Reading & Composition

What does it means for a text or an image to be “haunted” – by the dead, by past traumas, or by occluded memories? What do “supernatural” occurrences in literature and cinema tell us about the visible and the invisible, about the material and the spectral, about belief and disbelief, or about reality and the imagination?

In this course, we will encounter ghostly apparitions from a wide variety of time periods, genres, and cultures. Works will include, among others: Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Balzac’s Colonel Chabert, stories by Poe and Hoffmann, Rulfo’s Pedro Pàramo, and Hitchcock’s Vertigo.

This course fulfills the first half of the University’s Reading and Composition (R&C) requirement and is designed, above all, to help students improve their critical reading and writing skills. Students will complete regular essay assignments, including frequent revisions, in order to develop the skills to write clearly, elegantly, and convincingly.