781785279065 (In Press) Item availability may be restricted.
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    Heholt, Ruth ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6963-6427 (2020) Catherine Crowe: Gender, Genre, and Radical Politics. Among the Victorians and Modernists . Routledge, London. ISBN 9780367543327 (In Press) Item availability may be restricted.
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    Heholt, Ruth ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6963-6427 (2019) Gothic Animals: Uncanny Otherness and the Animal With-Out. Studies in Animals and Literature’ . Palgrave Macmillan, London. ISBN unknown (In Press) Item availability may be restricted.
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    Heholt, Ruth ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6963-6427 (2018) Gothic Britain: Dark Places in the Provinces and Margins of the British Isles. Gothic Literary Studies . University of Wales Press, Cardiff. ISBN 978-1-78683-233-7
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    Parsons, Jo and Heholt, Ruth ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6963-6427 (2018) The Victorian Male Body. Edinburgh Critical Studies in Victorian Culture . University of Edinburgh Press, Edinburgh. ISBN 9781474428606 Item availability may be restricted.
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    Heholt, Ruth ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6963-6427 and Downing, Niamh, eds. (2016) Haunted Landscapes: Super-Nature and the Environment. Place, Memory, Affect . Roman & Littlefield, London. ISBN 9781783488810 Item availability may be restricted.
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    Heholt, Ruth ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6963-6427, ed. (2015) Catherine Crowe, 'The Story of Lilly Dawson' Critical Edition. Victorian Secrets Press, Brighton. ISBN 9781906469559 Item not available from this repository.

    Conference

    Heholt, Ruth ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6963-6427 (2015) Sensational Men: Victorian Masculinity in Sensation Fiction, Theatre and the Arts. [Conference] Item not available from this repository.

    Heholt, Ruth ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6963-6427 (2014) Haunted Landscapes: Nature, Supernature and the Environment. [Conference] Item not available from this repository.

    Heholt, Ruth ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6963-6427, Lockley, Elfrea, Douglas, Mark, Downing, Niamh and North, Laurence ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6578-1771 (2014) Haunted Landscapes: Nature, Supernature and the Environment. [Conference]
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    Journal

    Barrios-O'Neill, Danielle and Heholt, Ruth ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6963-6427 (2018) Revenant: Critical and Creative Studies of the Supernatural. Special Issue: CROSS-PLATFORM STUDIES OF SONIC AUDIO AND HORROR. [Journal]
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    Heholt, Ruth ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6963-6427, Peters, Fiona and Wisker, Gina (2017) Contemporary Women's Writing. Special issue: Ruth Rendell. [Journal]

    Heholt, Ruth ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6963-6427 (2014) Victoriographies. Special issue: Haunted Men: Masculinity in the Ghost Story in the Victorian and Edwardian Eras. [Journal]
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    Review

    Heholt, Ruth ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6963-6427 (2018) Terraforming: ecopolitical transformations and environmentalism in science fiction. Green Letters, 22 (4). pp. 444-446. ISSN 2168-1414
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    Events

    2015

    'Sensational Men: Masculinity in Victorian Fiction, Theatre and the Arts'. One day conference co-hosted by Falmouth University and the Victorian Popular Fiction Association. 18 April 2015. Please see VPFA website for details.

    Events

    2014

    One day Symposium and art exhibition entitled 'Haunted Landscapes: Nature, Supernature and the Environment'. This symposium was co-hosted by Falmouth University and ASLE UK-I on 8th March 2014.

    Events

    2011

    'Haunted Men: Masculinity in the Victorian and Edwardian Eras' was a successful, international one day symposium. Keynote speakers were Professor William Hughes, president of the International Gothic Association and editor of the 'Gothic Studies' journal and Professor Mark Llewellyn head of research at the AHRC.

    Research Students

    Current research students

    I am currently supervising eight PhD students at Falmouth. I welcome queries and applications for PhDs on any subjects such as Gothic literature, crime fiction, ghost and supernatural fictions, gender studies, and Victorian studies.

    Research degrees examined

    I have been external examiner for PhDs at University of Exeter, Sunderland, and Debrecen (Hungary). 
    I have been internal examiner for two PhDs at Falmouth. 
    I was external examiner for a Masters by Research at Birmingham University.

    Number of research degree examinations

    1

    Teaching

    Areas of teaching

    • Crime
    • English
    • Film
    • Gender.
    • Victorian studies

    Courses taught

    • Making Nations: Literature and Culture 1832 - 1914, Travel Writing: Theory and Practice, Representations of Crime, Literature and Screen
    • Gender and Film

    Professional Engagement

    Professional esteem indicators

    Year Description
    2014

    I am invited to be keynote speaker at the 'Locating Fantastika' conference, Lancaster University, 2015. Invited to chair special panel 'Fakes and Frauds' at the Victorian Popular Fiction Association conference, 2015.

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