Identity, Citizenship, and the Rhetoric of American Horror Film

Catalog description

Concentrated on American horror film from the 1930s to the present, the course will address the role of horror in the creation of stories told about the United States, its history, and its people. The course examines horror films rhetorically and social scientifically. Specifically, the course incorporates a rhetorical lens by exploring horror films as acts of constitutive rhetoric, that dramatize and interrogate the ways people use language and images to tell stories and foster identification within and between citizens and to constitute an "American identity." The course also incorporates a social scientific lens by examining horror films' association with identity/US identities using media effects theories, which include perspectives associated with audience use and reception. Both perspectives (rhetoric and media effects) are used to consider the roles of U.S. social, political, and economic contexts in the production/construction of horror films for the stories they tell and the characters they construct. For example, the course will examine the ways that American horror films respond to fear and anxiety in response to specific cultural contexts such as the emergence of science, xenophobia/marginalized populations, various social movements, economics, and war.