French Studies 597U - ST- The Undead Souths

Paying due attention to their affiliations with Francophone and French Creole cultures and mythologies of the Caribbean and the American South, this course will explore representations of the undead, such as zombies, vampires, and related paranormal creatures of the Southern Gothic tradition on film and television. We shall examine popular entertainment media narratives of such paranormal phenomena and related critical scholarship, treating them as figures and tropes of displaced social anxieties and commentaries through which evolving personal, cultural, historical and sociopolitical themes are articulated and negotiated. Themes to be examined would include, the history of slavery, colonial and postcolonial relations, Creolization, religion, cultural difference, globalization, minority relations, civil rights, issues of sexuality, money, class relations, terror, ecological degradation, as well as questions of dystopian, utopian, apocalyptic, and post-apocalyptic narrative interest. Course taught in English.