Browse Hierarchy ESH6114: The Past Persists: Hauntings & Memory in Creative Writing

Writers have long-used hauntings to interrogate what it means when the past persists into the present. Stories of haunted houses reveal the social, political, and personal consequences of unsettled business. By reading literature that explores hauntings and their attendant themes -- memory, history, trauma, violence -- we will investigate the ways writers have used this genre to unearth that which has been buried. We'll become fluent in the modes of the literary haunting, and, through a mixture of seminar discussion and workshops, explore how we can use it in our own writing to uncover the hidden.