Professor Ruth Heholt

Professor of Literature and Culture

Ruth Heholt is an internationally renowned scholar in the fields of Gothic, supernatural, Victorian, folk horror, and crime fiction studies. She is author of Catherine Crowe: Gender, Genre, and Radical Politics (Routledge, 2020) and co-author of Gothic Kernow: Cornwall as Strange Fiction (Anthem Press, 2022). She is co-editor of several collections including Gothic Britain: Dark Places in the Provinces and Margins of the British Isles (2018), The Victorian Male Body (2018), and Haunted Landscapes (2017). She has also published numerous journal special issues, journal articles, and book chapters. She is on the editorial and advisory boards of several journals, book series and scholarly associations (including the Victorian Popular Fiction Association and the Wilkie Collins Association), and the book prize committee for the International Crime Fiction Association. Her work has been recognised in several fields as evidenced by multiple invitations to publish, peer-review, give keynote addresses, and invited talks. 

Ruth has organised international conferences including Haunted Landscapes (2023), Folk Horror in the Twentieth Century (Falmouth and Lehigh Universities 2019), and is editor of the peer reviewed journal Revenant: Critical and Creative Studies of the Supernatural. Revenant is dedicated to academic and creative explorations of the supernatural, the uncanny and the weird and can be found at revenantjournal.com. She is co-editor of the Gender and the Body book series and the Nineteenth Century and Neo-Victorian Cultures book series (Edinburgh University Press). She is a fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Ruth is an experienced PhD supervisor and examiner and welcomes applications from prospective PhD candidates on the subjects of the Supernatural, Crime Fiction, the Gothic, Horror, and Victorian Studies.

External Links

Dr Ruth Heholt staff picture

Contact details

Telephone 01326 370705
Email ruth.heholt@falmouth.ac.uk

    Qualifications

    Qualifications

    Year Qualification Awarding body
    2009 PGCHE University College Falmouth
    2004 PhD University of Plymouth
    1997 BA (Hons) English University of Reading

    Membership of external committees

    Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

    Research Interests

    Research interests and expertise

    My research is based around the concept of the supernatural, masculinity and both contemporary and Victorian culture and literature. I am willing to consider supervising PhDs that cover any aspect of the supernatural or masculinity in literature or media.

    Research centre and group affiliations

    RANE Research Group

    Research Topics

    • Gothic Literature
    • Ghost Stories
    • Crime fiction
    • Supernatural studies
    • Gender studies
    • Victorian and Neo-Victorian studies

    Research Outputs

    Publications and research outputs

    • Heholt, Ruth and Lloyd, Rebecca

      (2022), Ghostly Objects and the Horrors of Ghastly Ancestors in the Ghost Stories of Louisa Baldwin, In: Women's Writing, Taylor and Francis, UK, 29 (2), pp. 196-215, ISSN: 1747-5848

    • Krzywinska, Tanya

      (2019), “Everything is True”: Urban Gothic meets the Chthulucene in Multiplayer Online Game, The Secret World., In: The New Urban Gothic: Global Gothic in the Age of the Anthropocene, Palgrave Mamillan, Basingstoke, ISBN: 978-3-030-43777-0

    • Heholt, Ruth

      (2017), Ambivalent Ghosts: The Manifestation of the Supernatural in Ruth Rendell's Fiction, In: Contemporary Women's Writing, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 11 (1), pp. 85-101, ISSN: 1754-1484

    • Heholt, Ruth

      (2016), Introduction, In: The Luminary Journal, Lancaster University, lancaster.ac.uk, ISSN: 2056-9238

    • Heholt, Ruth

      (2014), Science, Ghosts and Vision: Catherine Crowe's Bodies of Evidence and the Critique of Masculinity, In: 'Haunted Men' Victoriographies Special Issue, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 4 (1), pp. 46-61, ISSN: 2044-2416, Item availability may be restricted.

    • Heholt, Ruth

      (2012), Subversive Ghost Hunting: A-Technology, the Imagination and the Gothic Spaces of Most Haunted, In: Textus: English Studies in Italy, Cariccu editore, Roma, XXV (3), ISSN: 1823-3967, Item availability may be restricted.

    • Heholt, Ruth

      (2023), Folk Horror New Global Pathways, University of Wales Press, Cardiff, ISBN: 978-1-78683-979-4, Item availability may be restricted.

    • Heholt, Ruth

      Parsons, Jo, (2022), Women Writing Men: 1689-1869, Routledge, London, ISBN: 978-1-032-22756-6, Item availability may be restricted.

    • Heholt, Ruth

      (2022), The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories by Algernon Blackwood, Introduction, Flame Tree Press, London, ISBN: 9781839648793, Item availability may be restricted.

    • Krzywinska, Tanya

      Heholt, Ruth, (2021), Gothic Kernow, Anthem Press, London, ISBN: 9781785279065, Item availability may be restricted.

    • Heholt, Ruth

      (2020), Catherine Crowe: Gender, Genre, and Radical Politics, Routledge, London, ISBN: 9780367543327, Item availability may be restricted.

    • Heholt, Ruth

      (2020), Gothic Animals: Uncanny Otherness and the Animal With-Out, Palgrave Macmillan, London, ISBN: 978-3-030-34539-6

    • Heholt, Ruth and William Hughes

      (2018), Gothic Britain: Dark Places in the Provinces and Margins of the British Isles, University of Wales Press, Cardiff, ISBN: 978-1-78683-233-7

    • Parsons, Jo

      Heholt, Ruth, (2018), The Victorian Male Body, University of Edinburgh Press, Edinburgh, ISBN: 9781474428606, Item availability may be restricted.

    • Heholt, Ruth

      (2022), Victorian Spectres of Nature: Catherine Crowe and the Consolation of the (im)Material Natural World, In: Other Futures, Other Worlds, Reading Peacemaking, Sustainability and Ecology Today Conference, 9-10 February 2022, Malaga University

    • Heholt, Ruth

      (2019), Raising Crime from the Dead: Revenge and Retribution in ‘Real’ Ghost Stories, In: Captivating Criminality 6, June 2019, Universita Chieta-Pescara Italy, (Unpublished)

    • Heholt, Ruth

      (2015), Land of Myth and Magic: The Hammer House of Cornish Horror: The Plague of Zombies (1966) and The Reptile (1966), Universite de Potiers, Universite de Paris Ouest

    • Heholt, Ruth

      (2015), Barely There: The Victorian Ghost Story and the Un-Manly Body of the Male Phantom, In: Marginal Perceptions: Queer Voices In and Beyond Conventional, March 7 2015, Penryn Campus

    • Heholt, Ruth

      (2014), ‘The Hammer House of Cornish Horror: The Plague of Zombies (1966) and The Reptile (1966)’, In: Locating the Gothic, October 2014, University of Limerick

    • Heholt, Ruth

      (2014), ‘The Natural and the Super-Natural: Ghost dogs, Science and Sustainability in the Writings of Catherine Crowe’, In: British Association of Victorian Studies Annual Conference, September 2014, University of Kent

    • Heholt, Ruth and Lloyd, Rebecca

      (2014), ‘Treasure into Trash: Ghostly Objects and the Horrors of Ghastly Ancestors in the Ghost Stories of Louisa Baldwin’, In: 'Treasure into Trash: Victorian Popular Fiction' Conference, July 2014, Senate House London

    • Heholt, Ruth

      (2014), ‘Haunting Beyond the Outer Eye: Catherine Crowe’s Vision of the Unseen’, In: ‘Sights and Frights: Interdisciplinary Conference on Victorian Visual Culture, Horror and the Supernatural’, Jone 2014, University of Sussex

    • Heholt, Ruth

      (2014), Subversion and Misplaced Desire: the Disintegration of the Normal and the Destruction of the Ordinary in Ruth Rendell’s Psychological Thrillers., In: Captivating Criminality: Crime Writing, Darkness and Desire, April 2014, University of Sussex

    • Heholt, Ruth

      (2014), ‘E F Benson, Sunny Landscapes, Dark Visions: The Cornish Ghost Stories of E F Benson’, In: Haunted Landscapes conference, March 2014, Falmouth University

    • Heholt, Ruth

      (2024), “Middle-aged, anti-Female single men” and middle-aged robust female vampires in E. F. Benson’s “Spook Tales”, In: Masculinity in Literatures and the Arts: Deconstruction/Evolution of Models of Identity,, LED Milan, Milan Italy, ISBN: Unknown, (Submitted), Item availability may be restricted.

    • Krzywinska, Tanya

      (2023), Curses, Rites and Questionable Offerings, In: Folk Horror: New Global Pathways, University of Wales Press, unknown, ISBN: 9781786839794, Item availability may be restricted.

    • Devanny, David

      (2023), THE CURSE OF THE CURSIVE: THE HORROR OF THE HAND IN FOLK HORROR FILM TYPOGRAPHY, In: Folk Horror: New Global Pathways, University of Wales Press, Wales, ISBN: 9781786839794, Item availability may be restricted.

    • Heholt, Ruth

      (2023), Handicrafts of Evil: The Make-Culture of Folk Horror, In: The Routledge Companion to Folk Horror, Routledge, Abingdon, pp. 160-172, ISBN: 978-1-032-04283-1, Item availability may be restricted.

    • Heholt, Ruth

      (2022), Traces of Light and Dark: History, Memory, and Landscape in the Ghost Stories of E. F. Benson, In: 'Reading the Trace in Modern and Contemporary Fiction', edited by Rosario Arias and Lin Pettersson,, Gylphi Press., Canterbury UK, pp. 15-32, ISBN: 978-1-78024-100-5, Item availability may be restricted.

    • Heholt, Ruth

      (2020), 'That Which Roars Further Out': Gardens and Wilderness in 'The Man Who Went Too Far' by E. F. Benson and 'The Man Whom The Trees Loved' by Algernon Blackwood, In: 'EcoGothic Gardens in the Long Nineteenth Century', Manchester University Press, Manchester, pp. 82-98, ISBN: 978-1-5261-4568-0, Item availability may be restricted.

    • Heholt, Ruth

      (2019), Ghost Stories, In: The Paalgrave Encylopedia of Victorian Women Writers, Palgrave Macmillan, Online, ISBN: 978-3-030-02721-6

    • Heholt, Ruth

      (2019), That Which Roars Further Out: Gardens and Wilderness in ‘The Man who Went too Far’ by E. F. Benson and ‘The Man Whom the Trees Loved’ by Algernon Blackwood., In: Uncanny EcoGothic Gardens, Manchester University Press, Manchester, ISBN: unknown, Item availability may be restricted.

    • Heholt, Ruth

      (2018), 'Perverting the Family: Re-Working Victor Frankenstein’s Gothic Blood-Ties in Penny Dreadful', In: 'Transmedia Creatures: Frankenstein's Afterlives', Bucknell University Press, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, ISBN: 978-1-6844-8060-9

    • Heholt, Ruth

      (2018), '"Powerful beyond all question": Catherine Crowe's novels of the 1840s', In: 'From Bronte to Bloomsbury: Volume One, edited by Adrienne E. Gavin and Carolyn W. de la L. Oulto, Palagrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, pp. 39-54, ISBN: 978-3-319-78225-6

    • Heholt, Ruth

      (2018), The Hammer House of Cornish Horror: The Inversion of Imperial Gothic in The Plague of the Zombies and The Reptile, In: Gothic Britain: Dark Places in the Provinces and Margins of the British Isles, University of Wales Press, Cardiff, ISBN: 9781786832337

    • Heholt, Ruth

      (2018), Visible Yet Immaterial: The Phantom and the Male Body in Ghost Stories by Three Victorian Women Writers, In: The Victorian Male Body, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, pp. 148-170, ISBN: 9781474428606

    • Heholt, Ruth

      (2016), Unstable Landscapes: Affect, Representation and a Multiplicity of Hauntings, In: Haunted Landscapes: Super-Nature and the Environment, Rowman Littlefield, London, pp. 1-20, ISBN: 9781783488810

    • Lloyd, Rebecca

      (2016), Haunting the Grown-Ups: The Borderlands of ParaNorman and Coraline, In: Haunted Landscapes Super-Nature and the Environment, Rowman & Littlefield International, London, New York, pp. 199-214, ISBN: 9781783488827

    • Downing, Niamh

      (2016), 'Tender Bodies': Embracing the Ecological Uncanny in Jim Crace’s Being Dead, In: Haunted Landscapes: Super-Nature and the Environment, Rowman & Littlefield, London, ISBN: 9781783488810

    • Heholt, Ruth

      (2016), Speaking of Seeing Ghosts: Visions of the Supernatural in the Tales of Catherine Crowe, In: Ghosts - Or the Nealy Invisible, Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main, pp. 25-34, ISBN: 9783631665664

    • Heholt, Ruth

      (2014), "Look Closer": Sam Mendes's Visions of White Men, In: Sensational Pleasures in Cinema, Literature and Visual Culture: The Phallic Eye, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, ISBN: 978-1-137-36363-3

    • Heholt, Ruth

      (2018), Terraforming: ecopolitical transformations and environmentalism in science fiction, In: Green Letters, Taylor & Francis, Oxford, 22 (4), pp. 444-446, ISSN: 2168-1414

    • Barrios-O'Neill, Danielle and Heholt, Ruth

      (2018), Revenant: Critical and Creative Studies of the Supernatural. Special Issue: CROSS-PLATFORM STUDIES OF SONIC AUDIO AND HORROR, Falmouth University, Falmouth University, ISSN: ISSN 2397-8791

    • Heholt, Ruth, Peters, Fiona and Wisker, Gina

      (2017), Contemporary Women's Writing. Special issue: Ruth Rendell, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 11 (1), ISSN: 17541476

    • Heholt, Ruth

      (2014), Victoriographies. Special issue: Haunted Men: Masculinity in the Ghost Story in the Victorian and Edwardian Eras, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 4 (1), ISSN: 2044 2416

    • Heholt, Ruth

      (2015), Sensational Men: Victorian Masculinity in Sensation Fiction, Theatre and the Arts

    • Heholt, Ruth

      (2014), Haunted Landscapes: Nature, Supernature and the Environment

    • Heholt, Ruth

      Lockley, Elfrea, Douglas, Mark, Downing, Niamh and North, Laurence, (2014), Haunted Landscapes: Nature, Supernature and the Environment, Falmouth University, Penryn Campus, Cornwall

    Events

    2015

    'Sensational Men: Masculinity in Victorian Fiction, Theatre and the Arts'. One day conference co-hosted by Falmouth University and the Victorian Popular Fiction Association. 18 April 2015. Please see VPFA website for details.

    Events

    2014

    One day Symposium and art exhibition entitled 'Haunted Landscapes: Nature, Supernature and the Environment'. This symposium was co-hosted by Falmouth University and ASLE UK-I on 8th March 2014.

    Events

    2011

    'Haunted Men: Masculinity in the Victorian and Edwardian Eras' was a successful, international one day symposium. Keynote speakers were Professor William Hughes, president of the International Gothic Association and editor of the 'Gothic Studies' journal and Professor Mark Llewellyn head of research at the AHRC.

    Research Students

    Current research students

    I am currently supervising eight PhD students at Falmouth. I welcome queries and applications for PhDs on any subjects such as Gothic literature, crime fiction, ghost and supernatural fictions, gender studies, and Victorian studies.

    Research degrees examined

    I have been external examiner for PhDs at University of Exeter, Sunderland, and Debrecen (Hungary). 
    I have been internal examiner for two PhDs at Falmouth. 
    I was external examiner for a Masters by Research at Birmingham University.

    Number of research degree examinations

    1

    Teaching

    Areas of teaching

    • Crime
    • English
    • Film
    • Gender.
    • Victorian studies

    Courses taught

    • Making Nations: Literature and Culture 1832 - 1914, Travel Writing: Theory and Practice, Representations of Crime, Literature and Screen
    • Gender and Film

    Professional Engagement

    Professional esteem indicators

    Year Description
    2014

    I am invited to be keynote speaker at the 'Locating Fantastika' conference, Lancaster University, 2015. Invited to chair special panel 'Fakes and Frauds' at the Victorian Popular Fiction Association conference, 2015.