Theorizing Stephen King

Michael J. Blouin, PhD is a professor of English and Humanities at Milligan University. His recent publications include Democracy and the American Gothic (2024), Stephen King and American Politics(2021) and Stephen King and American History (2020). Blouin’s primary research interests are horror, popular culture, and critical theory.

Stephen King and His Critics – Michael Blouin
I. Why Theorize?
1. Reading King Through the Years: Theoretical Permutations – Tony Magistrale
2. “Can’t someone else do it?” An (Attempted) A-theoretical Reading of Needful Things – Patrick McAleer
3. Stephen King and the Trouble with Poststructuralism – Michael Blouin
II. Making Meaning
4. Reading Stephen King Religiously: Scary Stories and the Teaching of Religion – Douglas Cowan
5. Stephen King’s and Peter Staub’s Mythmaking: Jack Sawyer as an American Hero – Daniel Compora
6. The Gospel (Paraphrase): King and Christian Epigraphs – Rebecca Frost
7. Excursus on Suffering, Meaning, and Metaphysics in Stephen King’s Revival – Jacob Held
III. Adapting Stephen King
8. Cinematic Skeleton Crew: Adapting Stephen King in the Mid-1980s – Joseph Maddrey and Carl H. Sederholm
9. Towards Infection: Viral Adaptations of King – Matthew Holtmeier and Chelsea Wessels
IV. New Critical Interventions
10. “Is Zelda dead yet?”: Disability, Mortality, and Narratives of Appropriation in Pet Sematary – Melissa Raines
11. “For you the sun never came back out”: Theorizing Trauma in It and Gerald’s Game – Laura Mulcahy
12. Choosing to See: Gardening It within The Upside Down without a Cord – Michael Perry
13. “the tongueless voice of the temple whispered”: Delirious Voices in Rose Madder – Theresa Mae Thompson
14. A Lovecraftian Critique of the Art of Stephen King – Greg Littmann
15. “A Certain Rough Justice”: Stephen King, Digital Activism, and Donald Trump - Philip Simpson
16. Dead Is Better: Pet Sematary and Animal Studies – Sarah D. Nilsen
17. Author Functions: Stephen King's Writers – effrey Andrew Weinstock
Index