Scenes of Suffering: Trauma in Black Horror

This dissertation examines how contemporary black horror functions as both a site of critique and a space of radical possibility. Through film and television analysis, I argue that black horror does not simply depict trauma but theorizes it, inviting audiences to feel, witness, and confront the violence of antiblackness in embodied, affective ways. Centering themes of madness, monstrosity, temporality, and bodies, I explore how black horror unsettles colonial logics of sanity, linear time, and the human, while simultaneously imagining forms of freedom, connection, and survival. Each chapter offers a focused analysis of black horror texts—including Get Out (2017), Lovecraft Country (2020), THEM (2021), Swarm (2023), Bad Hair (2020), and others—situating them within broader cultural, historical, and theoretical contexts. My methodology blends formal film analysis, audience reception study, and a relational, interpretivist framework grounded in care and intellectual accountability. I draw from Black studies, trauma theory, sociology, mad studies, affect theory, peace and conflict studies, and Afrosurrealism to interpret how black horror visualizes the psychological and structural impacts of racial violence. Rather than resolving trauma, these texts dwell in its aftermath, allowing for a fuller representation of black emotional and spiritual life. Ultimately, this dissertation shows how black horror creates new ways of seeing and feeling, offering viewers not only critical tools for understanding violence but also speculative blueprints for imagining otherwise.