The Functions of Evil Across Disciplinary Contexts explores answers to two important questions about the age-old theme of evil:is there any use in using the concept of evil in cultural, psychological, or other secular evaluations of the world and its productions? Most importantly, if there is, what might these functions be?By looking across several disciplines and analyzing evil as it is referenced across a broad spectrum of phenomena, this work demonstrates the varying ways that we interact with the ethical dilemma as academics, as citizens, and as people. The work draws from authors in different fieldsincluding history, literary and film studies, philosophy, and psychologyand from around the world to provide an analysis of evil in such topics as deeply canonical as Beowulf and Shakespeare to subjects as culturally resonant as Stephen King, Captain America, or the War on Terror. By bringing together this otherwise disparate collection of scholarship, this collection reveals that discussions of evil across disciplines have always been questions of how cultures represent that which they find socially abhorrent. This work thus opens the conversation about evil outside of field-specific limitations, simultaneously demonstrating the assumptions that undergird the manner by which such a conversation proceeds.

Malcah Effron is lecturer in the Writing, Rhetoric, and Professional Communication Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Brian Johnson is assistant professor of humanities at Cuyohoga Community College

Introduction
Brian Johnson and Malcah Effron
1. Villainous Victimhood in Edgar Allan Poes The Cask of Amontillado
Chu-chueh Cheng
2. The Winters Tale: Art and Redemption from Evil
Olivia Coulomb
3. Guilt, Evil, and Hell in Doctor Faustus and Macbeth
Jamey Hecht
4. Seasonal Villainy: Radical Evil, Relativity and Redemptive Relationships
Charity Fowler
5. The Name-of-the-Monster: Interpellation and the Construction of Evil
Jim Casey
6. The Communicative Force of Evil: The Case of Stephen King
Jessica Folio
7. When Real Life Isnt Evil Enough for Fiction: French Postwar Literature and the Relationship between Evil and Sexuality
Marian Duval
8. Poison and Antidote: Evil and the Hero-Villain Binary in Deon Meyers Post-Apartheid Crime Thriller, Devils Peak
Sam Naidu and Karlien van der Wielen
9. Ghosts of the Old South: The Evils of Slavery and the Haunted House in Royal Street
Brian Johnson
10. Ace in the Hole and Its Public: Evil and the News Spectacle
Julie Michot
11. The Evil Foreigner: Marvel Villains and the American National Identity from World War II to the War on Terror
Joanna Nowotny and Bettina Jossen
12. Tribalism and the Use of Evil in Modern Politics
Riven Barton
13. A Fiend Incarnate: Sin, Science, and the Problem of Evil in the New American Nation
Jeffrey Mullins