Out-of-Print

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! 

The second part of our Halloween special is our first ever ALL. VIDEO. EPISODE. Switch to video to see our wee faces (and costumes) to get you into a spooky frame of mind.

On this episode, we look at the gothic psychology in famous horror film ‘The Blair Witch Project’ alongside the first gothic novel, ‘The Castle of Otranto’, investigating not just if something is scary, but why...

Key Texts:

The Blair Witch Project, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez
The Castle of Otranto, Horace Walpole
Figures of Literary Discourse, Gerard Genette trans. by Alan Sheridan
Potential Images: Ambiguity and Indeterminacy in Modern Art, Dario Gamboni

Further Readings:

A New Companion to the Gothic, David Punter
Picture Theory, WJT Mitchell
Eighteenth-Century Fiction 27:3, Peter Otto

Happy Halloween! Out-of-Print is running a two-part Halloween special, and this one has our first ever guest.

This week, Sophie, Alice, and Emmeline are joined by legendary goblin-expert-in-residence and author Jen Calleja. We discuss the big pressing questions of today: Are you a goblin? Do you want to be a goblin? And what does it mean to be a goblin? 

Tune in for international goblins, goblin aspirations, goblinification, goblin spaces, goblin aesthetics, goblin mode (and vampire mode), and most importantly, discussing Jen’s fabulous book ‘Goblinhood: Goblin as a Mode’ (Rough Trade Books, 2024). You can buy Goblinhood here:

https://roughtradebooks.com/products/goblinhood-goblin-as-a-mode-jen-calleja

See Out-of-Print live at the Roundhouse in January:

https://www.roundhouse.org.uk/whats-on/out-of-print-live/

Key Texts:

Goblinhood: Goblin as a Mode, Jen Calleja
Year of the Goblin: Tracing New Developments of Digital Folklore and Urban Modes of Living in Online Music Subcultures, Luigi Monteanni, SOAS University of London, UK
‘Slobbing out and giving up: why are so many people going ‘goblin mode’?’, Kari Paul, The Guardian
‘Goblin mode: a gothic expert explains the trend’s mythical origins, and why we should all go ‘vampire mode’ instead’, Sam George, The Conversation
Goblin Mythology: A Brief Study of the Archetype, Tracing the Explications in English Literature, Annliya Shaijan
Encyclopaedia of Fairies in World Folklore and Mythology, Theresa Bane
Dictionary of Fairies, Katharine Briggs

Can violence ever be feminist? Is anger ever useful or productive? How is it that ‘female rage’ has become a TikTok trend? 

TW: femicide, sexual harassment, SA, and murder. 

Key text: 

• Dirty Weekend by Helen Zahavi (1991)

In this week’s episode, Alice takes us on a whistle-stop tour of the revenge fantasy genre, with a close reading specifically of Helen Zahavi’s razor-sharp cult-classic, Dirty Weekend. Zahavi’s dark comedy in which protagonist, Bella wakes up one day and realises she’s “had enough”, then embarks on a vicious killing spree of certainly-not-innocent men in Brighton. 

Published in 1991, Zahavi’s dark comedy caused quite the stir — with feminist critics simultaneously lauding and rejecting it for its sardonic tone and (extremely) violent subject matter. The text was frequently critiqued in conjunction with Brett Easton Ellis’ American Psycho — another slasher published in the same year. The girls also explore why it is that one text has been forgotten about whilst the other has gone on to become a cult classic… 

The revenge fantasy genre often ventures far into taboo and ethically grey areas. We do not approach the subject-matter lightly and encourage everyone who chooses to listen to the episode to do so mindfully. 

If you or anyone else has been affected by what we cover in this episode, please consider reaching out to (or supporting) The Survivor’s Trust: https://thesurvivorstrust.org

This week Emmeline transports Alice and Sophie to the juicy underworld of 18th century gossip, comparing Austen’s classic text ‘Emma’ to the contemporary arena of the high school, à la Clueless. The girls discuss the etymology of the word gossip, it’s function as a social glue and key driver of plot, and then unpack some of the hottest new gossip about their friendly neighbourhood aquarium… 

Primary texts: 
Emma, Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen 
Clueless dir. Amy Heckerling 

Secondary reading:
Lise Gaston ‘Gossip Economies: Jane Austen, Lady Susan and the Right to Self-Fasion’ European Romantic Review
Jan Gordon Gossip and Subversion in Nineteenth Century British Fiction (Palgrave Macmillan, 1996) 
Claudia Johnson Jane Austen: Women, Politics and The Novel (1988)
Gillian Russell ‘Sociability’ ed. Copeland, Edward and McMaster, Juliet The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen (1997)
Heidi Silcox ‘The Many Faces of Gossip in Emma’ ed. Dadlez, E.M. Jane Austen’s Philosophical Perspectives (Oxford Scholarship Online, 2018)
Patricia Meyer Spacks Gossip (New York: Knopf, 1985)
Katherine Sutherland, ‘Jane Austen On Screen’ The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen (1997)

On this week’s episode, Sophie takes Emmeline and Alice through the intersection of craft, technology and religion. From the importance of girls making crochet knits for their friends, to community art pieces, to robots tending zen gardens, to media materialism, to nosy busybodies investigating craft communes, this episode asks the big question - not just if a machine can do it, but do we want it to?

With special thanks to Dr Ben Higgins at LMH for assisting in providing the primary reading.

See Out-of-Print live at the Roundhouse in January:

https://www.roundhouse.org.uk/whats-on/out-of-print-live/

Key Texts:

Assorted textual products of the Little Gidding Group
Little Clippings, Adam Smyth
Liturgy at Little Gidding, Regina L Walton
Fully Automated Luxury Communism, Aaron Bastani
Programming Patterns: the Story of the Jacquard Loom, The Science + Industry Museum
Say bye to doomscrolling, experts say these grandma hobbies and crafts are trending, NBCDFW

Further Reading:

Cut/Copy/Paste: Fragments from the History of Bookwork, Whitney Trettein
Work by @dazychains on TikTok

Hidden microwaves, false dreams, and the tradwife movement. In this week’s episode, Alice takes the girls on a journey into Caro Claire Burke’s psychological thriller Yesteryear (2024) alongside Betty Friedan’s seminal second-wave feminist text, The Feminine Mystique (1963) to see what each of them reveal about the not-so-glamorous reality behind the lifestyle tradwives perform online. Both Yesteryear and The Feminine Mystique reveal the complexities behind a simple life and how the suburban housewives (of the 1950s and today) were impacted by living a life constrained to the white picket fence.

“The suburban housewife – she was the dream image of the young American women and the envy, it was said, of women all over the world. The American housewife – freed by science and labour-saving appliances from the drudgery, the dangers of childbirth, and the illnesses of her grandmother. She was healthy, beautiful, educated, concerned only about her husband, her children, her home.” - Betty Friedan (The Feminine Mystique, 1963)

Key Texts: 

Out-of-Print is back for Season 2! Join hosts Alice Garnett, Emmeline Armitage and Sophie Parke as they attempt to decode a new batch of books with contemporary social and pop culture in mind. In this episode, they’re delving into the complex literary history of student/teacher relationships, and asking whether the English classroom is the greatest site of self-discovery?

Texts Covered:
On Beauty, Zadie Smith
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
Teaching to Transgress, bell hooks
The Groves of Academe, Mary McCarthy
‘When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision’, Adrienne Rich
‘Reading Ourselves: Toward a Feminist Theory of Reading’, Patrocinio P. Schweickart,
Three Women, Lisa Taddeo
My Dark Vanessa, Kate Elizabeth Russell

Further Reading:
‘Managing Misogyny’, Susan Wheeler
Ordinary Light, Tracey K. Smith
Stoner, John Williams
Disgrace, JM Coetzee
‘Women and the Literary Curriculum’, Elaine Showalter

Resources for support:
Mind
https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/guides-to-support-and-services/abuse/
NHS
https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/getting-help-for-domestic-violence/
Women’s Aid
https://womensaid.org.uk/information-support/

For the season finale of Out-of-Print, our three hosts take on the nitty gritty topic of Side Characters, delving into their importance in a literary, cultural, and real-world sense. This extra-special episode covers Jane Eyre, main character syndrome, Troy McClure from The Simpsons, Noo-Noo, Alice's nickname at her local chicken shop, literary theory, some seriously questionable one-night stands, Edna Mode, open source investigation, Nietzsche, sauna juicing, flat vs round, shagging on the rugby field, and some very special listener submissions sent in from Glasgow, Scotland to Christchurch, New Zealand.

This episode is a mixture of studio recording and live extracts from the season finale, recorded as part of the Roundhouse Three Sixty Festival 2026.

Key texts referenced:

- Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
- The Madwoman in the Attic, Sandra Gilbert + Susan Gubar
- The One vs the Many, Alex Woolch
- Main Character Syndrome, Anna Gotlib
- A Fish Called Selma, Season 7, The Simpsons

Further reading:

- The Supporting Cast, David Galef
-  Aspects of the Novel, E.M. Forster

Co-hosted and produced by Alice Garnett, Emmeline Armitage and Sophie Parke.
Powered by Transmission Roundhouse.

This week, Alice – our self-confessed “gross girl”– takes the mic to discuss hangover cures, 18th century anti-blazon poetry, and the politics of being a party girl in 2026.

Key texts referenced:
- A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed, Jonathan Swift
- Powers of Horror, Julia Kristeva

Further Reading:
- Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130
- Astrophil and Stella, Sir Philip Sidney

By name and by nature, our very own 'Em' takes us through her love of whimsical grammar, and laments that the rise in generative AI has taken the not-so-humble 'em dash' from being an Emily Dickinson moment of pause to a sure sign your CV was written by CHATgpt...

Key texts: 
Emily Dickinson 'I Felt a Funeral, in my Brain' 
Emily Dickinson 'I Started Early – Took my Dog' 

Further Reading:
Goblinhood by Jen Calleja
'Deus in machina: Swiss church installs AI Jesus', The Guardian