LIT4013 – Spring 2027 – Mariano

The gothic novel is said to have been born in the 18th century and rumored to have died in the next, when in fact, its forms and faculties have been animated and reanimated many times, awakened to respond to the anxiety of shifting cultural, social, and political conditions. This course is focused on the intersection between historical representations of deviance and atrocity and the historically-specific (re)emergent trends of gothic themes, motifs, and modes of analysis in U.S. American novels, from the colonial era to the contemporary “new gothic.” We will explore how the conventions of gothic literature have shaped the representation of atrocity and its aftermaths, imbuing landscapes, bodyscapes, memoryscapes, and other sites of memory with historical significance and collective meaning.
This course fulfills the "Understanding Genre" requirement for majors.