Cine-Excess 2026 Keynote Presentation: Professor Aviva Briefel on Candyman and the Spatialization of Horror Legends

We are delighted to welcome Aviva Briefel as the keynote speaker to our 2026 conference component. Aviva Briefel is Professor of English and Cinema Studies at Bowdoin College, Maine. She is the author of numerous essays on horror and co-editor of a number of cult film collections, including Horror after 9/11: World of Fear, Cinema of Terror and Labors of Fear: The Modern Horror Film Goes to Work. She has also authored several books on Victorian culture, most recently, Ghosts and Things: The Material Culture of Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism, which she recently discussed in an interview with her college newspaper.

Her keynote presentation, titled “Return to Cabrini Green: Candyman (1992/2001) and the Spatialization of Horror Legends,” will discuss how the two major film versions of Candyman explore and explode the bonds between gothic legends and spatial locations, particularly in the context of Black horror.

Professor Briefel’s Keynote Address takes place on Tuesday 20 October at 3.30pm – 4.30pm