Simon Schothans

Master's Programme

After his Bachelor's, Simon Schothans pursued a Master's degree at the University of Groningen, where he was able to develop his interests in literary theory more broadly. While pursuing the English Literature and Culture Track of the MA Literary Studies, he additionally attended the Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies' International Gothic Summer School, hosted by Manchester Metropolitan University, after which he completed his thesis titled Theorising Transmutational Terror: Corporeal Amalgamation, Human Exceptionalism, and the Production of Horror in Eco-Weird Fiction, 1899-1936. He was awarded the judicium cum laude at his graduation.
[UK: (1:1)]

• MA Thesis

Creative Writing Committee

Simon Schothans is currently head of the CWW, or the Creative Writing Workshop committee of the study association T.E.A. The English Association at Radboud University. Here, he teaches workshops in creative writing, ranging from sessions on themes like the Gothic and Travel Writing to Poetry and Intertextuality.

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Honours Programme Arts

During the second and third year of his Bachelor's, Simon Schothans pursued an extracurricular research programme which was, at the time, called the Honours Programme Arts. In this programme, he researched the representation of mental atypicality in fin-de-siècle Gothic short fiction, focussing on what contemporary short stories revealed about British and American engagements with the mentally atypical. The final product of this project, the book Atypical Minds (2023), was written in the last summer of the programme, and made available for purchase to the broader public. Combining findings with illustrative short stories tailored to the specific themes of the book, it gives a popular-arts insight into the research conducted over those two years.

Bachelor's Programme

Starting in 2020, Simon Schothans pursued a Bachelor's degree in English Language in Culture at Radboud University, Nijmegen. Over the span of three years, he completed coursework in English linguistics, anglophone literary studies, and British cultural studies, all the while developing his passion for Gothic Studies. In his third year, he spent a semester abroad at the University of Hull, where he followed courses in creative writing and the American Gothic. Ultimately, in 2023, Schothans completed his Bachelor's degree with a thesis titled The Colonies' Curious Creepers: Animated Flora as an EcoGothic Transgression of the Colonial-Colonialist Dichotomy, 1880-1920, which can be accessed online.
[UK: BA(hons.); (2:1)]

• BA Thesis

The Reclaimed Conservatory

Inspired by preliminary research into topics for his Master's thesis, including topics surrounding human exceptionalism, human-nature relations, and promethean themes, 'The Reclaimed Conservatory' (2025) was written in late December of 2023 after the author happened to stumble upon an extended CFP deadline for issue v of the Gothic Nature Journal's creative corner. The short story follows a forester who follows in the footsteps of the retiring Mr Silvian, his mentor and a former botanist, who warns him to stay away from the abandoned conservatory in the middle of the forested terrain he is to oversee. The piece, which is perhaps best understood as Eco-Weird slipstream fiction, explores EcoGothic, speculative, and biological science fiction elements to approach themes of environmental decolonialism and the cosmic horror of love. Read it now, for free, on the Gothic Nature Journal website.

• Available Online

The Hurtling Horror

In March of 2025, the author was invited to write a one-page short story for the space-themed issue (21:3) of the T.E.A. Times; the magazine of Radboud University's study association: T.E.A. The English Association. In doing so, he represented, as a guest-writer, the CWW (creative writing workshop) committee that falls under the same association. 'The Hurtling Horror' (2025) presents the transcript of four pieces of media that have been ruled inadmissible in an abduction case. Except for a short introduction and a note by the mysterious 'K', the narrative follows the observations of one Dr Albrecht Grunewald as he tries to validate anomalous data reported by the WSRT. The piece of cosmic ecohorror deals with themes of xenophenomenology, ineffability, and the great Unknown. Read it now, for free, on the T.E.A. The English Association website.

• Available Online

• Repository

MA Thesis
Theorising Transmutational Terror:
Corporeal Amalgamation, Human Exceptionalism, and the Production of Horror in Eco-Weird Fiction, 1899-1936

As the human and the nonhuman become one in the process of corporeal amalgamation, the newly created body becomes a site of body horror that is not a singular new entity, but rather its two components at once. In this thesis, corporeal amalgamation is examined in reference to the ways it produces horror in its readers. It explores the transgression of boundaries of the subject and human exceptionalism, as well as the transference of qualities and emotions within the narratives, and between the page and the reader. To do so, four works of Eco-Weird fiction are approached through the lenses of (Eco)Gothic studies, psychoanalytic theory, and structuralism. These works are Wardon Allan Curtis’ ‘The Monster of Lake LaMetrie’ (1899), William Hope Hodgson’s ‘The Voice in the Night’ (1907), Clark Ashton Smith’s ‘The Seed From the Sepulcher’ (1933), and H. P. Lovecraft’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth (1936). Based on their portrayals of corporeal amalgamation, and the qualities ascribed to the natural nonhuman, it is argued that the horror experienced at the hand of the amalgamations in these narratives is produced by the primordial fear of the unknown.

BA Thesis
The Colonies' Curious Creepers:
Animated Flora as an EcoGothic Transgression
of the Colonial-Colonialist Dichotomy,
1880-1920

Between imperial globalisation, scientific discoveries, and improved technologies, the late nineteenth and early twentieth century introduced the Western public to exciting plants from distant colonial lands. With them, however, came terrible tales of the vegetal monsters. This thesis argues that animated flora in Gothic short fiction between 1880 and 1920 is actually a displacement of the Western fear of a transgression of the colonial-colonialist dichotomy—meaning the loss of its believed superiority over the colonial world. This is done through the analysis of four short stories, namely Arthur Conan Doyle’s ‘The American’s Tale’ (1880), Lucy H. Hooper’s Carnivorine’ (1889), H. G. Wells’ ‘The Flowering of the Strange Orchid’ (1894), and Herman Cyril McNeile’s ‘The Green Death’ (1920). This thesis is grounded in the importance of coming to understand relevant systemic injustices linked to colonialism and our detrimental relationship to the environment, which it hopes to add to.

• Repository