AP English Literature

If you’re a fan of horror, or if you wikipedia the plots of horror movies and don’t ever end up watching them, you might be familiar with how the often overlooked genre can engage in deeper social critique. In this course, we will be looking at a variety of subtly to moderately spooky stories and movies to think through how the genre might convey the horrors of being a woman in the world. We will look at how horror has both perpetuated and subverted tropes such as the (psychologically) “mad” woman and the “Final Girl”; we will think about what these movies tell us about what women have to fear, and what society fears about women. We will try to answer: Are these women doomed to their fates to find that the monster is still alive? Or is there power to be found in haunting?

Possible Movies:

Us, Jordan Peele

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, Ana Lily Amanpour

Parasite, Bong Joon€ho

The Babadook, Jennifer Kent

Possible Texts:

Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado

Severance, Ling Ma

I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem, Maryse Conde

Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon