Bodily mutilation. Flesh-eating bacteria. A highly contagious virus of unknown origin. Any of these conditions has the makings of a blockbuster horror film or bestselling novel. They all have their roots in our real-life health and medical communities. Gillian Andrews, a Ph.D. student in the department of English, explores the overlap between the horror genre and health humanities in her dissertation, Haunting Health: Disease, the Horror Genre and Health Rhetoric.

Andrews’ interest in the horror genre began long before she came to Lehigh as an exchange student from her native England. 

“I always really liked horror. I think I got into it slightly too young as a teen,” she said with a laugh. 

She chose Lehigh from a list of U.S. schools. She returned home and earned her B.A. in comparative literature from University of Kent, Canterbury, England, and came back to the States and received her M.A. in English from Lehigh. 

“Coming to the U.S. has been a big change, but it’s been wonderful,” she said.

A college adviser piqued Andrews’ interest in the health humanities. Along with the interest in horror, she began asking more questions and doing more research on how the two genres intersect. It eventually became her dissertation topic.

Andrews is in a relatively small group of academics studying the overlap of horror and health humanities. 

“On one hand, you have to love what you do,” she said. “If you don’t love the subject, you will suffer. I also chose this topic because the intersection of health humanities and society is a growing field, so there was a practical consideration.” 

And, she said, the horror genre is largely under-explored in health humanities, with much more research in science fiction. 

“[Science fiction] is great because it helps us imagine the future, but horror is sometimes still kind of looked down upon as not very academic, with not much to offer. There’s not as much exploration about fear,” she explains.  “Some people have theorized why the horror genre exists. It’s a cathartic experience—where everything society shoves aside surges up, then gets put to bed at the end of the story.” 

She agrees it’s a little fun to be scared—“engaging with taboo topics in a safe, contained narrative,” she said. As horror fans would agree, there is something oddly satisfying about having a good scare—not knowing what’s around the corner or when the ominous figure might emerge on the page or screen. The protagonist typically faces the monster or ominous figure head-on. In the health community, the fear largely stems from the unknown, whether waiting for more information about a diagnosis, a course of treatment or an approximate prognosis. Even terms from horror books and films are now widely used to describe health conditions or medicinal side effects, such as feeling like a “zombie.” 

The basic human emotion of fear is a common thread in conversations about both the horror genre and health humanities topics. Fear and anxiety as medical conditions have been studied and researched extensively, but less when it comes to their connection to horror film and literary genres. Andrews felt it was important to add her own perspective to these conversations. 

“Horror can sometimes be looked at as a kind of ‘thrills and chills’ genre that doesn’t say much or is viewed as a less valuable genre,” she said. “And in the health humanities area, there hasn’t been much publication as to how they fit together.” 

Yet, Andrews points out, a depiction of our shared fears can teach us about what a culture values.