House of Dread: Contemporary American Horror Fiction (Dom strachu: współczesna amerykańska literatura grozy) 4219-SD0088
The course is meant to familiarize students with contemporary American horror fiction (late 20th and early 21st century). Students will read short stories and novels by both well-known authors such as Anne Rice and Stephen King as well as lesser-known contemporary authors such as Caitlin R. Kiernan, Kathe Koja, Paul Tremblay, Victor LaValle, Jewelle Gomez, Carmen Maria Machado etc. The purpose of the course is to explore how contemporary horror fiction brings into focus fears and anxieties of contemporary American society; fears specifically related to racialization, gendered violence, economic destabilization, ecological collapse, social anomie, political polarization, and biomedical advancements. After a two-part introduction to the genre, its formation and history, the classes will be divided into four thematic modules, each devoted to a particular aspect of contemporary horror fiction: corporeality, including questions of dis/ability, sexuality and embodied terrors; traditions and transformations of the Weird; motifs of monstrosity (human and non-human, animate and inanimate, animal and vegetal); and finally, Black horror in its various forms and manifestations.
Schedule:
Introduction to the genre (2 classes)
Module I: Unruly Bodies
Module II: Weird Horror
Module III: Monsters Revisited
Module IV: Black Horror
Rodzaj przedmiotu
Tryb prowadzenia
Koordynatorzy przedmiotu
Efekty kształcenia
By the end of this course students:
1. KNOWLEDGE:
- have broadened their knowledge of the history of American horror literature as well as literary studies and cultural studies terminology
- understand how social and cultural fears, characteristic of American society emerge over time
- are aware of the complex nature of literary horror and its import for national identity formation and identity politics debates
2. SKILLS:
- can define different types of narratives, popular motifs, formal features and subgenres of literary horror
- can analyze horror literature in terms of social fears and anxieties over politics, economy, gender, racial relations, sexualities etc.
- can critically apply theory and terminology of horror studies and literary studies in order to arrive at their own interpretations of various literary representations
3. COMPETENCES:
- know how to work in groups and engage in academic debates
- understand the role of literary fiction in shaping collective understanding of social exclusion, othering and the processes of naming and creating fears to national identity or wellbeing
- identify and determine dilemmas connected to non-normative representations in literary horror with a special emphasis on social exclusion processes
Kryteria oceniania
Special emphasis is placed on students' active participation.
Active class participation (incl. 3 Kampus activities): 30%
Final project (an essay of min. 1500 words + multimedia elements): 70%
92-100% - 5 (97-100% - 5!)
84-91% - 4,5
76-83% - 4
68-75% - 3,5
60-67% - 3
Literatura
Literature:
Aldana Reyes, Xavier, Body Gothic: Corporeal Transgression in Contemporary Liter¬ature and Horror Film (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2014).
— (ed.), Horror: a Literary History (London: British Library, 2016).
Badley, Linda, Writing Horror and the Body: the Fiction of Stephen King, Clive Barker, and Anne Rice (Westport CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1996).
Bailey, Dale, American Nightmares: the Haunted House Formula in American Pop¬ular Fiction (Bowling Green OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1999).
Bloom, Clive, ‘Horror Fiction: In Search of a Definition’, in D. Punter (ed.), A New Companion to the Gothic (Chichester: John Wiley, 2012), pp. 211–23.
Brooks, Kinitra, Alexis McGee and Stephanie Schoellman, ‘Speculative Sank¬ofarration: Haunting Black Women in Contemporary Horror Fiction’, Obsidian: Literature in the African Diaspora, 42/1–2 (2016), 237–77.
Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome, ‘Monster Culture (Seven Theses)’, in J. J. Cohen (ed.), Monster Theory: Reading Culture (London and Minneapolis MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), pp. 3–25.
Corstorphine, Kevin, and Laura R. Kremmel (eds.), The Pal¬grave Handbook to Horror Literature (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).
Gelder, Ken, Reading the Vampire (London: Routledge, 2006 [1994]).
Gordon, Avery, Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination (Min-neapolis MN and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2008 [1997]).
Hantke, Steffen, ‘The Decline of the Literary Horror Market in the 1990s and Dell’s Abyss Series’, The Journal of Popular Culture, 41/1 (2008), 56–71.
— ‘The Rise of Popular Horror Fiction’, in X. Aldana Reyes (ed.), Horror: a Literary History (London: British Library, 2016), pp. 159–87.
Holland-Toll, Linda J., As American as Mom, Baseball, and Apple Pie: Construct¬ing Community in Contemporary American Horror Fiction (Bowling Green OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 2001).
Janicker, Rebecca, The Literary Haunted House: Lovecraft, Matheson, King and the Horror in Between (Jefferson NC: McFarland & Company, 2015).
King, Stephen, Danse Macabre (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2011 [c. 1981]).
Kotwasińska, Agnieszka, House of Horrors: Familial Intimacies in Contemporary American Horror Fiction (University of Wales Press, 2023).
Kröger, Lisa, and Melanie R. Anderson, Monster, She Wrote: the Women Who Pio¬neered Horror and Speculative Fiction (Philadelphia PA: Quirk Books, 2019).
Miéville, China, ‘On Monsters: or, Nine or More (Monstrous) Not Cannies’, Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, 23/3 (86) (2012), 377–92.Bibliography • 219
— ‘Weird Fiction’, in M. Bould, A. M. Butler, A. Roberts and S. Vint (eds), The Routledge Companion to Science Fiction (London and New York: Rout¬ledge, 2009), pp. 510–6.
Morton, Lisa, ‘Women Destroy Horror! Roundtable Interview: Linda Addi¬son, Kate Jonez, Helen Marshall, and Rena Mason’, Nightmare Magazine, Women Destroy Horror: Special Issue, 25 (2014), 179–93.
Nevins, Jess, Horror Fiction in the 20th Century: Exploring Literature’s Most Chill¬ing Genre (Santa Barbara CA: Praeger, 2020).
Ng, Andrew Hock Soon, Women and Domestic Space in Contemporary Gothic Narratives: the House as Subject (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
Noys, Benjamin, and Timothy S. Murphy, ‘Introduction: Old and New Weird’, Genre, 49/2 (2016), 117–34.
Palmer, Paulina, The Queer Uncanny: New Perspectives on the Gothic (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2012).
Thomson, Rosemarie Garland, Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017 [1997]).
Weinstock, Jeffrey Andrew, ‘American Vampires’, in J. Faflak and J. Haslam (ed.), American Gothic Culture: an Edinburgh Companion (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016), pp. 203–21.
— (ed.), Spectral America: Phantoms and the National Imagination (Madison WI: Popular Press, 2004).
Wester, Maisha L., American Gothic: Screams from Shadowed Places (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
Wisker, Gina, Contemporary Women’s Gothic Fiction: Carnival, Hauntings and Vampire Kisses (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).
— Horror Fiction: an Introduction (London: A&C Black, 2006).
Selected short stories, novellas and novels by: Caitlin R. Kiernan, Poppy Z. Brite (Billy Martin), Sara Gran, Kathe Koja, Josh Malerman, Paul Tremblay, Victor LaValle, P. Djeli Clark, Kai Ashante Wilson, Tananarive Due, Lee Mandelo, Stephen King, Stephen Graham Jones, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Elizabeth Hand, Thomas Ligotti, Anne Rice, N. K. Jemisin, Rebecca Roanhorse, among others.
Readings might be changed at a later date.
Więcej informacji
Dodatkowe informacje (np. o kalendarzu rejestracji, prowadzących zajęcia, lokalizacji i terminach zajęć) mogą być dostępne w serwisie USOSweb: