ENGL 355
Motherhood and Horror: The Movie Spring 2024
Division I Writing Skills

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 Henry Selick’s Coraline, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, Jee-Woo Kim’s A Tale of Two Sisters, Juan Antonio Bayona’s The Orphanage, Jordan Peele’s Get Out, Bong Joon Ho’s Mother, Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s 28 Weeks Later, and Veronika Franz’s and Severin Fiala’s Goodnight Mommy.