Forms of Literature: Gothic: Haunted Form

This course will think about how gothic texts represent haunting - the haunting of history, of racial and sexual violence, of the "other," of the non-human, of oneself. We will consider how fragments, encryptions, multiple narrators, for example, attempt to represent the persistence of the unspeakable. Our course will ponder why and how the gothic challenges, disrupts, resists, and yet also sometimes reinforces the tenets of authority. Although our course will proceed in a loosely chronological way, we will afford generous time to modern treatments, as we consider the development of gothic in memoir, graphic novels, music videos, and movies.