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.

Course Outline

Course Texts

Please purchase Henry James, The Turn of the Screw, plus at least one of the following (students will choose which one [or more] to purchase):

• Paul Auster, Ghosts
• Maryse Conde, I, Tituba Black Witch of Salem
• Louise Erdrich, Tracks
• Cristina Garcia, Dreaming in Cuban
• Andrea O�fReilly Herrera, The Pearl of the Antilles
• Nora Okja Keller, Comfort Woman
• Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior
• Tony Kushner, Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches
• Toni Morrison, Beloved
• August Wilson, The Piano Lesson

Short stories and critical essays will be made available at no cost through on-line sources, including the SUNY Fredonia course ANGEL space I have created for you and the online journals to which the Kyushu University library provides you access.

Course Requirements

As this course combines lectures, activities, student presentations, and open, guided, and small-group discussion, regular classroom attendance is very important. One-third of your grade in the class will be based on my assessment of your preparation and participation, both for class and on the course ANGEL space. Another third of your grade will be based on a research-based presentation on a relation between a work from early in the course and the contemporary work you chose to read. The final third of your grade will be based on a research paper (7-10 pages) due at the end of the semester.

Course Schedule

Week 1: Introductions, Goals, Expectations (11 April 2007). We�fll be getting to know each other and familiarizing ourselves with the set-up of the course. Emily Dickinson�fs poem #670 will be used this week (and next) to illustrate some of the complexities of reading hauntings.

Week 2: Definitions, Debates, Processes (18 April 2007). We�fll be considering similarities and differences between Japanese and American (and more broadly, Eastern and Western) narratives of haunting and spirit possession, in order to clarify the particular focus and emphases of this course.

Week 3: Colonial Hauntings I (25 April 2007). We�fll be examining historical accounts of the apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe and of the Salem Witch Trials to compare responses to American spirits by Catholic and Protestant, Spanish and British, and European and indigenous witnesses.

Week 4: Colonial Hauntings II (9 May 2007). We�fll be examining �gLa Llorona�h and Nathaniel Hawthorne�fs �gYoung Goodman Brown�h as examples of a later time period�fs responses to last week�fs colonial hauntings.

Week 5: Antebellum Hauntings I (16 May 2007). We�fll be examining Washington Irving�fs �gThe Legend of Sleepy Hollow�h and Edgar Allan Poe�fs �gThe Fall of the House of Usher�h (you are required to read only one of these) to expand our sense of the range of classic antebellum ghost stories.

Week 6: Antebellum Hauntings II (23 May 2007). We�fll be examining short excerpts from Harriet Beecher Stowe�fs novel Uncle Tom�fs Cabin alongside Charles Chesnutt�fs short story �gPo�f Sandy�h to understand how abolitionists and later writers connected haunting and slavery.

Week 7: Postbellum Hauntings I (30 May 2007). We�fll be examining Ambrose Bierce�fs �gThe Stranger�h and �gThe Haunted Valley�h for ghosts of American westward expansion.

Week 8: Postbellum Hauntings II (6 June 2007). We�fll be examining Lafcadio Hearn�fs �gThe Ghostly Kiss�h and �gOn Ghosts and Goblins�h to compare and contrast his representations of American and Japanese hauntings.

Week 9: Modern Hauntings I (13 June 2007). We�fll be examining Charlotte Perkins Gilman�fs �gThe Yellow Wallpaper�h and Edith Wharton�fs �gThe Eyes�h for the ways in which they connect ghosts, gender, and sexuality.

Week 10: Modern Hauntings II (20 June 2007). We�fll be examining Zora Neale Hurston�fs �gSpunk�h and a brief excerpt from Ralph Ellison�fs Invisible Man for the ways in which they connect ghosts, race, and class.

Week 11: James and�c I (26 June 2007). We�fll be examining how James and the contemporary author of your choice use ghosts in the beginnings of their works, and to what ends.

Week 12: James and �c II (3 July 2007). We�fll be examining how James and the contemporary author of your choice use ghosts in the middles of their works, and to what ends.

Week 13: James and �c III (10 July 2007). We�fll be giving feedback on each other�fs work-in-progress presentations and examining how James and the contemporary author of your choice use ghosts at the ends of their works, and to what ends.

Week 14: James and �c IV (17 July 2007). We�fll be watching an American film that deals with ghosts, hauntings, or spirit possessions with the students from Fukuoka University taking another version of this course. (We�fll meet outside the ticket gate of the Fukudai-mae subway station between 10:15 and 10:30 am.)

Haunting America, Kyushu University, Spring 2007
Created: 4/9/07 5:35 pm
Last modified: 6/26/07 9:00 am
Webmaster: Bruce Simon, Fulbright Visiting Lecturer in American Studies, Kyushu University, Seinan Gakuin University, and Fukuoka University; Associate Professor of English, SUNY Fredonia