BUSSW Professor Copeland Explains How the Horror Genre is a Lens for Analyzing Power and Injustice
Professor Phillipe Copeland recently presented his research on horror as a framework for understanding oppression and resistance in a webinar hosted by the Natural Resources Defense Council titled “Sinners in a Time of Monsters.” The session brought together more than 100 participants from across the country.
Rather than treating horror as entertainment alone, Copeland argues it can function as a lens for analyzing power and injustice. He describes oppression as “monstrous” — embedded in systems, institutions, cultures, mindsets and actions that reproduce harm. Framing it this way makes structural inequality visible and contestable within broader conversations about social change.
He also outlines three roles that emerge in “times of monsters:” casualties, survivors, and warriors. Casualties experience physical harm and what James Baldwin described as “the death in the heart,” a state of political and psychological depletion. Survivors demonstrate resilience but often remain defensive, while warriors actively confront and disrupt oppressive systems.
Applying this framework to Sinners, Copeland interprets its vampires as symbolic of the fear and racial violence that sustained Jim Crow, showing how fiction can illuminate history and sharpen our understanding of resistance.