Dark Thoughts

This is a collection of highly engaging and provocative essays by top scholars in the increasingly interrelated fields of Philosophy, Film Studies, and Communication Arts that deal with the epistemology, aesthetics, ethics, metaphysics, and genre dynamics of horror cinema past and present, reveals that our fascination with horror cinema, and the pleasure we take in it, is in the end simply a natural extension of a philosopher's inclination to wonder. Contributors include Curtis Bowman, Noel Carroll, Elizabeth Cowie, Angela Curran, Cynthia Freeland, Michael Grant, Matt Hills, Deborah Knight, George McKnight, Ken Mogg, Aaron Smuts, Robert C. Solomon, and J.P. Telotte.

Steven Jay Schneider is a Ph.D. candidate in Philosophy at Harvard University and in Cinema Studies at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. He has published widely on the horror film and related genres, and is author of the forthcoming Designing Fear: An Aesthetics of Cinematic Horror. Steven is editor of New Hollywood Violence and The Horror and Psychoanalysis: Freud's Worst Nightmares, and co-editor of Understanding Film Genres and Horror International, all forthcoming. For more information, please visit his "website".

Daniel Shaw is Professor of Philosophy and Film at Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania. He is Editor of the journal Film and Philosophy, and secretary-treasurer of its sponsor organization, the Society for the Philosophic Study of the Contemporary Visual Arts. He has published articles in The Journal of Value Inquiry, Kinoeye, and Film/Literature Quarterly. His reviews also appear periodically in the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism and in Choice magazine.