gb - Englisches Seminar - Ruhr-Universität Bochum

Count Dracula and Carmilla, we will look at Herbert G. de Lisser’s The White Witch of
Rose Hall (1929), which features an exploitative Caribbean post-colonial female
vampire, Poppy Z. Brite’s 1992 novel Lost Souls (whose entire cast of vampires
features an array of gendered identity problems) and also Mudrooroo Narogin’s The
Undying (1998), a gothic novel set in aboriginal Australia.
Please read Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Sheridan Le Fanu’s “Carmilla” before the
beginning of class. Additional primary and secondary materials will be uploaded onto
Moodle. [A caveat: if you’re mainly interested in the Twilight series or zombie movies
you’ll be disappointed – the course is academic and therefore quite theory-oriented.]
Assessment/requirements: active participation, presentation, written assignment/s or
term paper (wissenschaftliche Hausarbeit).
050 648 Freitag
“To turn from this great world of Gentlemen, to the small lowly sphere” – The Cultural
Work of Local Color, 4 CP
___________________________________________________________________
2 st. mo 16-18 GABF 04/613 Süd
The term “Local Color” designates a body of mostly short prose texts, written in the
second half of the 19th century. It was devoted to specific regions of the U.S., i.e. the
West, the South, or the rural East coast, and tells much about the culture and the
customs of these regions. Yet because of its devotion to “the small lowly sphere,” i.e.
regional matters, Local Color has long been thought to be of lesser value than
realism, the dominant literary method of the time. By an introduction to selected Local
Color texts and their cultural contexts, this judgement will be re-evaluated in the
seminar. The texts will be made available in a reader or on Blackboard.
Assessment/requirements: Übung: active participation, written assignments;
Seminar: the above, and 10-page term paper (wissenschaftliche Hausarbeit).