ENGL 373
Troubled Spirits
Last Offered Spring 2020
Division I
This course is not offered in the current catalog or this is a previous listing for a current course.

“Trouble” and “spirit” are both words with various and contrasting meanings and surprising overlaps. To be troubled is one thing, to be in trouble can mean several quite different things. Spirit began as breath, yet it transcended breathing. Hoping to soothe and grasp the troubled spirits of their own moment, writers and shamans often seek to conjure up spirits from the past. Some wish to exorcise those spirits, others to be haunted by them. This course will examine the manifestations of troubled spirits in works by American writers, especially African and Native Americans and white Southerners. The authors will include Edgar Allan Poe, William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, Leslie Marmon Silko, N. Scott Momaday, H. P. Lovecraft, Joy Harjo, Alice Walker, Toni Cade Bambara, and Randall Keenan.