A Very Maverick Halloween

As Halloween quickly approaches, we are in the height of spooky season. With many excited for costumes, parties, and of course Trick-or-Treating, it’s a great time to come together and celebrate as a community of Mavericks!

Here are some fun ways we want to help you 'treat' yourself to a fun Halloween this year!

• Celebrate With Us
• Faculty Spotlight: The Joy of Fear
• UNO's Spooktacular Spotify Playlist
• UNO Theatre Makeup Tutorial
• Show Your Maverick Spirit
• A History of Halloween

Celebrate With Us

In the true spirit of Halloween, UNO Chancellor Joanne Li is encouraging members of the campus community to dress up and, or in place of, decorate their offices for Monday, Oct. 31, to share their Halloween and Maverick spirit with campus. Students, faculty, and staff are all welcome to celebrate!

Here are just a few popular Halloween costume ideas that are trending in 2022 according to Google:

• Witch
• "Spider-Man"
• Dinosaur
• "Stranger Things"
• Fairy/Fey
• Pirate
• Rabbit
• Clown
• "Hocus Pocus"
• 1980s

There are also a number of events happening on campus each month. Learn more about all our campus events in October through our UNO Events calendar.

Military-Connected Resource Center Halloween Pet Contest

Deadline: Tuesday, Oct. 25

The UNO community is encouraged to share photos of their pet dressed up for Halloween! The UNO MCRC wants you to show off your pet’s most adorable look in their Halloween costume for a chance to win a first, second, or third-place prize! Voting takes place on the MCRC's social media channels through noon on Monday, Oct. 31.

Spoopy Jam 4: Back from Heck

Saturday, Oct. 29, to Sunday, Oct. 30

Designers, artists, musicians, programmers, voice actors, hobbyists, educators, anyone and everyone is welcome to try their hand at making a game. In-person final preparations and test plays will happen on Oct. 29, 30 at the Peter Kiewit Institute.

UNO Child Care Center Parade

Monday, Oct. 31, 9 A.M.

Offices and departments are welcome to greet and hand out treats outside their buildings. They ask that no hard candy or candy containing nuts and peanuts be handed out.

Faculty Spotlight: The Joy of Fear

Pictured: Kristin Girten, Ph.D.

Halloween today is synonymous with horror, specifically creatures like ghosts, witches, and monsters. However, the foundation for today’s Halloween horror was set centuries ago, in the eighteenth century, with the popularization of what is known as “the sublime.”

“That’s a term we use today, but it’s misused all over the place,” says Kristin Girten, Ph.D., an associate professor of English and assistant vice chancellor for research and creative activity. “In its time it was a category of human experience—specifically, an artistic or literary experience used to signify the awe and transcendence we feel when confronted with vast, dark, and terrifying scenes or characters.”

Girten says that the sublime stemmed from society wanting to achieve transcendent experiences that weren’t tied to religion. Authors turned to describing aspects of the lived, human experience in spiritual, but not always religious, terms.

“The English philosopher Edmund Burke was the one who linked the sublime with terror and horror, which makes sense because we all know what it feels like to take pleasure in being afraid,” Girten says. “When we observe a Nebraskan summer lightning storm, we may fear for our own safety, but aren’t we also amazed and exhilarated by its spectacle and power? You don’t have to be a fan of monster movies to admire such awe-inspiring scenes.”

Girten, whose research looks at the history and literary structure of the sublime, has taught a number of courses on the close cousin of the sublime, the gothic, and the work of Mary Shelley, who, in publishing “Frankenstein” in 1818, carved a path for underrepresented female and queer authors such as Daphne du Maurier, Oscar Wilde, Shirley Jackson, and Anne Rice.

Girten says that sublime horror is distinguished by a defiance of boundaries—between dead and undead, self and other, male and female.

“There is something inherently rebellious, if not radical, about sublimity” Girten says.

In Mary Shelley’s iconic story, a man named Victor Frankenstein pushes the limits of science by giving life to a figure he creates out of an assortment of body parts. Despite being intended to approximate a human, the creature is rejected by Victor and the public at large because of his ugliness; his monstrosity.

“Frankenstein was such a change-making novel because of how seriously it was taken,” Girten says. “Everyone initially thought it was written by a man because, according to Burke and other philosophers, the sublime required a bravery and genius incompatible with femininity. Mary Shelley proved them wrong.”

Literary scholars like Girten point to “Frankenstein” as an important point in the historical development of future horror fiction as well as science fiction. It is a history that, Girten says, sometimes gets lost in modern popular horror , which often relies more on cheap thrills than on sublime experiences.

“I think that often gets lost with our Halloween celebrations now. They tend to be about jump scares and formulaic horror. But in early modern sublime horror, there was something much more moving and powerful.”

Halloween may only come around once a year, but those who enjoy the sublime mixture of terror and pleasure it provides can find something year-round to explore across more than 200 years of Romantic and gothic literature.

UNO's Spooktacular Spotify Playlist

To help you get into the "Maverick Spirit" of Halloween, we had several UNO students help curate this hauntingly good playlist.

If you want to see more curated Spotify playlists, follow us on Spotify or visit our Spotify playlist page.

UNO Theatre Halloween Makeup Tutorials

Enjoy these Halloween makeup tutorials from recent UNO Theatre alumna Emily Bradshaw.

Fairy

Skeleton

Vampire

Show Your Maverick Spirit

There are other ways you can share your Maverick Spirit out and about during the Halloween season! Try an "O" stencil courtesy of the UNO Alumni Association or sport a Halloween-themed Maverick t-shirt courtesy of the UNO Bookstore!

• Download the Jack-"O"-Lantern Stencil
• Get Your Spooky Maverick Shirt at the UNO Bookstore

A History of Halloween

We asked three UNO faculty to provide their insights into why Halloween continues to haunt us every year. Here's what they said:

• Lisabeth Buchelt, Ph.D., Professor of English

• Adam Tyma, Ph.D., Professor of Communication

• Kristin Girten, Ph.D., Associate Professor of English, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Research and Creative Activity
  
  

Did you know? Modern Halloween is based on an ancient Celtic festival, called Samhain, which celebrates the new year. It has been around since at least the second century AD.

"In Irish folk practice, people would carve turnips or other root vegetables and place candles inside to help ward off supernatural beings; leave small gifts of food or whiskey for the fairy folk; leave gates and doors open so as not to impede the spirits’ progress as they wander through the land; and dress up in disguises possibly to protect yourself should one encounter a supernatural being or to go to your neighbors’ houses to collect small gifts of food or money, thus symbolically representing the spirits who provided the fruitful harvest and are now asking for us to recognize their favor.

As Irish people immigrated to the United States from early in its foundation, they brought these many folk practices and traditions with them: thus, the connection with all things frightening, supernatural, and that go bump in the night; our carving of jack-o-lanterns to protect us from the release of the spirits among us, dressing up in costumes, and trick-or-treating." - Lisabeth Buchelt

Since it was brought to the United States and evolved, the holiday has become incredibly popular for a variety of reasons.

"I think there’s always some sense of play that goes with Halloween. The idea of dressing up to celebrate is an age-old phenomenon, and Halloween is by no means the only one. It taps into a lot of those escapist moments and those play moments. It becomes a reason for people to cut loose for a bit... That’s why you see adults still doing costumes for good or for ill, but adults like to dress up, and kids love to dress up. There is this sense of play that I think is nostalgic. I think for some folks it’s very important, it’s part of their identity." - Adam Tyma

For centuries, along with Halloween, horror has been widely enjoyed for its exploration of the human condition.

"One reason people enjoy horror is related to a category of experience called the sublime... The sublime is that feeling of awe, but also fear or pleasure that you might get, for instance, standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon, or standing at the edge of a stormy ocean. It’s a feeling of exhilaration or pleasure but also fear... It reveals to us what makes us uniquely human." - Kristin Girten

Overall, UNO faculty say the spooky season is a great time for many to celebrate and reflect.

"Halloween has always been about a combination of exploration and entertainment. Dressing up as different things is just to have a good time, to play and be weird and let down whatever we are... but also entertainment. If I can, I put something together for Halloween. I love it. It’s a blast for me." - Adam Tyma

"To me, Halloween is fun because it’s an excuse to dress up, and I’ve always loved clothes and costumes. I also treat it as a New Year celebration; a time to lose things or habits that I don’t want anymore and to reflect on the things or habits that should be retained. In Irish folk tradition whatever you gain on Samhain is yours forever and whatever you lose is lost forever; so be careful what you wish for! It’s also the first in our cultural series of fall/winter holidays that celebrate the importance of family and community both past and present (the overlaps with Día de los Muertos celebration are evident, of course), and so it’s good time to think about ways in which we can come together as a community to celebrate all members of the human family." - Lisabeth Buchelt

"I love this time of year when the leaves are turning. It’s a melancholic time. And I think it’s too bad that often gets lost with our Halloween celebrations now. It tends to be so much about jump scares and that sort of thing, but there’s something really moving and powerful about the combination of fear and melancholy." - Kristin Girten