The Slow Apocalypse in The Low, Low Woods

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DC Field	Value
dc.identifier	ECF_article_15306
dc.title	The Slow Apocalypse in The Low, Low Woods
dc.contributor.author	Fuchs Michael
dc.contributor.author	Marini Anna Marta
dc.publisher	Edizioni Ca’ Foscari - Venice University Press, Fondazione Università Ca’ Foscari
dc.type	Research Article
dc.language.iso	en
dc.identifier.uri	http://edizionicafoscari.it/en/edizioni4/riviste/english-literature/2023/10/the-slow-apocalypse-in-the-low-low-woods/
dc.description.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.
dc.relation.ispartof	English Literature
dc.relation.ispartof	Vol. 10 \| December 2023
dc.issued	2024-02-06
dc.dateAccepted	2023-11-21
dc.dateSubmitted	2023-09-18
dc.identifier.issn
dc.identifier.eissn	2420-823X
dc.rights	Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.identifier.doi	10.30687/EL/2420-823X/2023/10/005
dc.peer-review	yes
dc.subject	Appalachia
dc.subject	Coal
dc.subject	Comics
dc.subject	Ecocriticism
dc.subject	Ecogothic
dc.subject	Ecohorror
dc.subject	Extraction
dc.subject	Intersectionality
dc.subject	Mining
dc.subject	Trauma

Research Article
open access peer reviewed

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

Keywords: Ecogothic • Mining • Coal • Extraction • Ecocriticism • Comics • Trauma • Intersectionality • Appalachia • Ecohorror

permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/EL/2420-823X/2023/10/005

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.

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