Postcolonial Horror: Political Specters in Non-Western Literature and Film

Catalog description

This course explores the genre of “postcolonial horror” in contemporary non-Western literature. How are world writers and filmmakers utilizing elements of horror— including shock, supernaturalism, gore, and psychological realism— to derange viewers’ relationships to everyday life? Can horror capture controversial themes like war, genocide, and human rights crimes without exploiting violence? Or does horror merely objectify human suffering to reproduce sexist, racist, homophobic, and xenophobic stereotypes? We will take a transnational, decolonial feminist approach to supernatural motifs, including ghosts, zombies, aliens, witches, vampires, demons, and psychopaths, in films and fiction from Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, and South Asia.