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: •
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
Dianca London “’Get Out’ and The Revolutionary Act of Subverting the white Gaze” found at
Thursday:
Film: Get Out
Readings: Preston Mitchum, “Get Out Provides that ‘nice racism’ and White Liberalism are Never to be Trusted” found at
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
Kinitra Brooks, “What Becky Gotta Do to get Murked? White Womanhood in Jordan Peele’s Get Out” Found at
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)
