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The first purpose of this work is to analyze the typological configuration of the Weeping Woman legend through a comparative study of the oral testimonies disseminated in Latin America and USA. On the other hand, by examining the stories about this legendary figure, we try to identify the folk motifs shared with other spectral figures. For this purpose, we study with detail the correspondences between the Ciguanaba, the Dirty, and the Cegua, which we consider as manifestations of the same character from the typological point of view. Finally, we offer an approach to other female spectral prototypes that also have connections with the Weeping Woman and the Ciguanaba. Our objective is to define the motives associated to the different figures and their specific features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines some of the formal properties, stylistic motifs and thematic preoccupations of classic and contemporary South Korean horror films. As a genre that has enormous box-office appeal and crossover potential for western audiences, horror might seem to be little more than a commercial platform for young filmmakers to exploit popular tastes and cash in on derivative stories offering scant insight into the social conditions faced by modern-day Koreans. However, even the most cliché-ridden, shock-filled slasher films and ghost tales reveal the often-contradictory cultural attitudes of a populace that, over the past three generations, has weathered literally divisive transformations at the national and ideological levels. As such, the genre deserves scrutiny as a repository of previously pent-up, suddenly unleashed libidinal energies, consumerist desires and historical traumas, as well as a barometer of public opinion about such issues as class warfare, gender inequality and sexual identity. Specifically, I explore some of the most salient features of Korean horror cinema, including filmmakers' tendency to adopt narrative analepsis – typically rendered as flashbacks – in the course of plotting out scenarios that, though far-fetched, are rooted in unsettled (and unsettling) real-world problems. Historical return, I argue, truly is a horrifying prospect, especially for anyone old enough to remember, or to have experienced firsthand, the brutality of a military dictatorship or an ongoing abuse of presidential power resulting in severe rights violations (e.g. the Park Chung-hee [1961–79]) and Chun Doo-hwan [1980–88] administrations). But historical return simply must be dramatized as part of the regurgitative 'purging' for which the genre has been singled out by theorists who recognize horror's socially productive function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The waiting woman is a ghost who appears to be endlessly waiting – for recognition, for her lover, for a chance to reincarnate, or to exact revenge. In Asia, her roots can be found in early medieval Chinese records of the strange, arguably the oldest written ghost stories in the region. The romanticized version of this ghost, introduced in Tang Xianzu's drama Peony Pavillion (Mudan ting, 1598), influenced many writers of Japanese kaidan (strange) stories and merged with East and Southeast Asian ghostlore that continues to inspire contemporary local fiction and films. The article proposes to read the figure of the waiting woman as a representation of the enduring myth of the submissive Asian femininity and a warning against the threat of possible female emancipation brought about by the socio-economic changes caused by modernisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many parts of Asia, female ghosts play an interesting role in how the supernatural is imagined and constructed. Whether she be the pontianak who waits for her victim by the side of the road, or the mother or lover who returns for revenge, the female ghost is often characterised as treading the line between agency and oppression. On one hand, she is an autonomous character who seeks justice on her own terms; on another, she is usually reduced to a victim of violence while she is alive, and her agency is only granted in death… in the transformation of her identity from victim to villain. Death Wears a Dress is a collection of poems inspired by numerous female “monsters” central to Asian folklore, many of whom continue to reincarnate through horror films, pop culture and social media. Through poetic verse, I hope to centralise, re-imagine and humanise the experiences, emotions, desires, fears and regrets of these fictitious women in an effort to unearth possible insights about gender, power, longing and justice. Death Wears A Dress is being written with the support of Singapore’s National Arts Council’s Creation Grant.

This article argues that modern Korean fiction arose not simply by mimicking Western literature, but as a response to political and cultural changes that merged Korea into the global capitalist system as a colony. I focus on a turn-of-the-century work of Korean fiction, Mt. Ch'iak (1908-1911), and especially on the female protagonist, whose uncanny character remains an anomaly among modern fiction. While departing from premodern gender norms, advocating the value of "enlightenment and civilization," and even flirting with a colonialist rhetoric, she does not quest for individuality or complex interiority, which, scholars often believe, marks modern fiction apart from its premodern counterparts. Her novelty instead comes from the fact that she embodies turn-of-the-century Korean male intellectuals' two incompatible desires toward the modern: to achieve the advanced "civilization" by promoting women's status in the nation on the one hand and to reinstate gender hierarchy between men and women on the other. I will show that Mt. Ch'iak "symbolically resolves" the conflict between the two desires by modifying a premodern female ghost into a ghostly double of the female protagonist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The second-longest running play in London,The Woman in Blackdraws its energy from presenting the threat posed to patriarchal society by the repressed feminine. Analyzing the novella and film as well as a dramatic text, this essay focuses on the portrayal of a murderous,vengeful female ghost who, having lost her child, terrorizes a village. Attempting to banish her by appropriating and retelling her story, male authors and the audience learn the repressed feminine cannot be contained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]