Courses of Study 2013-2014 
    
    Mar 29, 2024  
Courses of Study 2013-2014 [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

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AMST 2050 - Ghosts in American Culture

(crosslisted)
(also ENGL 2655 ) (CA-AS)
Spring. 4 credits.

K. Howe.

Headless horsemen, vanishing hitchhikers, wailing women, revenants, poltergeists, and spectres.  Ghosts haunt the American landscape, and the Amercian imagination, their spectral shapes acting as the embodiment of cultural contradiction.  They are present, but not present.  They are remnants of history, and witnesses to it.  They reassure the living that others have passed here before, yet they terrify us with their passing.  In this course we will examine the figure of the ghost in American literature, film, and popular culture, paying special attention to the unique relationship between ghost narratives and the landscape of New York State.  Readings will include current scholarship on ghostlore, together with authors including Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edith Wharton, Henry James, Shirley Jackson, Stephen King, Toni Morrison, and Neil Gaiman, as well as ghost folklore and oral histories collected by the Federal Writers Project of the Works Progress Administration.  Films will include The Univited (1944), The Haunting (1963), The Shining (1980), The Sixth Sense (1999), and American Horror Story (TV, 2012). (LT)



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