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Midwest Gothic – Patricia Oman
Course Description: What do you think of when you think of the Midwest: Farms? Small towns? Fly-over country? This course explores depictions of the Midwest you might not be familiar with—the Gothic Midwest. We’ll explore Gothic depictions of the Midwest in literature and visual culture throughout the 20th c. to understand the origins of today’s…
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Ecohorror – Patricia Oman
Course Description: This course is an introduction to the critical field of ecohorror, which combines scholarship on ecocriticism and the gothic. The first part of the course focuses on the foundational concepts of the field. Each student will create an individualized plan of study for Weeks 10-16 that follows their own interests in ecohorror.
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Gothic and Horror Short Fiction – Alexia Mandla Ainsworth
Course Description: Gothic and horror novels, for the reader, each conjure up images of ghosts, monsters, and, centrally, haunted houses. Less attention has been paid to the smaller corners and crevices in which these haunting texts have often made their homes: short fiction. How can these texts create atmospheres of terror and tension so quickly?…
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The Uncanny in Literature – Dr. Sean J. Kelly
Course Description: In his classic essay “The Uncanny” (1919), Sigmund Freud theorized the psychological implications of those aesthetic effects which disturb us, unsettle us, and creep us out without us quite knowing why. While theuncanny or das unheimliche evokes a peculiar form of affect within “the field of the frightening” (123), it is a type…
