Undergraduate Course: Global Gothic (ENLI10443)
Course Outline
| School | School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 4 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course examines modern and contemporary Gothic literature from around the world, focusing on the relationship between the Gothic, empire, and decolonisation. It contends that modern and contemporary Gothic is a thoroughly global genre, and that the most disturbing, boundary-pushing, and weird Gothic writing can be found beyond the familiar British and American canons. |
| Course description |
Academic Description
Authors turn to the Gothic at times of social crisis and upheaval because of its capacities to mediate deep cultural fears and anxieties. Its origins are associated with the height of empire - yet Gothic modes have also been an important means through which postcolonial writers have responded to the violence of imperial rule and its ongoing aftermaths. This course asks how modern and contemporary writers from around the world have adapted Gothic and irrealist literary forms to engage with topics including colonialism and neocolonialism; plantation slavery; environmental extraction and contamination; industrialised animal agriculture; the War on Terror; the Arab Spring; and the promise and failures of various national revolutions and independence movements. Themes may include: body horror; body swapping; cannibalism; doppelgangers; ghosts; magic and vodou; mermaids and water spirits; monsters; zombies; and conflicts between rationalist science and Indigenous folklore. Texts will primarily have been written after the formal end of colonisation (c. 1950 - to the present), and may include a range of written and visual media, engaging with adjacent genres including sci-fi, fantasy and horror. We will consider the extent to which the social and ecological deformations wrought by colonial rule inevitably generate Gothic forms of writing, and how Global Gothic texts change our understanding of the Gothic itself.
Outline Content
Texts may include: Ahmed Al-Saadawi, Frankenstein in Baghdad (2013); short stories by Hassan Blasim and Sinan Antoon; Basma Abdel-Aziz, The Queue (2016); Sonallah Ibrahim, The Committee (1988), Sayed Kashua, Second Person Singular (2010); Agustina Bazterrica, Tender is the Flesh (2017); Samanta Schweblin, Fever Dream (2014); José Donoso, The Obscene Bird of Night (1960); short stories from authors including Mariana Enriquez and Guadelupe Nettel; Jordan Peele, Get Out (2014); Lauren Beukes, Zoo City (2010); Eben Venter, Trencherman (2016); short stories by Henrietta Rose-Innes; Shani Mootoo, Cereus Blooms at Night (1996); Cyril Dabydeen, Dark Swirl (1988); Wilson Harris, Palace of the Peacock (1960); Ana Lily Amirpour, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014), Jacques Tourneur, I Walked with a Zombie (1943). We may also draw on classic texts in the Gothic and adjacent genres in order to orient our readings. These may include work by authors including Joseph Conrad, H. Rider Haggard, Bram Stoker, and H.P. Lovecraft.
Student Learning Experience
The course is taught through a weekly two-hour seminar. Students will be expected to come to seminars having read course texts and met in small groups before seminars to prepare answers to specific questions set in advance. They should come to the seminar ready to present and discuss their ideas with peers in class through facilitated discussion. Discussions may draw on relevant material and examples from modern and contemporary , history, culture, and politics. Students will complete two marked assessments: a close reading and a final essay. The final essay (70%) will demonstrate achievement of learning outcomes 1-5. The thinkpieces (30%) will demonstrate achievement of LO2-4.
Indicative Reading List
Essential:
Ahmed Al-Saadawi, Frankenstein in Baghdad (2013)
Sinan Antoon, The Corpse Washer (2013)
Hassan Blasim, The Corpse Exhibition: And Other Stories of Iraq (2017)
Hassan Blasim (ed), Iraq+100: Stories from a Century after the Invasion (Comma Press, 2016)
Agustina Bazterrica, Tender is the Flesh (2017)
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness and Other Tales (OUP 2008)
Wilson Harris, Palace of the Peacock (1960)
HP Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories (Penguin, 2002)
Shani Mootoo, Cereus Blooms at Night (1996)
Samanta Schweblin, Fever Dream (2014)
Bram Stoker, Dracula (Broadview, 1997)
Henrietta Rose-Innes, Animalia Paradoxa (2019)
Eben Venter, Trencherman (2016)
Recommended:
Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, Helen Tiffin (eds.) The postcolonial studies reader (Routledge, 2025)
Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, Helen Tiffin (eds.), Postcolonial studies : the key concepts (Routledge; 2013)
Bartolovich, Crystal and Neil Lazarus (eds.), Marxism, modernity, and postcolonial studies (Cambridge University Press, 2002)
Glennis Byron and Dale Townshend, eds., The Gothic World (Routledge, 2013)
Glennis Byron (ed), Globalgothic (Manchester University Press, 2013)
Césaire, Aime, Discourse on Colonialism, trans. by Joan Pinkham (Monthly Review, 2000 [1955])
Supriya Chaudhuri, Josephine McDonagh, Brian H. Murray and Rajeswari Sunder Rajan (eds.), Commodities and cultures in the colonial world (Routledge, 2018)
Sybil Newton Cooksey and Tashima Thomas, Afro-Gothic, liquid blackness 6:2 (2022): 413.
Davis, Mike, Late Victorian Hholocausts: El Niño famines and the making of the third world (Verso, 2002)
Rebecca Duncan and Rebekah Cumpsty (eds), The Cambridge Companion to World Gothic Literature (2026)
Rebecca Duncan (ed), The Edinburgh Companion to Globalgothic (Edinburgh University Press, 2023)
Rebecca Duncan, South African Gothic: Anxiety and creative dissent in the post-apartheid imagination and beyond (University of Wales Press, 2018)
Justin D. Edwards and Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet (eds), The Gothic in Contemporary Literature and Popular Culture: Pop Goth (Routledge, 2012)
Fanon, Frantz, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. by Constance Farrington (Penguin: 2001 [1967])
Nick Groom, The Gothic: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2012)
Justin D. Edwards and Sandra G. T. Vasconcelos, Tropical Gothic in Literature and Culture: The Americas (Routledge, 2016)
Harding, Sandra G., The postcolonial science and technology studies reader (Duke University Press; 2011)
Huggan, Graham, The Oxford handbook of postcolonial studies (Oxford University Press; 2013)
Huggan, Graham, and Tiffin, Helen, Postcolonial ecocriticism: literature, animals, environment (Routledge; 2015)
Mukherjee, Upamanyu Pablo, Postcolonial environments: nature, culture and the contemporary Indian novel in English (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010)
Lazarus, Neil, The Postcolonial Unconscious (Cambridge UP, 2011)
Lazarus, Neil, The Cambridge companion to postcolonial literary studies (Cambridge University Press; 2004)
Loomba, Ania, Postcolonial studies and beyond (Duke UP, 2005)
McLeod, John, The Routledge companion to postcolonial studies (Routledge; 2007)
Michael Niblett, World Literature and Ecology: The Aesthetics of Commodity Frontiers, 1890-1945 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)
Michael Niblett and Chris Campbell (eds), The Caribbean: Aesthetics, World-Ecology, Politics (Liverpool UP, 2016)
Michael Niblett, The Caribbean Novel since 1945: Cultural Practice, Form, and the Nation-State (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2012)
Michael Niblett, Chris Campbell and Kerstin Oloff (eds), Literary and Cultural Production, World-Ecology, and the Global Food System (Palgrave, 2021)
Nixon, Rob, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (Harvard UP, 2011)
Kerstin Oloff, Ecology of the Zombie: World-Culture and the Monstrous (Liverpool UP, 2023)
Parry, Benita, Postcolonial studies: a materialist critique (Routledge; 2004)
Nancy Lee.; Watts, Michael J. (eds), Violent environments (Cornell University Press, 2001)
David Punter, ed., A New Companion to the Gothic (Oxford, UK, and Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2015)
Alyson Rudd, Postcolonial Gothic Fictions from the Caribbean, Canada, Australian and New Zealand (Cardiff, UK: Wales University Press, 2010)
Edward Said, Orientalism (Vintage, 1978)
Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (Chatto and Windus, 1993)
Andrew Smith and William Hughes, EcoGothic (Manchester UP, 2013)
Lucy Swanson, The Zombie in Contemporary French Caribbean Fiction (Liverpool UP, 2023)
Spencer, Robert and Anastasia Valassopoulos, Postcolonial locations: new issues and directions in postcolonial studies (Routledge, 2021)
Leila Taylor, Darkly: Black History and America's Gothic Soul (Repeater, 2019)
Sara Wasson and Emily Alder, eds., Gothic Science Fiction 1980-2010 (Liverpool University Press, 2014)
Maisha Wester (ed), Twenty-First-Century Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion (Edinburgh University Press, 2019)
Maisha Wester, African American Gothic: Screams from Shadowed Places (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)
Warwick Research Collective (WReC), Combined and Uneven Development: Towards a New Theory of World-Literature (Liverpool UP, 2015)
Young, Robert J.C., Empire, colony, postcolony (John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2015)
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
|
Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | This course is only available to students studying in LLC. It is available to visiting students. |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2026/27, Not available to visiting students (SS1)
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Quota: 0 |
| Course Start |
Semester 1 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 20,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
176 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
|
| Additional Information (Assessment) |
100% coursework, consisting of:
1x 3,000-word final essay (70%)
1x Close reading assessment, 2,000 words total (30%). Students will select their own passage of an assigned text to close read, in consultation with the convenor.
Final essay meets LO1, LO2, LO3, LO4, LO5
Close reading meets LO2, LO3, LO4 |
| Feedback |
Detailed written feedback will be provided on each element of assessment. Verbal follow-up feedback from the convenor will be available in office hours on request. |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Analyse and evaluate a range of approaches to global gothic literature
- Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the stylistic techniques of gothic and related genres
- Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of literary theory, particularly including debates, trends, and relevant critical vocabulary in world literature and postcolonial studies
- Construct clear and effective critical arguments in written prose with respect for scholarly accuracy and referencing conventions
- Demonstrate awareness of the relationship between literary aesthetics and historical and political contexts
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
On this course, students will read and evaluate complex literary and theoretical texts from a range of perspectives. They will learn to identify key themes of literary and theoretical texts, and situate course texts within literary and theoretical traditions, and within historical and political contexts. Through engaging with assigned secondary texts, students will learn to assess the merits of the authors' claims, evaluate these claims alongside competing arguments, and, through individual reflection, group discussion, and written assessments, come to informed and reasoned conclusions about their own beliefs.
This process develops key Edinburgh graduate attributes. It relies on and develops student curiosity about Gothic and world literature, including historical contexts and relevance to ongoing cultural and political debates. In doing so, it furthers the capacities of students to make a positive difference through considering important social issues. Students will gain courage to expand and fulfil their potential through reflecting on the relationship between course topics and historical and current global issues. Students will be encouraged to connect course topics to wider social issues, promoting local and global engagement.
The course builds further attributes of Edinburgh graduates through selection of texts, mode of study, and modes of assessment. Course texts are varied, complex, and provocative. By analysing texts in context, students will gain skills in creative problem-solving and research, and in critical and reflective thought. Evaluating Global Gothic texts through group discussion and considering arguments for and against different critical perspectives will develop students' communication skills, helping them become effective and influential contributors.
Reading global literature is ideal training for developing the mindsets of Edinburgh graduates. The focus of this course on questions of social injustice sets students up to see academic learning as means of making a difference to their own lives and the wider world, and to become lifelong learners. The emphasis in this course on the connection between literature and the world will encourage students to develop an informed, international perspective. |
| Keywords | Gothic,Genre Fiction,Empire,Race,Environment,Nature,Animals,gender,capitalism,critical theory |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Hannah Boast
Tel:
Email: hboast@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | |
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