Studies in American Literature: The Gothic in American Literature

The Gothic is a literary mode that examines what one scholar calls "the dark side of culture"; this course is an introduction to the American Gothic, from the early nineteenth century to the present. Often depicting extreme emotional and psychological states, the threat of an archaic or barbarous past on the present, the usual ghosts and occasional monsters, the Gothic has been the means for writers to examine a host of cultural and political anxieties, including colonialism, the rise of technology, andgender relations. Our reading will begin with early writers like Edgar Allan Poe and Washington Irving and continue through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to the present, concludingwith Stephen King's The Shining (1977), Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987), and Stephen Graham Jones's The Only Good Indians (2020). Course work will include a presentation, in-class tests and quizzes, and two papers, one critical and the other a reflection on the reading.