ENGL 487: Monsters, Women & the Gothic

Course Description

This course questions our inheritance of "the gothic" as a district literary style that continues to discipline readers' notions of gender, race, and sexual identity. The course argues that by tracing the gothic's literary history, we may simultaneously witness a history of gender formation. Readings may include English novelists who originated a gothic style in English (Walpole, Radcliffe, Lewis) as well as English and American poets and novelists who have debated as well as resisted the effects of the gothic on readers' (particularly women's) psychology (Christina Rossetti, Austen, King, Stoker).