Gothic Bodies
ENGL 317
Fall 2024
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01
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This seminar examines the Gothic mode and its literary afterlives in the texts of the British empire. During the nineteenth-century, the Gothic mode--darkened old houses, discoverable family secrets, mysterious moving objects, threatened bodies--migrated to a wide range of narrative forms. We will read some of this range, exploring early political fiction, science fiction, slave narratives, domestic fiction, and the ghost story. We'll think about how the Gothic mode was used to imagine different kinds of harm to bodies. We'll explore how these formal conventions involving unseen terrors, old family houses, and threatened bodies intersected with some of the key formations of the period: the rise of individualism, industrial and racial capitalism, Orientalism, automation, changes in property and inheritance law, theories of freedom and slavery and sexual consent. Along the way, we'll read key theorists who write about the Gothic as we develop our own theories of how to read the ways this genre still haunts our present. |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
HA ENGL |
| Course Format: Seminar | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Major Requirement for: None |
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Past Enrollment Probability: 50% - 74% |
| SECTION 01 |
Major Readings: Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore
William Godwin, CALEB WILLIAMS; Mary Shelley, FRANKENSTEIN, OR THE MODERN PROMETHEUS; Mary Prince, THE HISTORY OF MARY PRINCE, A WEST INDIAN SLAVE; Charlotte Brontė, JANE EYRE; Henry James, THE TURN OF THE SCREW; and critical writings by Freud, Spivak, Poovey, Wollestonecraft.
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Examinations and Assignments:
2 short papers, reading responses, final paper |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
This course contributes to the following English major requirements:
British Literature, Literary History 2, Theory. |
| Instructor(s): Eckert,Sierra Times: .M.W... 08:20AM-09:40AM; Location: TBA |
| Total Enrollment Limit: 15 | | SR major: 4 | JR major: 4 | | |
| Seats Available: 0 | GRAD: X | SR non-major: 1 | JR non-major: 3 | SO: 3 | FR: 0 |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 4 | 1st Ranked: 0 | 2nd Ranked: 2 | 3rd Ranked: 2 | 4th Ranked: 0 | Unranked: 0 |
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