ENGL 380
Motherhood and Horror: The Movie Spring 2018
Division I Writing Skills
This is not the current course catalog

Horror might be the most durable of film genres as well as the genre that’s done the most work in terms of transforming the medium as a whole, and its transgressive nature has insured it attention, giving its most famous texts enormous cultural reach when it comes to ongoing conversations as to what defines evil, what constitutes normality, or what comprises the taboo. A look at the particular anxieties the genre has–especially recently–mobilized through its portraits of mothers and motherhood. The course will also touch on other genres that suggest an unspeakable invisible beneath the maternal quotidian. Films to be studied will include Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby, Jee-Woo Kim’s A Tale of Two Sisters, Juan Antonio Bayona’s The Orphanage, Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook, James Cameron’s Aliens, Michael Curtiz’s Mildred Pierce, Mike Nichols’ Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s 28 Weeks Later, and Veronika Franz’s and Severin Fiala’s Goodnight Mommy.