Sean Parson
Politics of Horror (Spring 2018)
Part 1: Introduction to Cultural Studies and Horror
Week 1:
Tuesday, January 16: Intro to the class
Reading: Read the syllabus
Thursday, January 18: Why Horror?
Film: Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922)
Reading: Mathias Clasen, Why Horror Seduces, ch. 2 “How Horror Works: The Evolution andstimulation of negative emotions”
Week 2:
Tuesday, January 23rd: Criticism vs. review
Reading: Iam Bogost, How to Talk about Videogames, Intro: “Nobody asked for a toaster critic: Doing Videogame Criticism.”
Ian Bogost, How to Talk about Videogames, ch 3 “The Blue Shell Is Everything That’s Wrong with America”
Thursday, January 25th: Encoding and Decoding
Film:• Psycho (1960)
Reading: Stuart Hall “Encoding and Decoding
Week 3:
Tuesday January 30th: Horror and Liberalism?
Readings: Elisabeth Anker “The Liberalism of Horror”, Social Research Vol. 81, no. 4 (2014)
Part 2: Zombies!
Thursday February 1st: Zombie, history and origin
Film: I walked with a Zombie (1943)
Reading: Ian Olney, Zombie Cinema, ch. 1 “Black Mask, White Zombies”
Week 4:
Tuesday February 6th: Zombies and Political Space
Readings: Ian Olney, Zombie Cinema, ch. 2 “Consumer Culture”
Thursday February 8th: Zombies and Capitalism
Film: Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Reading: Camilla Fojas, Zombies, Migrants and Queers: Race and Crisis Capitalism in Pop Culture ch. 4 “Zombie Capitalism: Night of the Living Debt”
Week 5:
Tuesday, February 13th: Zombies
Readings: Camilla Fojas, Zombies, Migrants and Queers: Race and Crisis Capitalism in Pop Culture ch.6 “Sinkholes and Seismic Shifts: Ecological and Other Disasters”
Part 4: Gender, Misogyny and Agency in Horror
Week 8:
Tuesday, March 6th: Gendered and the Horror Film
Readings: Cynthia Freeland, “Feminist Frameworks for Horror Films” from Film Theory and Criticism, (1996)
Thursday, March 8th: Gender and Agency
Film: The Witch (2015)Reading:• Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch, ch. 4 “The Great European Witch-hunt”
Week 9:
Tuesday March 13th: Gender Violence and Women’s Agency
Readings: Carol Clover, Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film, ch. 1 “HerBody, Himself”
Thursday, March 15th: Feminist Revenge Films
Film: Teeth (2007)
Reading: Carol Clover, Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film, ch. 3“Getting Even”
Week 11
:Tuesday March 27th: Catch-up day
Reading: NO ADDITIONAL READING
Thursday March 29th: Male Anxiety, Misogyny, and Motherhood
Film: Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
Reading: Lucy Fisher, “Birth Traumas: Parturition and Horror in Rosemary’s Baby” from The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film
Week 12
Tuesday, April 3rd: Queer Horror?
Reading: Sam S. Miller, “Chapter 11. Assimilation and the Queer Monster” from Horror After9/11Thursday April 5th: Queer horror
Film: The Babadook (2014)
Readings: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/rabbit-holes/the-babadook-is-a-frightening-fabulousnew-gay-icon• https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/ywzwej/inside-the-babadiscourse-how-the-babadookbecame-a-queer-icon
Part 3: The Legacy of Slavery and the horror of White Supremacy
Thursday, February 15th: The Horror of Slavery
Film:• The Girl With All the Gifts (2017)
Reading: Frank B. Wilderson III, “Blacks and the Master/Slave Relationship” from Afro-Pessimisman Introduction
Week 6:
Tuesday, February 20th:
Reading: Annalee Newitz, Pretend We are Dead: Capitalist Monsters in American Pop Culture, Ch. 3“The Undead: A Haunted Whiteness”
Thursday, February 22nd:
Film: Excerpts from Birth of a Nation (1915); Birth of a Nation (2016)
Reading: Nikhil Singh, “The Whiteness of Police” from American Quarterly Vol. 4 (2014)
Week 7:
Tuesday, February 27th: Race and Social Death
Reading: “Get the Fuck Outta Here: A Dialogue on Jordon Peele’s GET OUT” found at https://medium.com/@SonofBaldwin/get-the-fuck-outta-here-a-dialogue-on-jordan-peelesget-out-831fef18b2b3
Dianca London “’Get Out’ and The Revolutionary Act of Subverting the white Gaze” found at https://theestablishment.co/get-out-and-the-revolutionary-act-of-subverting-the-whitegaze-c769cb620496
Thursday:
Film: Get Out
Readings: Preston Mitchum, “Get Out Provides that ‘nice racism’ and White Liberalism are Never to be Trusted” found at https://www.theroot.com/get-out-proves-that-nice-racism-and-whiteliberalism-1792955235
Aisha Harris, “The Most Terrifying Villain in Get Out is white Womanhood” found athttp://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2017/07/how_get_out_positions_white_womanhood_as_the_most_horrifying_villain_of.html
Ms. Willis “The Most Overlooked & Underrated Characters in ‘Get Out’ are Black Women”found at https://movietime.guru/black-women-in-get-out-d87e0aa9d7c7
Kinitra Brooks, “What Becky Gotta Do to get Murked? White Womanhood in Jordan Peele’s Get Out” Found at http://verysmartbrothas.com/what-becky-gotta-do-to-get-murkedwhite-womanhood-in-jordan-peeles-get-out
Part 4: Trauma, National Identity, and Horror
Week 13
Tuesday, April 10th: Horror and National Trauma
Readings: Adam Lowenstein, Shocking Representation: Historical Trauma, National Cinema, and the Horror Film, “Introduction: the Allegorical moment”
Thursday: April 12th: Hororrism and War
Film: The Devils Backbone (2001)
Readings: François Debrix, “Horror beyond death: Geopolitics and the Pulverization of the human”,New Formations: A journal of Culture/Theory/Politics, vol 89-90 (2017)
Week 14:
Tuesday April 17th: Horror, Gender, and Islam
Film: A Girl Walks Home At Night
Reading:•TBA
Thursday, April 19th: Korean Conflict
Film: Train to Busan
Readings:• TBA
Part 5: Capitalism, Anxiety, and Sacrifice
Week 15
Tuesday April 24th: Class, capitalism, and Inequality
Film: Purge: Anarchy (2014)
Readings: Ben Brucato, “An American Exception: The Counter-Insurrectionary Function of the ColorLine” from Why Don’t the Poor Rise up?
Thursday April 26th: The end of the world
Film: Cabin in the woods
Readings:• Sean Parson “Cthulhuscene: Ecological Catastrophe, Horror, and the Politics of Suvivalism”(DRAFT)
