Literary Arts Professor's Essay Published in Book on American Horror Writer Shirley Jackson Monday, August 31, 2020
"When I watched The Haunting of Hill House Netflix series, I was really intrigued by the show's renovation of Jackson's novel, as well as its treatment of female characters. I thought the show was really well done, but its development of the main female character, Olivia Crain, left me troubled and puzzled. The essay grew from there."
Jessica McCort, Ph.D., associate professor of composition and rhetoric and director of the composition program for the Department of Literary Arts and Social Justice at Point Park University, recently had her essay titled "Flipping Hill House: The Netflix Revision of Shirley Jackson's Landmark Novel" published in the Bloomsbury book, Shirley Jackson and Domesticity: Beyond the Haunted House.
McCort's inspiration for the essay came from her years of teaching Shirley Jackson's novel, The Haunting of Hill House, most recently in her Haunted America class at Point Park.
"When I watched The Haunting of Hill House Netflix series, I was really intrigued by the show's renovation of Jackson's novel, as well as its treatment of female characters. I thought the show was really well done, but its development of the main female character, Olivia Crain, left me troubled and puzzled. The essay grew from there," McCort explained.
McCort earned a Ph.D. in English and American literature from Washington University in St. Louis. Her research interests include gothic and horror in children's and young adult literature and culture, fairy tales and fairy tale revisions, Sylvia Plath and girls' cultures and reading practices. She teaches a variety of literary arts classes at Point Park University ranging from Feminist Fairy Tales to Plath and Sexton.