The American Ghost Story

Taking a deep dive into the eerie and captivating world of American ghost literature, we will explore the rich tapestry of supernatural folklore from colonial hauntings to contemporary spectral innovation in fiction. Starting with an overview of the landscape of the early American ghost story, we look at the role of the early colonial condition that laid the foundations of a distinctly American spectral genre. We then venture into the grotesque and macabre of the Southern Gothic, before exploring the emergence of the psychological ghost in the late nineteenth century and the terrifying face of American horror in the twentieth. We examine how the ghost, which has been a figure of past trauma haunting the present, assumes different guises in American literature in the years preceding and post-millennium. Over the eight weeks, we will look at the ghost stories of Washington Irvine, Ambrose Bierce, William Faulkner, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry James, Shirley Jackson, Stephen King, Tony Morrison, Alice Sebold, Mitch Albom, Kevin Brockmeier, and George Saunders. This range of literature is designed to foster an appreciation of the evolution of the American ghost genre in terms of myth, psychological complexity, and syncretic spirituality, as well as provide a greater understanding of what makes American ghost stories unique, popular, and fascinating. This engaging course ultimately offers a spine-chilling journey through the nation's most haunted tales to learn how the specter holds a mirror up to society to show us what it sees but what we often fail, to our detriment, to notice.

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