LIT 3024 Fall 2024 - Burns

This course will introduce students to unsettling and haunting tales of the weird from the 19th into the 21st century with authors such as Edgar Allan Poe, Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Shirley Jackson, Ray Bradbury, Octavia Butler, Carmen Maria Machado, and several understudied authors who were quite popular in their time. Students will be encouraged to formulate their own interpretation of the works we read based on their developing ability to recognize the decisions each author has made in constructing the text. Students will be introduced to a variety of meaningful social and cultural contexts and asked to read the stories with an awareness of the social and cultural situations that inform our understanding of the story’s thematic meanings.