Ghost Stories

First-year students in Shuchi Kapila’s tutorial take a walk on the supernatural side as they study ghosts and literary ghost stories.

In the course, Ghost Stories, the students will explore questions such as:

• Do such fantasies provide an escape from an oppressive reality into a wish-fulfilling world or do they present an exaggerated or distorted version of the “real” world?
• What are literary ghosts and monsters?
• Are they particular to the historical moment in which they appear?

Texts for the course will include:

• Bram Stoker’s Dracula,
• Toni Morrison’s Beloved,
• Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat,” and
• Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper.”