4-Week: The Contemporary Gothic

This will serve as a crash-course overview of the Gothic genre with a specific focus on the contemporary Gothic story (although we’ll explore its origins as well). We’ll mostly read short stories that fall under this category, but also read a few novel excerpts as well as watch film clips both as homework and together in class. Channeling what we learn about the Gothic tradition and the motifs it relies upon, participants will be guided through a series of prompts and exercises designed to spark the creation or continuation of a Gothic short story or novel just as Dr. Frankenstein animated his monster by way of a strategically channeled lightning bolt. These prompts can also help a writer resurrect a tale that has gone stale or to enrich a work-in-progress. No matter what, be prepared to peel away the yellow wallpaper or wander the fog-heavy moors or brave a dark and dreary night from a wuthering height. The weather will be extreme, the castles crumbling, and each potential landscape haunted by brooding hero-villains, mad women confined to the attic, doppelgangers, ghosts, and/or monsters only with a modern day zeitgeist at the helm. We’ll explore how writers have used the Gothic tradition as a mode for writing the marginalized experience. There will be an emphasis on studying women writers; queer writers; and writers of color. Each week there will be reading homework plus optional only writing exercises and then time the next week for participants to share what they might have generated and for others to listen and learn that way. Come write the sublime and the uncanny.