Academic Catalog

ENGL 18B: GOTHIC & HORROR LITERATURE

Foothill College Course Outline of Record

Foothill College Course Outline of Record
Heading Value
Effective Term: Summer 2024
Units: 4
Hours: 4 lecture per week (48 total per quarter)
Advisory: Demonstrated proficiency in English by placement via multiple measures OR through an equivalent placement process OR completion of ESLL 125 & ESLL 249.
Degree & Credit Status: Degree-Applicable Credit Course
Foothill GE: Non-GE
Transferable: CSU/UC
Grade Type: Letter Grade (Request for Pass/No Pass)
Repeatability: Not Repeatable

Student Learning Outcomes

  • Student will be able to analyze, in writing and orally, interpersonal dynamics and power relationships, gender and sexuality, social class, and media representation as manifested in gothic and horror literature.

Description

A survey of gothic and horror literature from its 18th-century beginnings to its 21st-century manifestations, including subgenres such as haunted spaces, poltergeists, and demonic possession; werewolves and vampires; supernatural, psychological, religious, and "slasher" horror. Reading and analysis of multicultural texts contextualized historically and interculturally, with special attention to the aesthetics and psychologies of fear.

Course Objectives

The student will be able to:

  1. Identify significant literary, social, cultural, political, and corporeal issues in multicultural gothic and horror literature from the nineteenth century to the present.
  2. Differentiate between and compare analytically the historical and cultural content of European and American, Asian, Latinx, and African horror traditions.
  3. Apply a variety of critical and theoretical criteria to evaluation of gothic literature.
  4. Analyze gothic and horror literature through interpretations and arguments in written and oral forms.

Course Content

  1. Identification of issues specific to gothic and horror literature
    1. Literary issues, such as horror literature's place within multicultural literature canons
    2. Social issues, such as interpersonal dynamics and power relationships, gender and sexuality, social class, media representation
    3. Cultural issues, including relationships between humans and the environment, multicultural identities, popular culture expressions
    4. Political issues, such as colonialism, oppression and manipulation of the "other"
    5. Issues of the body, including the significance of blood, mortality, maternity, orality, disease, sexual expression and repression
  2. Differentiation and analytical comparison between multicultural horror traditions
    1. European traditions emerging from Enlightenment and Romantic literature and the advent of the gothic novel
    2. North and South American iterations of horror literature, Native and colonial, to the present
    3. Asian representations of horror literature
    4. African and African diasporic representations
  3. Apply a variety of critical and theoretical criteria to evaluation of horror literature
    1. Symbolic language (e.g., metaphor, synecdoche)​
    2. Poetic structures (e.g., stanza, meter)
    3. Narrative devices (e.g., unreliable narrator)
    4. Structural devices (e.g., epigraphs, paragraphing)
    5. Historical contexts
    6. Gender studies
    7. Queer theories
    8. Psychological theories (Freudian, Jungian)
    9. Marxian theories
    10. Ethnic and racial theories
    11. Theories of embodiment and abjection
    12. Postcolonial studies
  4. Analyze gothic and horror literature through interpretations and arguments in written and oral forms
    1. Active, critical participation in class discussion
    2. Literary analysis/critical thinking demonstrated in formal essays
    3. Literary analysis/critical thinking demonstrated through short writing projects
    4. Understanding of literature demonstrated through class presentations

Lab Content

Not applicable.

Special Facilities and/or Equipment

1. When taught on campus, no special facility or equipment needed.
2. When taught online, ongoing access to computer with learning management system.

Method(s) of Evaluation

Methods of Evaluation may include but are not limited to the following:

Formal essays
Informal writing projects, such as journal entries, reader responses
In-class examinations
Class participation, student presentations

Method(s) of Instruction

Methods of Instruction may include but are not limited to the following:

Reading literary texts
Lectures on the texts and their historical and social contexts
Class discussion
Small group projects and presentations
Analytical writing projects

Representative Text(s) and Other Materials

Anaya, Rudolph. Curse of the Chupacabra. 2006.

Barry, Lynda. The Aswang. 2005.

Cardin, Matt, ed.. Horror Literature throughout History: An Encyclopedia of the Stories that Speak to Our Deepest Fears. 2017.

Peele, Jordan, Dir.. Get Out (film). 2017.

King, Stephen. The Shining. 1977 (2012).

Middleton, Kristen. Awaken at Twilight: A Vampire Anthology. 2015.

Reyes, Xavier Aldana. Horror: A Literary History. 2021.

Rice, Anne. Interview with the Vampire. 1976 (1991).

Stoker, Bram. Dracula. 1897 (2000).

Waters, Sarah. The Little Stranger. 2009.

Although some of these texts are older than the suggested "5 years or newer" standard, they remain seminal texts in this area of study.

Poetry from John Keats, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Federico Garcia Lorca.

Types and/or Examples of Required Reading, Writing, and Outside of Class Assignments

  1. Reading and analyzing literary texts
  2. Formal essays
  3. Informal writing projects, such as journal entries, reader responses
  4. In-class examinations
  5. Class participation, student presentations

Discipline(s)

English