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About the eventA 3-Session course on Horror - Tuesdays 5, 19 and 26 May
Why are we drawn to horror? Why do we willingly sit through stories that disturb, unsettle, and frighten us? From haunted houses and monstrous doubles, to possession and supernatural terrors, horror has always held a strange fascination. But what is it about it that both repels and compels us?
This three-session course explores horror not merely as stories of ghosts, occult forces, or serial killers, but as a genre that dares to show what we would rather not see. Horror stages the return of what we repress. It provides clues to the hidden fears, unspoken desires, and anxieties that quietly shape our inner lives.
Drawing on ideas from psychoanalysis, this course examines how horror brings to the surface what everyday life encourages us to deny: fear of death, loss of control, forbidden longing, the fragility of identity, and the darker tensions within family and society. Psychoanalysis suggests that what terrifies us is rarely foreign to us. The monster often reflects something unacknowledged within us. The haunted house may be the mind itself. The double may embody the self we disown. Even the apocalypse can echo our private sense of collapse.
Through selected examples from well-known films, video games, and literary works, we will explore how horror allows us to encounter these unsettling truths indirectly but with surprising intensity. Horror frightens us, but it also reveals us.
Session 1: Tuesday 5 May 2026 | When the Familiar Turns Strange
- The Origins of Horror
- The Uncanny: Sigmund Freud
- The Return of the Repressed: Robin Wood, James B. Twitchell
Session 2: Tuesday 19 May 2026 | What Our Fears Look Like
- An Introduction to the Monster: Noel Carroll
- Vampires
- Zombies
- The Double: Otto Rank
Session 3: Tuesday 26 May 2026 | When the Body Breaks
- The Abject Body: Julia Kristeva, Barbara Creed
_ ‘The Thing’ in Horror Cinema: Jacques Lacan
- Horror in the Twenty-First Century: An Overview
Tickets are available on our website. Prices for members, non-members, students, and senior citizens include full attendance at all three sessions.
About the Speaker
Dr David Vella is a philosopher and also a lecturer at the University of Malta, contributing to programmes in the Centre for Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Junior College, where his teaching spans modern literature, critical and cultural theory, and related philosophical themes.
He holds a Ph.D. in Critical and Cultural Theory (Cardiff University) and has taught English abroad, including at Aix-Marseille University in France. His research and teaching interests are interdisciplinary, encompassing existentialism, phenomenology, identity studies, contemporary spirituality, the sociology of late modernity, horror and dystopian fiction, and broader questions about the self and culture.
Dr David Vella has published on literary and cultural topics, including work on Michel Houellebecq’s novels, the fitness lifestyle as a cultural phenomenon, and ethical issues of identity in consumer society. In addition to his academic writing, he is the author of the book Refiguring Identity in Corporate Times: Or Rediscovering Oneself in a Consumer Culture (2023) and a work of literary fiction When Her Time Comes (2023). He is engaged in Malta’s intellectual and cultural scene and has delivered talks and seminars on philosophical themes, reflecting his commitment to bringing philosophical insight into both academic and public contexts.
David is a Member of the Philosophy Sharing Committee.
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Event Venue
Valletta Design Cluster, Valletta, Malta
Tickets
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