Home > Catalogue > English Literature > 10 | 2023 > The Slow Apocalypse in The Low, Low Woods
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The Slow Apocalypse in The Low, Low Woods

Michael Fuchs    University of Innsbruck, Austria    

Anna Marta Marini    Instituto Franklin, University of Alcalá, Spain

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abstract

The comics series The Low, Low Woods is set in the fictional former coal‑mining town of Shudder‑to‑Think, Pennsylvania. While the mines have long been abandoned, their variegated effects, from poverty to environmental destruction, still haunt the region. This article suggests that The Low, Low Woods identifies a convergence between the exploitation of the natural world, a coal industry on the brink of collapse, and a fragile form of (white) hypermasculinity that promotes a violent and race‑ as well as class‑specific idea of local identity that two teenage, queer women from ethnic minority backgrounds begin to challenge.

Published
Feb. 6, 2024
Accepted
Nov. 21, 2023
Submitted
Sept. 18, 2023
Language
EN

Keywords: IntersectionalityEcogothicEcocriticismMiningCoalEcohorrorComicsTraumaAppalachiaExtraction

Copyright: © 2023 Michael Fuchs, Anna Marta Marini. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.