Department of English

Is there an affinity between women and ghosts, or do we imagine it? Are women more likely to see ghosts–or to be them? What happens to haunted men and manhood? Do hauntings change over time?
We will explore these and other questions by examining a series of nineteenth-century and twentieth-century ghost tales and films. We shall read works by Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell, Vernon Lee, Henry James, M. R. James, Edith Wharton, Shirley Jackson, Pat Barker, and others; films will include The Ghost and Mrs. Muir , The Innocents, and The Haunting. (Robert Wise version).
Each student will write a 10-page paper on some work or works not covered on the syllabus. In addition, there will probably be some sort of midterm and final examination.