HENK00035U English, 2017 curriculum - Free topic 5: Literary Ghosts: Cultural Haunting in British and American Fiction + Fiction Now: Narrative, Media, and Theory in the 21st Century

Literary Ghosts: Cultural Haunting in British and American Fiction

Ghost stories have multiple meanings, but one recurrent theme is the challenging of order and rationality. The ghost is often an unwanted return of what is terrible, marginal, hidden, or forgotten. The spectral manifestation may represent the guilt of the nation’s past or what has been repressed in the human mind. The ghost is therefore responsible for bringing about a crisis in the present, inviting social re-evaluation and political reflection.

Fiction Now: Narrative, Media and Theory in the 21st Century

As a form — material and generic -- the novel seems to have survived the digital turn better than expected. But what is it like to read books alongside connected devices, films, and updates? What do novelists themselves make of this juxtaposition? And perhaps most provocatively: if we were once hardwired to think of our selves and our existence through books, how do books work now that we are mediated by other devices?