{"id":8633,"date":"2025-10-20T06:31:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T06:31:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/8633\/"},"modified":"2025-10-20T06:31:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T06:31:06","slug":"university-of-pittsburgh-is-dead-serious-about-horror-pittsburgh-city-paper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/8633\/","title":{"rendered":"University of Pittsburgh is dead serious about horror – Pittsburgh City Paper"},"content":{"rendered":"

For horror fans, Pittsburgh has long been sacred ground. It\u2019s where Night of the Living Dead<\/a> was born, where Dawn of the Dead<\/a> turned the Monroeville Mall into a cinematic shrine<\/a>, and where filmmaker George A. Romero built a sub-genre that changed the world. Now, that legacy has an academic home.<\/p>\n

The University of Pittsburgh officially launched the Horror Studies Center<\/a> earlier this fall, touted as the first of its kind. Led by Pitt film professor Adam Lowenstein, the center expands on the university\u2019s Horror Studies Collection<\/a>, which houses Romero\u2019s personal papers and production materials.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Horror Studies Center is the result of many years of hard work,\u201d Lowenstein tells Pittsburgh City Paper. \u201cIt really grew from the idea that Pittsburgh is a world capital for horror because of the connection to George Romero\u2019s films.\u201d<\/p>\n

That connection dates back to 1968, when, according to Lowenstein,\u00a0Night of the Living Dead, Romero\u2019s first feature film, became \u201can incredible success,\u201d adding \u201cit captured the cultural zeitgeist in such a way that it became an instant classic.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately, he and his collaborators never made a dime off it because it wasn\u2019t correctly copyrighted,\u201d says Lowenstein. <\/p>\n

Still, Romero\u2019s creative shadow looms large. \u201cIn many ways, in Pittsburgh film, all roads lead to Romero,\u201d Lowenstein says. \u201cHe trained so many people \u2014 Peggy Ahwesh, Tony Buba<\/a>, Greg Nicotero \u2014 who went on to have their own successful careers.\u201d<\/p>\n

At its core, the Horror Studies Center serves as more than a vault of memorabilia \u2014 it\u2019s a hub for scholarship, student research, and community engagement; one that treats horror not as a guilty pleasure but as a complex, global language.<\/p>\n

\u201cHorror actually has more to teach us about events we\u2019d categorize as historical trauma \u2014 like the Holocaust, Hiroshima, Vietnam \u2014 than the often Oscar-winning films that are about these events explicitly,\u201d says Lowenstein. \u201cHorror knows that the past is never past, and that it\u2019s still with us. It has a genuine vocabulary for pain, for suffering, for loss.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those aren\u2019t abstract references. The Holocaust\u2019s mechanized cruelty and generational grief. The blinding flash of Hiroshima, where survivors carried invisible wounds for decades. The televised carnage of Vietnam that seeped into America\u2019s collective consciousness. Horror, he says, is the language that lets us look directly at what history prefers to bury.<\/p>\n

Lowenstein\u2019s own scholarship reflects that mission. His first book, Shocking Representation: Historical Trauma, National Cinema, and the Modern Horror Film, explores how horror mirrors cultural anxiety and political violence.<\/p>\n

The center is also an interdisciplinary experiment, blurring the lines between art, psychology, and social science. One of its collaborators, Pitt psychiatry professor Greg Siegle, works with the Center to design virtual reality simulations focused on suicide prevention.<\/p>\n

\u201cGreg came to us and said, \u2018I\u2019m a scientist, I know science, but I don\u2019t know how to scare people,\u2019\u201d Lowenstein says. \u201cHe needed them to be frightening for the simulations to work. So we helped him think through what makes fear effective.\u201d<\/p>\n

That exchange, Lowenstein explains, represents the Center\u2019s ethos: a dialogue between disciplines that typically don\u2019t share space.<\/p>\n

Horror, in this view, isn\u2019t just a genre. Rather, it\u2019s a methodology. The Center recently sponsored Camera as Passport: The Ship of Photographers, an exhibition at the Jewish Community Center in Squirrel Hill that traces the work of German Jewish photographers who fled the Holocaust.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no masked killers, no monsters, no supernatural elements,\u201d Lowenstein says. \u201cBut the Holocaust is a horrific moment in history that horror studies can help us understand.\u201d<\/p>\n

The heart of the Center\u2019s work beats inside Pitt\u2019s Archives & Special Collections, where the Horror Studies Collection lives. Horror Studies collection coordinator, Ben Rubin, the says the materials are open to everyone, not just Pitt affiliates.<\/p>\n

\u201cVisitors register a researcher account and can request materials to view in our Reading Room,\u201d Rubin explains. \u201cWe encourage researchers to make an appointment to ensure what they want will be available.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"\"Ben Rubin, coordinator of Pitt\u2019s Horror Studies Collection at the Hillman Library, holds the MISSING poster from The Blair Witch Project Credit: Photo: Courtesy of the University of Pittsburgh<\/p>\n

For casual visitors, there\u2019s also a public exhibit gallery on the third floor of Hillman Library, which features horror materials on display. No appointment necessary.<\/p>\n

Recent additions to the collection include a first edition of Dracula and a script archive from the cult television series Kolchak: The Night Stalker, both of which signal the collection\u2019s widening scope. Rubin\u2019s goal, he says, is to \u201ccapture the breadth of the genre as best as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

That includes acquiring archives from underrepresented voices and a wider range of subgenres. <\/p>\n

\u201cCourses being taught and faculty or student interests can also drive collection growth,\u201d Rubin adds. \u201cWe want resources that support both scholarship and creative curiosity.\u201d<\/p>\n

While rooted in Pittsburgh, the Horror Studies Center has already gone global. Lowenstein and his team have forged partnerships with universities in Japan, Canada, the UK, and Australia.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne example is a series of conferences on global horror we ran with Kyoto University and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Melbourne,\u201d Rubin says. \u201cBy starting with Japan and Australia rather than the usual U.S. and U.K., we got a totally different picture of what horror is and where it comes from.\u201d<\/p>\n

That transnational lens also informs the Center\u2019s acquisitions. \u201cWe\u2019re in the happy situation now where people are coming to us rather than us seeking them out,\u201d Lowenstein says. \u201cWe\u2019re really the only horror studies archive at an academic university, and it\u2019s open to the public \u2014 you can make an appointment and see everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Long term, Lowenstein hopes the Center will serve as the educational foundation for something even bigger \u2014 a horror museum in Pittsburgh. A recent feasibility study conducted in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University found that such a museum would not only be sustainable but also economically beneficial for the city.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a dream we\u2019re actively pursuing,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Until then, Lowenstein is still drawn to the places that keep Pittsburgh\u2019s eerie pulse alive. His top three? The Evans City Cemetery, where Night of the Living Dead was filmed; the soon-to-be-demolished Monroeville Mall, immortalized in Dawn of the Dead; and the \u201cwonderfully creepy\u201d Cathedral of Learning, the Pitt landmark where he works every day.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a classic Gothic building with all kinds of nooks and histories that suggest you could be joined by ghosts at any time,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd at least some of that must be true.\u201d<\/p>\n

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