BA Seminar: American Topographies of the Fantastic 4219-ZS047

The seminar offers students an investigation into how American literature engages with the fantastic—encompassing such modalities as, for example, the gothic, the weird, and the speculative—to imagine, contest, and reconfigure space and place. We examine how these genres construct haunted zones of alternative geographies/ locations, often of fear, wonder and monstrosity, that reflect and refract historical tensions, ideological conflicts, cultural anxieties or personal traumas. Thus the seminar asks: How does the fantastic map the American imagination? In what ways do these imagined topographies offer tools for critique, resistance, or re-enchantment? In addition to critical reading and discussions, the course leads to the development of independent BA theses. projects