Course Description

How and to what ends do American writers use ghosts in their narratives? In this course, we will seek to answer this and related questions by reading and comparing works from a variety of American literary genres, cultural traditions, and historical periods that employ haunting or spirit possession as a central motif. In so doing, students will gain a broad knowledge of American literature and build skills and habits of reading attentively and comparatively, thinking critically and analytically, listening actively and carefully, speaking thoughtfully and concisely, and writing clearly and engagingly.

Link to Kyushu University syllabus.

Link to Fukuoka University syllabus.

Course Instructor

The salutatorian of Clinton High School�fs Class of 1987 and co-valedictorian of Hamilton College's Class of 1991, Bruce Simon went on to earn his M.A. and Ph.D. from the Department of English at Princeton University, where he was a teaching assistant in English and Afro-American Studies and an instructor in the Princeton Writing Program. A former co-general editor of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor, he has published essays in The Politics of Information (2004), The Social Construction of Race and Ethnicity in the United States (2nd ed., 2001), Postcolonial Theory and the United States: Race, Ethnicity, and Literature (2000), and Race Consciousness: African-American Studies for the New Century (1997). As an assistant and now associate professor of English at SUNY Fredonia, he has taught courses in American, African-American, and world literature as well as in Multiethnic Studies and American Studies. With a sabbatical leave from SUNY Fredonia from fall 2006 to spring 2007 to enable him to serve as a Fulbright Visiting Lecturer at Kyushu University, Seinan Gakuin University, and Fukuoka University, he stepped down as Vice President for Academics of the Fredonia chapter of the SUNY faculty/professionals union, Chair of the university�fs Planning and Budget Advisory Committee, Associate Chair of the English Department, and University Senator. In addition to teaching courses in American Literature and American Studies in Fukuoka, Japan, he is currently working on a book manuscript, American Studies and the Race for Hawthorne, co-editing two collections of critical essays, tentatively entitled Echoes of Nuremberg and Trauma, Melancholia, and the Politics of Race, and posting regularly to his Hawthorne blog, Citizen of Somewhere Else (citizense.blogspot.com). For further information, please see his web site at www.fredonia.edu/department/english/simon/.

Haunting America, Spring 2007
Created: 4/9/07 3:45 pm
Last modified: 4/9/07 3:45 pm
Webmaster: Bruce Simon, Fulbright Visiting Lecturer in American Studies, Kyushu University, Seinan Gakuin University, and Fukuoka University; Associate Professor of English, SUNY Fredonia