American Horror Story
Hannah Lauren Murray - University of Nottingham
Why do Americans like to scare themselves? This module asks this question in covering the development and multiple manifestations of the horror genre in America. Engaging with work from 1790s to 2010s, this module examines historical and cultural issues represented in American horror including the frontier, slavery, scientific developments, and American foreign policy. Furthermore, this course asks how and why these issues are filtered through horror’s distinct stylistic aspects.
This course will use primary literary, cinematic and televisual texts in synthesis with historical context and literary and film theory. Kristeva’s work on abjection helps us to consider the visceral effect of horror and our dual desire to both look at and hide from the disgusting. Scarry and Bakhtin’s theories on the body illuminate reading the violated or fantastical body as a site of painful creative possibility or of comic celebration. Both Poe and Lovecraft’s essays on writing alert us to the aesthetic considerations and tropes of genre fiction. Goddu’s Gothic America (1997) asks us to consider the legacy of settler colonialism, slavery and class oppression on American literature, which enables us to expand the horror genre to include authors such as Harding Davis, Melville and Jacobs.
This course will use primary literary, cinematic and televisual texts in synthesis with historical context and literary and film theory. Kristeva’s work on abjection helps us to consider the visceral effect of horror and our dual desire to both look at and hide from the disgusting. Scarry and Bakhtin’s theories on the body illuminate reading the violated or fantastical body as a site of painful creative possibility or of comic celebration. Both Poe and Lovecraft’s essays on writing alert us to the aesthetic considerations and tropes of genre fiction. Goddu’s Gothic America (1997) asks us to consider the legacy of settler colonialism, slavery and class oppression on American literature, which enables us to expand the horror genre to include authors such as Harding Davis, Melville and Jacobs.
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