Biography
MA in English, SUNY Brockport, 2020
BA in Cinema Studies and French, SUNY Oswego, 2016
Stacey Anh Baran is a Literature PhD candidate at the University of California, Davis. Her research primarily focuses on film, horror, and food/agricultural studies. Stacey's dissertation explores how the iconography of maize in American horror cinema reveals historical anxieties around regionality, race, and consumption in the national consciousness. She has been published in Horror Studies, Quarterly Review of Film & Video, and an edited collection titled Youth Horror Television and the Question of Fear (2024).
For the 2024-2025 academic year, Stacey is the graduate fellow in the Mellon Sawyer Seminar, Thinking Food at the Intersections: a year-long food studies research initiative. Through the Seminar, she coordinates the "Screening Food" film series and the UCD Food Studies Reading Group, runs the Thinking Food newsletter, and is the podcast producer of Esculent.
Publications
- "Car Troubles: The Autophilia of Titane." Body Horror, eds. Elizabeth Erwin, Lauren Gilmore, and Dawn Keetley. Special Issue, Horror Homeroom 9 (February 2025): 98-107.
- "Once upon a Midsommar...: Nature, Nationalism, and the Swedish Folkloresque." Folk Horror, guest eds. Dawn Keetley and Jeffrey A. Tolbert. Special Issue, Horror Studies 14 (October 2023): 205-217.
- “Good Grief: Sorrows, Screams, and Silence in the Contemporary Horror Film.” Quarterly Review of Film & Video (22 June 2023): 1-19.
- “‘We’ve been teenagers forever’: Reference and Self-Reflexivity in Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated.” In Youth Television and the Question of Fear, eds. Kyle Brett and Ethan Robles. Lehigh University Press, 2024.
Presentations
- "Autophilia and Objects of Desire in Julia Ducournau's Titane." Roundtable: "Gender and Sexuality in Speculative Fiction." 2024 MLA Annual Convention, Philadelphia, PA, 4-7 January 2024.
- "Symbol of the Stalk: Agricultural Horror and the Midwest in 1922." ASLE 2023 Biennial Conference, Portland, OR, July 2023.
- Paper jam co-chair with Dr. Carter Soles: "Regionalism and Ecohorror."
- "Evolution of Hexxus: Terror and Embodiment in FernGully: The Last Rainforest (1922)." 54th NeMLA Convention, Niagara Falls, NY, March 2023.
- Panel co-chair: "If It Looks Like Horror: Mechanics of Fear in Cross-genre Cinema."
- "What's Lost in a Word: Interrogating English Translations of French Culinary Terminology." Panel: "Babel's Alphabets." Living in Languages Colloquium, University at Albany, SUNY, 24 March 2022.
- "'Once upon a Midsommar...': Nature, Nationalism, and the Swedish Folkloresque." Panel: "Hybridity and Fluidity in Fairy Tales and Folklore." 53rd NeMLA Convention, Baltimore, MD, 12 March 2022.
- “On the Periphery: Black Phillip and the Domesticated Animal in Robert Eggers’ The Witch.” Panel: "Animals in Literature and Film" (co-presented with Kayla Adgate). 62nd MMLA Convention, Milwaukee, WI, 5 November 2021.
- “Preserving nature and preservation of whiteness in Ari Aster’s Midsommar.” Panel: "Race & Environment, Speculative Ecomedia." ASLE Biennial Conference, Virtual, July/August 2021.
- “Grief, escapism, and transnational ecotourism in Ari Aster’s Midsommar.” Panel: "Horror Within and Beyond the Nation." 51st NeMLA Convention, Boston, MA, 8 March 2020.
- “‘Trust in God and Keep Your Powder Dry’: Religious Fanaticism in The Witch and Wieland.” Panel: "Intertextuality and Adaptation" (co-presented with Kayla Adgate). SEGue 6th Annual Symposium, Brockport, NY, 22 February 2019.
- “The value of the familiar in nostalgia horror.” Panel: "Creepypastas and Born-Digital Horror." 40th International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, Orlando, FL, March 2019.
Teaching
- AI (Davis): UWP1 (Intro to Academic Literacies), AMS/FST 55 (Food in American Culture)
- TA (Davis): AMS/FST 55 (Food in American Culture), FMS 45 (Vampires and Other Horrors), ENL 123 (18th Century British Literature), ENL 122 (Milton), ENL 111 (Medieval Literature)
- TA, English Tutor (SUNY Brockport): Fall 2018 - Spring 2020
- Assistant de langue (TAPIF): Lycée René Descartes, Lyon, FR, Fall 2017 - Spring 2018
- French Tutor (SUNY Oswego): Fall 2015 - Spring 2016
- TA (SUNY Oswego): FRE 102 Introductory French, Spring 2016