5.7 Nora Gilbert and Paige Sweet on Gaslighting

The most recent issue of our journal Social Research focuses on the concept of “Gaslighting,” a term that has gained a great deal of popularity in recent years that has its roots in classic cinema and theatre, most famously in the 1944 film Gaslight, for which Ingrid Bergman was awarded a best actress Oscar. 

The articles in this special issue look at gaslighting in myriad contexts, from film and domestic violence to international politics and the judiciary. For this episode, we speak with two authors from the issue: sociologist Paige Sweet, who is looking at Gaslighting in Intimate Relationships, and Nora Gilbert, who co-specializes in nineteenth-century British literature and twentieth-century American film — an ideal platform from which she investigates an underexplored subgenre of films that arose in Gaslight’s immediate wake which she calls gaslight noir. Of course, fans of the Hopkins Press Journals may recognize Nora Gilbert’s name as the long-time editor of another one of our titles, Studies in the Novel. Both of the interviewees articles will be free to read in Social Research on Project MUSE through 31 August 2026.