Five Week Class Taught Online Via Zoom
Sundays, February 1 - March 1, 2026
2 - 4 PM ET (NYC Time)
$150 Paid Patreon Members / $175 General Admission
PLEASE NOTE: Classes will be recorded and archived for students who cannot make that time
The Gothic Cosmos Part I traces the birth of the Gothic imagination from the 18th century into the Romantic age, when ruins, specters, and forbidden desires reshaped Europe’s sense of reality. We begin with the sublime and the melancholy of ruined abbeys, moving into the haunted dreamscapes of Romantic art and literature. The Gothic unfolds through the political theatre of revolution, the erotic delirium of the body, and the Orientalist fantasies that projected Europe’s fears onto an uncanny elsewhere.
Readings range from Burke and Radcliffe to Sade, Byron, and Beckford, guided by Victoria Nelson’s Gothicka: The Romance of the Gothic Imagination. Visual material includes Piranesi’s prisons, Goya’s Caprichos, Blake’s visionary engravings, and Delacroix’s revolutionary canvases. Students will see how the Gothic emerged as a shadow cosmos to Enlightenment rationalism — a world of ruins, visions, and dangerous knowledge.
Jason Lahman is an artist and cultural historian specializing in the history of technology, science and the occult. He has lectured often and taught a number of classes for Morbid Anatomy including A Cultural History of Robots, A History of Fairies and a two part course on the history of the Femme Fatale.
Five Week Class Taught Online Via Zoom
Sundays, February 1 - March 1, 2026
2 - 4 PM ET (NYC Time)
$150 Paid Patreon Members / $175 General Admission
PLEASE NOTE: Classes will be recorded and archived for students who cannot make that time
The Gothic Cosmos Part I traces the birth of the Gothic imagination from the 18th century into the Romantic age, when ruins, specters, and forbidden desires reshaped Europe’s sense of reality. We begin with the sublime and the melancholy of ruined abbeys, moving into the haunted dreamscapes of Romantic art and literature. The Gothic unfolds through the political theatre of revolution, the erotic delirium of the body, and the Orientalist fantasies that projected Europe’s fears onto an uncanny elsewhere.
Readings range from Burke and Radcliffe to Sade, Byron, and Beckford, guided by Victoria Nelson’s Gothicka: The Romance of the Gothic Imagination. Visual material includes Piranesi’s prisons, Goya’s Caprichos, Blake’s visionary engravings, and Delacroix’s revolutionary canvases. Students will see how the Gothic emerged as a shadow cosmos to Enlightenment rationalism — a world of ruins, visions, and dangerous knowledge.
Jason Lahman is an artist and cultural historian specializing in the history of technology, science and the occult. He has lectured often and taught a number of classes for Morbid Anatomy including A Cultural History of Robots, A History of Fairies and a two part course on the history of the Femme Fatale.
