TuTh, 9:30 AM-10:45 AM, SY 002
Required film screening: Tu, 7:15 PM-10:15 PM, BH 235

Instructor: Joan Hawkins
E-Mail: jchawkin@indiana.edu
Office: C2 211
Phone: 855-1548

This course takes a serious look at horror as a cultural and
cinematic form, and attempts to draw some conclusions about
its “politics”—sexual, ethnic, familial, economic etc.  How has
horror dealt with social changes in sexual mores. gender roles and
family structure, political and economic events, the increasing role
of technology in our lives, AIDS, addiction?  Is horror essentially
conservative or does it challenge accepted social paradigms?  What
is its relationship to mainstream cinema and to cultural criticism
at large? Films will include: Meet Me in St. Louis, George Romero’s
original Night of the Living Dead, Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom,
Hitchcock’s Psycho, and units on European horror, vampire films,
Asian Extreme horror, trash, experimental horror and early horror.

Written work will consist of two papers and a final exam.

Readings:

Essays on e-reserve

Timothy Corrigan, A Short Guide to Writing About Film (Longman 2007)
0321412281

Mark Jancovich, Horror: The Film Reader (Routledge, 2001) 978-0-415-
23562-4

Bram Stoker, Dracula