English Composition in Connection with the Reading of World Literature
Spectral Encounters: Horror Literature in Latin America and the U.S.
In this course we will explore how the horror tropes differ between United States and Latin American literature and film and how these tropes are meant to critique the socioeconomic and sociopolitical states of these countries, especially the negative impact of foreign relations and the description of identities in relation to immigration. We will explore questions such as: How do ghostly apparitions speak about the past and the present? How do demonic manifestations in literature and film critique socio political unrest? And how does the “monstrous” shift from representations of the other to those of self identification?
To answer these questions we will focus on comparisons between short stories, novels, and films stemming from the 19th century to the present. We will read a collection of short stories by Edgar Allen Poe, Ruben Darío, Julio Cortazar, Horacio Quiñones, and Silvina Ocampo, as well as novels such as Frankenstein by Mary Shelly, Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo, and Things We Lost in the Fire by Mariana Enriquez. We will also look at films made by Guillermo del Toro and Jordan Peele, among others.