Gothic South, The (Final year module)
Semester Spring
Programme description
In the past, the United States South has been viewed as an exotic backwater full of moonlight and magnolias, Southern belles and dashing gallants, and happy banjo-strumming slaves. Recent scholarship, however, has conceptualised the South as part of the extended Caribbean, a region obsessed with boundaries, whether territorial (the Mason-Dixon line), or those related to gender, social class, sexual orientation, and particularly race. In this course, we will examine the ways in which the grotesques, monsters, freaks and doppelgangers that populate the Southern Gothic are directly linked to the region's past, particularly to its difficulties in coming to terms with its history of slavery and with interracial sexuality. Authors to be studied include Edgar Allan Poe, George Washington Cable, Charles Chesnutt, William Faulkner, Carson McCullers, Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, and Tennessee Williams.
Pre-requisites
You must be a major in American Studies/Literature or similar with a cumulative GPA of 3.3
Assessment
The course is taught through weekly two-hour seminar discussions. Assessment consists of one essay of 4,000 words (90%) and in-class participation (10%).
Credits
4