Admission requirements
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Description
In Spirit Matters, students will explore the appeal, form and function of one of the most successful genres of popular culture since the late eighteenth-century: supernatural fiction. By means of close-textual analysis, classroom debate, as well as several reader-response experiments students will search for answers to questions concerning the relationship between supernatural fiction and forms of belief and faith; the relationship between the supernatural and society; the differentiation between supernatural fiction and other “fantastic” genres such as fantasy, horror and science fiction; the supernatural realm as an imaginary and creative environment; and the historical grounding of literary representations of the supernatural. Spirit Matters is a 500 level literature course, which means that students participating in the course are expected to have mastered the basic reading, writing and research skills taught at undergraduate level.
Course objectives
This course aims to give students of English a thorough knowledge and understanding of the history of Supernatural fiction in English, as well as a greater insight into the broader cultural schema of the supernatural and its relations to other forms of fantastic fiction, forms of belief and society. By means of several reader-response experiments, students will be challenged to concretize their own imaginary (re-)productions of the supernatural realm, in relation to the idea of the supernatural realm as an environment. By means of a research-essay project of a self-chosen topic students will be challenged to develop their own critical theory of supernatural fiction.
Timetable
Wednesday 13.00-15.00
The timetable will be available by July 1st on the website.
Mode of instruction
Seminars, participation in reader-response experiments
Assessment method
Participation in reader-response experiments (20%)
A reading journal to be submitted first during the mid-term study week, and again at the end of the semester (20%)
An extensive research essay, in which the student shows the capability to independently research the chosen topic, to write a coherent analytical argument and to theorize about the appeal, form and function of supernatural fiction (5000-6000 words). The essay needs to be presented according to the MLA stylesheet (60%)
Blackboard
Blackboard will be available for the distribution of study materials and to post announcements concerning the course
Reading list
Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress, Part I (Oxford World’s Classics)
Radcliffe, The Romance of the Forest (Oxford World’s Classics)
Brown, Wieland (Oxford World’s Classics)
Bulwer, The Pilgrim’s of the Rhine (etext)
Hawthorne, The Marble Faun (Oxford World’s Classics)
Hodgson, The House on the Borderland (etext)
Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House (Penguin)
King, Christine (Hodder)
Cherryh, The Dreaming Tree (Signet)
Registration
Students should register through uSis. Exchange students cannot register through uSis, but must see the director of studies and register with her. If you have any questions, please contact the departmental office, tel. 071 5272144 or mail: english@hum.leidenuniv.nl.
Exchange and Study Abroad students, please see the Study in Leiden website for information on how to apply
Contact information
Departmental Office English Language and Culture, P.N. van Eyckhof 4, room 102C. Tel. 071 5272144; or mail english@hum.leidenuniv.nl.
Studentcounsellor Bachelor: Ms T.D. Obbens, P.N. van Eyckhof 4, room 103B.
Coordinator of Studies Master: Ms T.D. Obbens, P.N. van Eyckhof 4, room 103B.