Forms of Literature: Gothic: Haunted Form

This course will think about how Gothic texts represent haunting - the haunting of history, of trauma, of racial and sexual violence, of the "other," of oneself. We will consider how fragments, encryptions, multiple narrators, etc. attempt to represent the persistence of the unspeakable, pondering why and how 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 current treatments, as we consider the development of gothic in theory, novels, memoir, short stories, and film.