Unit Outlines 2015-16
All sessions will take place in the New English
Department Building at 70 Oxford Street
Autumn Term Core units:
Representing Contemporary Cultures 1
The Rise of the Gothic
Autumn Term Elective units:
American Gothic Literature
Contemporary Queer Cultures
Independent Study
Spring Term Core units:
Representing Contemporary Cultures 2
Gothic and Modernity
Spring Term Elective units:
Border Fictions
Screening the Gothic
Independent Study
Core Units
Autumn 2015
(Tuesday 6-00 to 8-00)
Representing Contemporary Cultures 1
Dr Lucy Burke (l.burke@mmu.ac.uk) and Dr Sarah MacLachlan
(s.maclachlan@mmu.ac.uk)
Representing Contemporary Cultures 1 is the first of two core units that
introduce students to issues and debates in contemporary culture and the
ways that recent and current writers and film-makers engage with them. Major
global events and transformations of the late Twentieth and early Twenty First
Centuries provide a contextual frame. The unit begins with a discussion of key
historical events and social, political and intellectual transformations over the
last thirty years, paying close attention to the ways in which cultural practices
– literature, film, television and art – mediate this history. The unit focuses on
three major topics in detail. Each topic introduces students to key critical and
theoretical debates in the area and pays close attention to the distinctive ways
in which selected novels and films engage with the theme or problem at hand.
Reading List
Critical / contextual material will be provided on Moodle. Students must bring
copies of the novels to class.
Introduction: Defining the Contemporary (29th September)
In this session we will discuss and identify the defining characteristics and
concerns of contemporary culture and cultural politics. We will think about the
role of cultural texts in the mediation of dominant and dissident conceptions of
politics, ethics, freedom and security.
TOPIC 1: September 11th and the ‘Post-Postmodern’? (3 weeks)
Critical/Contextual
Martin Amis, ‘Fear and Loathing’ (The Guardian, September 18th 2001).
Jean Baudrillard, The Spirit of Terrorism (London: Verso, 2003).
Don DeLillo, ‘In the Ruins of the Future’ (The Guardian, December 22nd
2001).
Jenny Edkins, Trauma and the Memory of Politics (Cambridge University
Press, 2003) - ‘Preface’ (pp. xiii-xvii) and ‘Conclusion: the return of the
political – the memory of politics’ (pp. 215-233).
Susannah Radstone, ‘The War of the Fathers: Fantasy, Trauma and
September 11th’, Signs (Vol. 28.1, 2002) pp. 457-459.
Paul Virilio, Ground Zero (London: Verso, 2002).
Slavoj Zizek, Welcome to the Desert of the Real: Five Essays on September
11 and Related Dates (London: Verso, 2002).
Recommended Further Reading:
Martin Amis, The Second Plane (London: Vintage, 2008).
Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (London:
Verso, 2004) and Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? (London: Verso,
2010).
Susan Faludi, The Terror Dream: What 9/11 Revealed About America (2007;
London: Atlantic, 2008).
Richard Gray, After the Fall: American Literature Since 9/11 (London: WileyBlackwell, 2011).
David Holloway, 9/11 and the War on Terror (EUP, 2008).
Austin Sarat (ed.), Dissent in Dangerous Times (Ann Arbor, U of Michigan P,
2005).
Film
Oliver Stone (dir.), World Trade Center (2006).
Highly Recommended:
Samira Makhmalbaf et al (dir.), 11’09”01, September 11 (2002).
Novel
Don DeLillo, Falling Man (London: Picador, 2007).
Highly Recommended:
Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist (London: Hamish Hamilton,
2007).
TOPIC 2: Archives of Resistance and Defeat (4 weeks)
Critical/Theoretical
Alan Badiou, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil (London: Verso,
2002) and;
‘The Communist Hypothesis’ in New Left Review (NLR) 49, January-February
2008, pp.29-42
Slavoj Zizek, 'SOS Violence', chapter 1 in Violence (London: Profile Books,
2008), pp.8-25
Lisa Duggan, The Twilight of Equality: Neoliberalism, Cultural politics and the
Attack on Equality (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2004)
Nancy Fraser, ‘Rethinking Recognition’ in NLR 3, May-June 2000, pp. 107120
Judith Butler ‘Merely Cultural’ in NLR I/227, January-February 1998, pp. 3344.
Patricia Melzer, ‘Maternal Ethics and Political Violence: The “Betrayal” of
Motherhood among the Women of the RAF and June 2 Movement’ in
Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies, Volume 47, Number 1, February
2011 pp.81-102.
Novels
David Peace, GB84 (London: Faber and Faber, 2004)
Hari Kunzru, My Revolutions (London: Hamish Hamilton, 2007)
Films
Baader Meinhof Complex dir.Uli Edel, 2008 and;
Children of the Revolution, dir. Shane O’Sullivan, 2011
Recommended reading:
Matthew Hart ‘The Third English Civil War: David Peace's "Occult History" of
Thatcherism’ in Contemporary Literature, Volume 49, Number 4, Winter
2008, pp. 573-596
Nancy Fraser, ‘Heterosexism, Misrecognition and Capitalism: A Response to
Judith Butler’ NLR I/228, March-April 1998, pp. 140-149.
TOPIC 3: Moral Panics (3 weeks)
Critical/Contextual
Lauren Berlant, extracts from Compassion (London: Routledge, 2004) and
“The Epistemology of State Emotion”, in Austin Sarat (ed.), Dissent in
Dangerous Times (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005).
Frank Furedi, extracts from Culture of Fear (Continuum, 2002) and extracts
from Paranoid Parenting (Allen Lane, 2001).
Susannah Radstone, ‘Social Bonds and Psychical Order: Testimonies’,
Cultural Values (Volume 5.1, 2001) pp. 59-78.
Mark Seltzer, extracts from Serial Killers: Death and Life in America’s Wound
Culture (London: Routledge, 1998).
Film
Todd Field (dir.), Little Children (2006).
Novel
Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin (London: Serpent’s Tail, 2005)
The Rise of the Gothic (this unit is also available online for
online Gothic students)
Dr Sonja Lawrenson (s.lawrenson@mmu.ac.uk) and Dr Emma Liggins
(e.liggins@mmu.ac.uk)
The unit provides an historical background to the rise of Gothic literature and
an introduction to current debates in Gothic studies, around the uncanny,
female Gothic, queer Gothic and psychoanalysis. It looks at a range of different
genres, from Jacobean revenge tragedy through Romantic ballads, eighteenthcentury novels, nineteenth-century novels and Victorian ghost and vampire
stories.
Reading List
Primary Texts
Renaissance and Eighteenth-Century Gothic
Lewis, Matthew The Monk (1796, any edition)
Webster's The Duchess of Malfi (1623)
Radcliffe, Ann The Italian (1797, any edition)
Shakespeare, William, Titus Andronicus
Walpole, Horace, The Castle of Otranto (1764, any edition)
Romanticism and Victorian Gothic
Romantic Ballads: Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ‘Christabel’, John Keats, ‘Lamia’
Dacre, Charlotte, Zofloya (1806)
Hogg, James, Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824, any edition)
Bronte, Emily, Wuthering Heights (1847, any edition)
Ghost and Vampire Stories: Elizabeth Gaskell’s ‘The Old Nurse’s Tale’,
Robert Louis Stevenson, ‘Olalla’, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, ‘Good Lady
Ducayne’, Vernon Lee, ‘A Wicked Voice’
Decadent poetry by Charles Baudelaire, Oscar Wilde and Algernon
Swinburne
Secondary Texts
Botting, Fred, Gothic (Manchester University Press, 2000)
Clery, E.J. and Robert Miles, Gothic Documents: A Sourcebook (Manchester;
Manchester University Press, 2000).
Day, William Patrick, In the Circles of Fear and Desire: A Study of Gothic
Fantasy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985).
Ellis, Kate Ferguson, The Contested Castle: Gothic Novels and the
Subversion of Domestic Ideology (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989).
Hoeveler, Diane Long, Gothic Feminism: The Professionalisation of Gender
from Charlotte Smith to the Brontës (Pennsylvania State University Press;
1998).
Horner, Avril and Sue Zlosnik, Gothic and the Comic Turn (Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).
Horner, Avril and Sue Zlosnik (eds), Le Gothic (Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2008).
Hughes, William and Andrew Smith (eds.) Queering the Gothic, (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 2009)
Kilgour, Maggie, The Rise of the Gothic Novel (London: Routledge, 1995).
Miles, Robert, Anne Radcliffe: The Great Enchantress (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1995).
Miles, Robert, Gothic Writing 1750-1820: A Genealogy, 2nd Edition
(Manchester; Manchester UP, 2002).
Punter, David (ed.), A Companion to the Gothic (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000).
Spooner, Catherine and Emma McEvoy (eds), The Routledge Companion to
the Gothic (London: Routledge, 2007).
Williams, Anne, Art of Darkness: A Poetics of Gothic (Chicago and London:
The University of Chicago Press, 1995).
Gothic Literature: A Gale Critical Companion (Liverpool: Liverpool University
Press, 2006)
Elective Units
Autumn 2015
(Wednesday 6-00 to 8-00)
American Gothic Literature (this unit is also available online
for online Gothic students)
Dr Liz Nolan (e.nolan@mmu.ac.uk)
The unit examines the nature and use of the Gothic genre in American
culture. Taking as a starting point the translation of the European tradition to
the American scene, it will explore the particular anxieties which inform the
genre’s articulation of American experience. Issues under discussion will
include the Puritan inheritance, the frontier experience, race and the legacy of
slavery, gender and sexuality. There will also be a focus on American gothic
locations: the landscape, the urban environment and the significance of
region. Considering the development of the genre in an American context, the
unit will examine literary texts from the C18th Romance to C21st narratives of
the vampire and the serial killer in relation to a range of critical and theoretical
debates.
Topics: Origins of American Gothic; American Romanticism; The Puritan
Inheritance; Frontier Gothic; Southern Gothic; Suburban Gothic; African
American Gothic; Race, Gender and Sexuality; Postmodern Gothic; The
Vampire in American Culture; the Serial Killer and the American Gothic
Imagination.
Primary Reading list
1. Nathaniel Hawthorne, ‘Alice Doane’s Appeal’ and ‘Young Goodman
Brown’
2. Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Man of the Crowd’, ‘The Fall of the House of
Usher’, ‘The Black Cat’, ‘William Wilson’
3. Henry James, ‘The Turn of the Screw’ and Edith Wharton ghost
stories
4. William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! (a long read – make a start on
this as soon as possible)
5. Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
6. Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House
7. Stephen King, The Shining
8. Gloria Naylor, Linden Hills
9. Joyce Carol Oates, Zombie
10. Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves (another long read)
Secondary Reading:
Auerbach, Nina, Our Vampires, Ourselves (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1995)
Beville, Maria, Gothic-Postmodernism: Voicing the Terrors of Postmodernity
(New York: Rodopi, 2009)
Botting, Fred, ‘Hypocrite Vampire’, Gothic Studies, Volume 9, Number 1, May
2007, pp. 16-34
Burns, Sarah, Painting the Dark Side: Art and the Gothic Imagination in
Nineteenth-Century America (Berkeley: U. of Calif. P, 2004)
Day, William Patrick, Vampire Legends in Contemporary American Culture
(What Becomes a Legend Most) (Lexington: Kentucky University Press, 2002)
Edmundson, Mark, Nightmare on Main Street: Angels, Sadomasochism and
the Culture of the Gothic Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999)
Edwards, Justin D., Gothic Passages: Racial Ambiguity and the American
Gothic (Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 2003)
Fedorko, Kathy A., Gender and the Gothic in the Fiction of Edith Wharton,
(Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 1995)
Garrett, Peter K. Gothic Reflections: Narrative Force in Nineteenth-Century
Fiction (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 2003)
Gleeson-White, Sarah, Strange Bodies: Gender and Identity in the Novels of
Carson McCullers (Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 2003)
Goddu, Teresa A., Gothic America: Narrative, History and Nation (New York:
Columbia UP, 1997)
Gordon, Joan and Veronica Hollinger, Blood Read: The Vampire as Metaphor
in Contemporary Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1997)
Goodwyn Jones, Anne, Susan Van D'Elden Donaldson, Haunted Bodies:
Gender and Southern Texts (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press,
1997)
Gray, Richard, ed., A Companion to the Literature and Culture of the
American South (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007)
Gross, Louis S., Redefining the American Gothic: from Wieland to Days of the
Dead (Ann Arbor: U. M. I. Research P, 1989)
Haggerty, George E, Queer Gothic (Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2006)
Hayes, Kevin, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe,
(Cambridge: CUP, 2002)
Hoeveler, Diane, ‘Postgothic Fiction: Joyce Carol Oates turns the screw on
Henry James’ Studies in Short Fiction, 35, 1998
Hogle, Jerrold E. ed., The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction
(Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002)
Kafer, Peter, Charles Brockden Brown's Revolution and the Birth of American
Gothic (Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2004)
Kennedy, J. Gerald, Romancing the Shadow: Poe and Race (Oxford: OUP,
2001)
Kerr, Elizabeth, William Faulkner's Gothic Domain (Port Washington, NY:
Kennikat Press, 1978)
Lloyd Smith, Allan, American Gothic Fiction: An Introduction (New York:
Continuum, 2004)
Martin, Robert K. and Eric Savoy. eds., American Gothic: New Inventions in a
National Narrative (Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 1998)
Meindl, Dieter, American Fiction and the Metaphysics of the Grotesque
(Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1996)
Meyers, Helene, Femicidal Fears: Narratives of the Female Gothic
Experience (Albany: State U of New York P, 2001)
Mogen, David, Scott P. Sanders, and Joanne B. eds., Frontier Gothic: Terror
and Wonder at the Frontier in American Literature (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh
Dickinson UP, 1993)
Monnet, Agnieszka Soltysik, The Poetics and Politics of the American Gothic:
Gender and Slavery in Nineteenth-Century American Literature (Ashgate,
2010)
Morrison, Toni, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992)
Ringe, Donald, A., American Gothic: Imagination and Reason in NineteenthCentury Fiction (University Press of Kentucky, 1982)
Sage, Victor & Alan Lloyd Smith, Modern Gothic: A Reader (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1996)
Smith, Andrew and Jeff Wallace (eds), Gothic Modernisms (Basingstoke:
Palgrave, 2001)
Spaulding, A. Timothy, Re-Forming the Past: History, the Fantastic, and the
Postmodern Slave Narrative, (Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2005)
Spooner, Catherine, Contemporary Gothic (London: Reaktion Books, 2006)
Contemporary Queer Cultures
Dr Andrew Moor (a.moor@mmu.ac.uk) and Ginette Carpenter
(g.carpenter@mmu.ac.uk)
This unit analyses the ways in which same-sex desire is expressed,
represented and received in contemporary cultures. The last two decades
saw a shift away from the recently consolidated concept of gay ‘identity
politics’ to a more material concept of ‘queerness’, and ‘queerly negotiated’
reading practices gained academic respectability. The politics of same-sex
desires stretched to include transsexuality, bisexuality, and a range of other
non-normative activities. A politics of assimilation was, in part, replaced by a
politics of the margins. The ‘gay movement’ was also radicalised through the
recognition of AIDS. Arguably we are now entering the era of the ‘post-gay’.
This unit addresses these issues, and texts may be selected from film,
television, literature or culture more broadly. Areas for study include: the
impact and representation of AIDS; Queer politics vs Gay Identity politics; the
development of New Queer Cinema; ‘queer spectatorship’; the
commodification of same-sex desire; the concept of the ‘Post-Gay’.
Set Texts to be studied on the Unit:
The majority of primary texts on this unit are films. Aim to own all of the films
on DVD. If you rely on downloading them, do so well in advance and check
they are ‘complete’. The Primary Texts are:
Set Text: Theoretical:
Either Nikki Sullivan, A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory OR Annamarie
Jagose, Queer Theory: An Introduction (we will cover the territory of these
books in Week One so you should aim to have read one of these by then.
These books cover similar ground, so read either of them).
Set Texts: Fiction:
Allan Hollinghurst, The Swimming Pool Library
Jeanette Winterson, The Powerbook
Set Texts: Film:
Gus Van Sant, My Own Private Idaho
Derek Jarman’s, Blue & John Greyson’s Zero Patience
Cheryl Dunye, Watermelon Woman
Kimberly Peirce, Boys Don't Cry
Andrew Haigh, Weekend
Orange is the New Black
Additional / Suggested Reading:
Aaron, Michele. (ed) (2004), New Queer Cinema: A Critical Reader
(Edinburgh U.P.)
Benshoff, Harry & Griffin, Sean (2001), Queer Cinema: A Film Reader
Michael Charlesworth, Derek Jarman (Critical Lives)
Steven Dillon, Derek Jarman and Lyric Film
Doty, Alexander, (1993), Making Things Perfectly Queer: Interpreting Mass
Culture (Univ. of Minnesota Press),
Griffiths, Robin (ed.) (2006), British Queer Cinema (Routledge, London)
Hanson, Ellis. (1999), Out Takes: Essays on Queer Theory and Film (Duke
U.P., London)
Niall Richardson, The Queer Cinema of Derek Jarman
Sinfield, Alan (1998), Gay and After: gender, culture and consumption
Warner, Michael (ed) (1993), Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and
Social Theory
Boffin, Tessa (ed.) Ecstatic antibodies: resisting the AIDS mythology
Crimp, Douglas (ed.) AIDS: Cultural Analysis / Cultural Activism
Additional Suggested Viewing:
The Celluloid Closet (documentary), Go Fish (Rose Troche); Paris is Burning
(Jennie Livingston); Poison, Swoon (Haynes), Edward II (Jarman), Mysterious
Skin (Araki), Brokeback Mountain (Lee), Zero Patience and Lilies (John
Greyson), Queer as Folk, Cucumber, Banana (TV Series).
Independent Study
Available in the Autumn and Spring terms via agreement with the Programme
Leader (s.maclachlan@mmu.ac.uk) and relevant tutor (see staff research
interests: http://www2.mmu.ac.uk/english/staff/).
Students produce a written project based on a topic mutually agreed with a
supervisor, either a) based on a unit in the MA programme that is not currently
running, or b) staff / student research interests. Students are advised on the
research, writing and presentation of the essay by a supervisor with expertise
in their field of study or a related field.
This unit is taught via individual tutorials with a designated member of the
teaching team. Students work independently, under guidance, to research
and write an essay on a topic of their choice.
1 x Essay of 4,000 words.
Core Units
Spring 2016
(Tuesday 6-00 to 8-00)
Gothic and Modernity (this unit is also available online for
online Gothic students)
Dr Linnie Blake (L.Blake@mmu.ac.uk) and Dr Xavier Aldana Reyes
(X.Aldana-Reyes@mmu.ac.uk)
Gothic and Modernity moves on from Rise of the Gothic to address a range of
key gothic sub-genres that have emerged in the twentieth and twenty-first
centuries. The course is structured under a number of sub-headings: The
Abhuman, The Weird, The Necrophiliac Turn in Southern Gothic, The
Monster as Metaphor I: Vampires & II: Zombies, Postcolonial Hauntings, The
Grotesque, Techno-gothic, Serial Killers and Abject Femininities. It involves a
lot of reading – both of primary texts and of secondary texts. By its end, you
will have a strong grasp of both modern gothic literature and theorisations of
the gothic mode from a range of theoretical perspectives. It is not necessary
to have taken Rise of the Gothic to opt in to this unit but you will be expected
to grapple with some challenging material – the primary texts being dark and
often disturbing, the secondary material being dense and intellectually
challenging. If you have a scholarly interest in the gothic and want to work on
some of its most wonderful stories, books and films this is most certainly the
course for you.
Primary Reading (organized in order of study)
H.G. Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896)
Bram Stoker, Dracula (1898).
Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire (1977).
M.R. James, ‘Count Magnus’ (1904),
Algernon Blackwood, ‘The Willows’ (1907),
H.P. Lovecraft, ‘Dagon’, Call of Cthulhu’ and ‘The Shadow over Innsmouth’, in
Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories (1926)
William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying (1930)
Cormac McCarthy, Child of God (1973)
Toni Morrison, Beloved (1983)
Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (1966)
Katherine Dunn, Geek Love (1989)
Freaks (Tod Browning, 1932)
J.G. Ballard, High Rise (1975)
Demon Seed (Donald Cammell, 1977)
John Fowles, The Collector (1963)
The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme, 1991)
Stephen King, Carrie (1974)
The Ring (Gore Verbinski, 2002)
Secondary Reading
This is posted to the Moodle area on a week by week basis. It includes
articles by key figures in Gothic Studies and focuses both on the primary texts
and on theorisations of the gothic as mode.
JOURNAL Gothic Studies, Manchester University Press
WEB: International Gothic Association http://www.iga.stir.ac.uk/
Representing Contemporary Cultures 2
Prof. Antony Rowland (antony.rowland@mmu.ac.uk) and Dr. David Miller
(d.miller@mmu.ac.uk)
Representing Contemporary Cultures 2 is the second of two core units that
introduce students to issues and debates in contemporary culture and
literature and the ways that recent and current writers and film-makers
engage with them. Major global events and transformations of the late
Twentieth and early Twenty First Centuries provide a contextual frame for
approaching the cultural and artistic strands that deal with those major human
catastrophes and intensities that have shaped our contemporary ‘experience’.
Trauma, loss, waiting, reminiscence, and the fate of the human, memory,
testimony, remembrance and the home and significance of the literary work in
our current life extend the considerations.
Primary Texts
Gert Buelens, Samuel Durrant and Robert Eaglestone (eds), The Future of
Trauma Theory: Contemporary Literary and Cultural Criticism (Routledge:
2013).
Robert Eagletsone, ‘Identification and the Genre of Testimony’ in Immigrants
& Minorities: Historical Studies in Ethnicity, Migration and Diaspora (Volume
21, Issue 1-2, 2002, Special Issue: Representing the Holocaust).
Robert Eaglestone, ‘The Public Secret’ in The Future of Testimony ed. Jane
Kilby and Antony Rowland (Routledge, p. 69-82).
Cathy Caruth, Trauma: Explorations in Memory (Johns Hopkins, 1995).
Selected 9/11 Poetry and Testimony.
Michael Haneke (dir.), Hidden / Cache (2005).
Geoffrey Hill, Scenes from Comus (Penguin, 2005).
Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time (various edtions), Volume 1, Swann’s
Way - please read the final chapter ‘Place Names: The Place’, paying
attention the passages dealing with the narrator’s notions of memory at
Balbec.
Rainer Maria Rilke, 1913 Essay “On the Wax Dolls of Lotte Pritzel”. This
essay is available online as a pdf text and is best read in conjunction with
Baudelaire's and Von Kliest's essays on dolls, puppets and marionettes in
Essays on Dolls (Syrens, Penguin, 1994).
Ludwig Wittgenstein Philosophical Investigations Aphorisms 65-69 on
language and ‘family resemblance’.
The two essays, ‘After Epic’ and ‘Relationships to Realism in Holocaust
Fiction’ in The Bloomsbury Companion to Holocaust Literature, edited by
Jenni Adams (Bloomsbury: London, 2014).
Austerlitz, by W.G Sebald, translated by Anthea Bell (Penguin; London,
2001).
The films of the Quay Brothers - The Comb (1991)
Elective Units
Spring 2016
(Wednesday 6-00 to 8-00)
Border Fictions: Representing the US-Mexico Border
Dr Lucy Burke (l.burke@mmu.ac.uk) and Dr Sarah MacLachlan
(s.maclachlan@mmu.ac.uk)
Border Fictions explores representations of the US–Mexico border in recent
US literature and film. The unit attends to the ways the border provides a
vantage point from which the possibilities and limitations of US national
identity are assessed. The currency of the border as a celebratory site of
fusion in contemporary US culture will be considered in the context of its
related rise to prominence in literary studies in the US academy in the 1980s
and beyond, but also in relation to an opposing cultural strand: an increasing
hostility to the border crossings made by immigrants from Mexico to the US in
‘mainstream’ discourses, a climate intensified in the wake of the events of
September 11th 2001 that continues to flourish (witness the frequent
'crackdowns' on illegal ‘aliens’ and the war on drugs). The unit considers the
ways the US–Mexico border has been represented in the US in the twentieth
century as a backdrop for the emergence of recent, experimental border
fictions of cultural fusion pioneered by Chicano/a writers. The connection
between genre and cultural politics is considered through the comparison of a
Chicano/a border aesthetic with border fictions that revisit traditional US
literary forms, such as the Western. The discussion of aesthetics and politics
and the ethics of representation will focus on complicity, collusion and position
as a means of understanding the significance of the border as narrative
device.
Topic 1: Documenting the Border
Topic 1 maps continuities and discontinuities in the diverse body of texts and
topics covered by Border Fictions: from Orson Welles' Noir classic, Touch of
Evil (1958), to the emergence of the Chicano Movement in the 1960s, the rise
of a Chicano/a 'border aesthetic' in the 1980s, recent environmental concerns
along the US–Mexico border, issues of demographic change in the
contemporary US (particularly the Southwest) and a renewed interest in the
border in revisionary Westerns. Border Fictions interrogates the renewed
currency of the border in US culture in the 1980s (as literal and metaphorical
site) and its ongoing significance as a site of violence in the present,
particularly following 9-11. We will view the first episode of the US television
series The Bridge (2013, Reid, Stein and Stiehm).
Introductory Reading (available via Moodle):
Charles Bowden, extract from Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global
Economy’s New Killing Fields (Nation Books, 2011).
Michel Foucault's 'Of Other Spaces', Diacritics 16.1 (1986), pp. 22–27.
Rolando J. Romero's 'Border of Fear, Border of Desire', Borderlines 1.1
(1993), pp. 36–70.
Ed Vulliamy, extract from Amexica: War Along the Borderline (London:
Vintage, 2011).
Please also watch Orson Welles (dir.), A Touch of Evil (1958) in advance of
our first session.
Topic 2: The Rise of a Chicano/a Border Aesthetic
Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987).
Guillermo Gómez–Peña, Ethno–Techno: Writings on Performance, Activism
and Pedagogy (2005) and (www.pochanostra.com).
Topic 3: The Body and Historical Trauma
Edward J. Olmos (dir.), American Me (1992).
Topic 4: Over Her Dead Body (Representing the Femicides in Ciudad
Juarez)
Stella Pope Duarte If I Die in Juarez (Tucson: University of Arizona Press,
2008).
Selected images: Brian McGuire’s portraits and photographic images from
Charles Bowden’s Juarez: The Laboratory of Our Future (Reading, Pa:
Aperture, 1998).
Ileana Rodriguez, ‘The Perverse Heterosexual’ in Liberalism at its Limits:
Crime and Terror in the Latin American Cultural Text (Pittsburgh: University of
Pittsburg Press, 2009), pp.175-196.
Further: Alice Driver, ‘Femicide and the Aesthetics of Violence in Juarez: The
Laboratory of Our Future: An Interview with Charles Bowden’ Hispanic
Research Journal, Vol 12, No.4. August, 2011, pp.369-81.
Topic 5: At the Limits of Crime Fiction? Genre at the Border
Martin Solares, The Black Minutes (Grove Press, 2010).
Topic 6: Violence, Mexico and the Allegorical Impulse
Cormac McCarthy, No Country For Old Men (2005).
Topic 7: The Revisionary Western
John Sayles (dir.), Lone Star (1996)
Topic 8: Narco Culture
Shaul Schwarz (dir.) Narco Cultura (2014).
Extract from Hermann Herlinghaus, Narcoepics: A Global Aesthetics of
Sobriety (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2012).
Extract from Elijah Wald, Narcocorrido: A Journey Into the Music of Drugs
(New York: Rayo, 2002).
Chris Muniz, ‘Narcocorridos and the Nostalgia of Violence: Postmodern
Resistance en la frontera’ in Western American Literature 01/2013; 48 (1): 5669.
Topic 9: Revenge, Repatriation and Redemption
Tommy Lee Jones (dir.), The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005)
Topic 10: Review / Essay Consultation / Essay Plan Presentations
General Background:
Films
Gareth Edwards (dir.), Monsters (2010).
Alejandro González Iñárritu (dir.), Babel (2006)
Tony Richardson (dir.), The Border (1982)
Robert M. Young (dir.), Alambrista (1977)
Secondary Reading
Aldama, Arturo J. and Quinoñez, Naomi H., Decolonial Voices: Chicana and
Chicano Cultural Studies in the 21st Century (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2002)
Andreas, Peter, Border Games: Policing the US–Mexico Divide (Ithaca:
Cornell UP, 2000)
Arteaga, Alfred, An Other Tongue: Nation and Ethnicity in the Linguistic
Borderlands (Durham: Duke UP, 1994)
Arteaga, Alfred, Chicano Poetics: Heterotexts and Hybridities (Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 1997)
Beverley, John Subalternity and Representation: Arguments in Cultural
Theory
(Durham: Duke University Press, 1999) and Latin Americanism after 9/11
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2011).
Screening the Gothic (this unit is also available online for
online Gothic students)
Dr Linnie Blake (l.blake@mmu.ac.uk) and Jonathon Greenaway
(j.greenaway1@live.co.uk)
This unit will focus on the development of Gothic cinema, from its early
incarnations in German Expressionism up to modern day trends such as
torture porn and found footage. A chronological approach will allow students
to see the historical development of the mode on the screen and assess how
the Gothic has reflected and interpreted the particular fears of the cultural
moment throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Students will be
expected to engage with the wider field of Horror and Gothic scholarship and
with the thematic, structural and formal elements of the films in question. By
the end of the unit students will have gained an awareness of how the Gothic
mode has manifested in cinema and transformed over the decades to explore
and enact our deepest and darkest fears. The outline of the course is below.
Reading will be posted on Moodle on a week-by-week basis. Assessment is
by a 4,000 word essay submitted at the end of the unit.
1: Origins of Gothic Cinema 1: German Expressionism
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) dir. Robert Weine / The Golem (1915) dirs.
Henrik Geleen & Paul Wegener/ Metropolis (1927) dir. Fritz Lang.
2: Origins of Gothic Cinema 2: Universal Horrors
Dracula (1931) dir. Tod Browning / Frankenstein (1931) dir. James Whale /
Wolf Man (1941) dir. George Waggner.
3: Gothic Cinema and the Threat of the Apocalypse
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) dir. Don Siegel / Omega Man (1971)
dir. Boris Segal.
4: British Gothic Cinema: Hammer, Amicus & Tygon
Dracula (1958) dir. Terence Fisher /Dr Terror's House of Horrors (1965) dir.
Freddie Francis / Blood on Satan's Claw (1971) dir. Piers Haggard.
5: Domestic & Familial Gothic
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane (1962) dir. Robert Aldrich/ Rosemary's
Baby (1968) dir. Roman Polanski / Poltergeist (1982) dir. Tobe Hooper.
6: Horrors of War
Jacob's Ladder (1990) dir. Adrian Lyne / The Jacket (2005) dir. John Maybury
/ Dog Soldiers (2002) dir. Kevin Macdonald.
7: Religious Terror
The Omen (1976) dir. Richard Donner / The Exorcist (1973) dir. William
Freidkin / Children of the Corn (1984) dir. Fritz Kiersch.
8: European Gothic
The Mask of Satan (Italy) (1960) dir. Mario Bava / Mark of the Werewolf
(Spain) (1968) dir. Enrique López Eguiluz / Fascination (France) (1979) dir.
Jean Rollin.
9: Gothic of the 1980s
Near Dark (1987) dir. Kathryn Bigelow / The Lost Boys (1987) dir. Joel
Schumacher.
10: 21st Century Gothic: Digital Horror, Torture Porn & Global Gothic
The Blair Witch Project (1999) dir Eduardo Sanchez, Daniel Myrick / Hostel
(2005) dir. Eli Roth / Pan's Labyrinth (2006) dir. Guillermo del Toro.
Independent Study
Available in the Autumn and Spring terms via agreement with the Programme
Leader (s.maclachlan@mmu.ac.uk) and relevant tutor (see staff research
interests: http://www2.mmu.ac.uk/english/staff/).
Students produce a written project based on a topic mutually agreed with a
supervisor, either a) based on a unit in the MA programme that is not currently
running, or b) staff / student research interests. Students are advised on the
research, writing and presentation of the essay by a supervisor with expertise
in their field of study or a related field.
This unit is taught via individual tutorials with a designated member of the
teaching team. Students work independently, under guidance, to research
and write an essay on a topic of their choice.
1 x Essay of 4,000 words.