Mastering fear: women, emotions, and contemporary horror

'Mastering Fear' analyzes horror as play and examines what functions horror has and why it is adaptive and beneficial for audiences, including women.

It takes a biocultural approach, and focusing on emotions, gender, and play, it argues that the audience plays with fiction horror.

In horror we engage not only with the negative emotions of fear and disgust, but with a wide range of emotions, both positive and negative, and the aim for us is to master these emotions.

The book lays out a new theory of horror and analyzes female protagonists in contemporary horror from child to teen, adult, middle age, and old age.