ENGL 394 - A Century of Horror

Credits: (3)
How might horror help us understand modern and contemporary British literature and culture? To explore that question, this class will study the “modernist gothic,” Angela Carter’s tales of vampires and werewolves, and read George Orwell’s 1984 as a horror novel along with its most famous successor, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. We’ll look at contemporary British horror from Clive Barker and David Peace, and we’ll turn to British film, seeing how zombies symbolize contemporary life in 28 Days Later and how Attack the Block challenges enduring forms of racism. This course fulfills the British/European literature requirement for the English major.