Strange Territories: American Weird Fiction

elective courses
proseminars

The seminar looks at American weird fiction of the first wave (from the mid-19th century to the 1930s), and its revival (the new weird, or the second wave of weird fiction) at the end of the 20th century with its further mutations in thematic diversity (from global problems to intimate relationships of family life and love) and aesthetic inspirations (the grotesque, surrealism, Dadaism, absurd, satire, bizzaro, nature writing, romance, to name but a few).

The seminar looks at American weird fiction of the first wave (from the mid-19th century to the 1930s), and its revival (the new weird, or the second wave of weird fiction) at the end of the 20th century with its further mutations in thematic diversity (from global problems to intimate relationships of family life and love) and aesthetic inspirations (the grotesque, surrealism, Dadaism, absurd, satire, bizzaro, nature writing, romance, to name but a few). During the seminar we will discuss both the poetics and the aesthetics of the weird in the context of other categories that describe various forms of the experience of horror or strangeness (the uncanny, the abject, the sublime, the monstrous, the

eerie). We will also look at the possibilities to use the concept of the weird as a theoretical, critical and philosophical notion (especially for speculative realism and object-oriented ontology). Such a perspective allows for a reading of contemporary reality and its various crises through the affective lenses of weird. In this context the seminar offers students the opportunity to broaden their research skills and methods as its major requirement is an extended analytical essay.

Literary texts sources:

Barron, Laird, The Imago Sequence and Other Stories (Night Shade Books, 2007);

Barron, Laird and Michael Kelly (eds.), Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Volume 1 (Undertow Publications, 2014);

Bierce, Ambrose, The Complete Short Stories of Ambrose Bierce (University of Nebraska Press, 1984);

Booth III, Max and Lori Michelle (eds.), Lost Signals: Horror Transmissions (Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing, 2018);

Chambers, Robert W., The Yellow Sign and Other Stories. The Complete Weird Tales of Other Stories, (ed.) S.T. Joshi (Chaosium, 2004);

Cisco, Michael, The San Veneficio Canon (Prime Books, 2004);

Evenson, Brian, A Collapse of Horses (Text Publishing Company, 2016);

Files, Gemma, Spectral Evidence (Trepidatio Publishing, 2018);

Isis, Justin and Quentin S. Crisp (eds.), Dadaoism. An Anthology (Chomu Press, 2012);

Kelly, Michael (ed.), Shadows and Tall Trees, Issue 6 (Undertow Publications, 2014);

Kelly, Michael (ed.), Shadows and Tall Trees, Issue 7 (Undertow Publications, 2017);

Kiernan, Caitlin R., The Ammonite Violin & Others (DIP, 2018);

Koja, Kathe and Michael Kelly (eds.), Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Volume 2 (Undertow Publications, 2015);

Ligotti, Thomas, Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe (Penguin Books, 2015);

Ligotti, Thomas, Theatro Grottesco (Virgin Books, 2008)

Lovecraft, H.P., Collected Fiction: A Variorum Edition, Vols 1-3, (ed) S.T. Joshi (Hippocampus Press, 2017);

Machado, Carmen Maria, Her Body & Other Parties (Serpent’s Tail, 2017);

Marshall, Helen and Michael Kelly, Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Volume 4 (Undertow Publications, 2017);

Padgett, Jon, The Secret of Ventriloquism (Dunhams Manor Press, 2016);

Price, Robert M. (ed.), The Hastur Cycle: Tales of Hastur, the King in Yellow and Carcosa (Chaosium Press, 2014);

Pulver, Joseph S. Sr. (ed.), A Season in Carcosa (Miskatonic River Press, 2012);

Rasnic Tem, Steve, UBO (Solaris, 2017)

Salaam, Kiini Ibura, When the World Wounds (Third Man Books, 2016);

Strantzas, Simon (ed.), Aickman’s Heirs (Undertow Publications, 2015);

Strantzas, Simon and Michael Kelly (eds.), Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Volume 3 (Undertow Publications, 2016);

Strantzas, Simon, Nothing is Everything (Undertow Publications, 2018);

VanderMeer, Ann and Jeff VanderMeer (eds.), The New Weird (Tachyon Publications, 2011);

VanderMeer, Ann and Jeff VanderMeer (eds.), The Weird. A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories (TOR, 2011);

VanderMeer, Jeff, Secret Life (Prime Books, 2006);

VanderMeer, Jeff, “Annihilation” in: Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy ()

Wehunt, Michael, Greener Pastures (Apex Publications, 2016)

Secondary sources

Asma, Stephen T., On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears (Oxford University Press, 2009);

Braidotti, Rosi, Metamorphoses. Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming (Polity, 2002);

Canavan, Gerry and Andrew Hageman, Global Weirding, Paradoxa Volume 28;

Comaroff, Joshua and Ong Ker-Shing, Horror in Architecture (Oro Editions, 2018);

Edwards, Justin D. and Rune Graulund, Grotesque (Routledge, 2013);

Fawver, Kurt, “Why Weird? Why Now? On the Rationale for Weird Fiction Resurgence” in: Thinking Horror. A Journal of Horror Philosophy, Volume 1, 2015;

Fisher, Mark, The Weird and the Eerie (Repeater Books, 2016);

Harman, Graham, Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy (Zero Books, 2011);

Harman, Graham, Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything (Pelican Books, 2018);

Harpham, Geoffrey Galt, On the Grotesque: Strategies of Contradiction in Art and Literature (The Davies Group Aurora, 2006);

Hodder, Ian, Entangled. An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012);

Houellebecq, Michel, H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life (Gollancz, 2008);

Joshi, S.T., The Weird Tale (Wildside Press, 1990);

Joshi, S.T., The Modern Weird Tale (McFarland & Company, 2001);

Joshi, S.T., Lovecraft and a World in Transition. Collected Essays on H.P. Lovecraft (Hippocampus Press, 2014);

Joshi, S.T., Varieties of the Weird Tale (Hippocampus Press, 2017);

Kearney, Richard, Strangers, Gods and Monsters (Routledge, 2003);

Ligotti, Thomas, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race (Penguin Books, 2018);

Lovecraft, H.P., Collected Essays, Volume 2: Literary Criticism, (eds.) S.T. Joshi (Hippocampus Press, 2004);

Mieville, China, “Weird Fiction” in: Routledge Companion to Science Fiction, (eds.) Mark Bould et al. (Routledge, 2013);

Morton, Timothy, Hyperobjects. Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World (University of Minnesota Press, 2013);

Morton, Timothy, Being Ecological (Pelican Books, 2018);

Poole, W. Scott, Wasteland: The Great War and the Origins of Modern Horror (Counterpoint, 2018);

Royle, Nicholas, The Uncanny (Manchester University Press, 2003);

Schweitzer, Darrell (ed.), The Thomas Ligotti Reader. Essays and Explorations (Wildside Press, 2003);

Sederholm, Carl H. And Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, The Age of Lovecraft (University of Minnesota Press, 2016);

Shaw, Philip, The Sublime (Routledge, 2017);

Thacker, Eugene, After Life (The University of Chicago Press, 2010);

Thacker, Eugene, In the Dust of This Planet. Horror of Philosophy Vol. 1 (Zero Books, 2011);

Thacker, Eugene, Starry Speculative Corpse. Horror of Philosophy Vol. 2 (Zero Books, 2015);

Thacker, Eugene, Tentacles Longer Than Night. Horror of Philosophy Vol. 3 (Zero Books, 2011);

Toop, David, Sinister Resonance: The Mediumship of the Listener (Continuum, 2010);

Trigg, Dylan, The Thing. A Phenomenology of Horror (Zero Books, 2014)

Trigg, Dylan, Topophobia. A Phenomenology of Anxiety (Bloomsbury, 2016);

Vilder, Anthony, The Architectural Uncanny: Essays on the Modern Unhomely (The MIT Press, 1994);

Weinstock, Jeffrey Andrew, “The New Weird” in: New Directions in Popular Fiction: Genre, Distribution, Reproduction, (ed.) Ken Gelder (Palgrave, 2016);

Willems, Brian, Speculative Realism and Science Fiction (Edinburgh University Press, 2017);

Zapf, Hubert, Literature as Cultural Ecology (Bloomsbury, 2017).

Upon completing the course student:

1. knows the most important weird fiction authors and their main thematic concerns as well as poetical and aesthetic tools;

2. is able to offer readings of weird fiction by means of the acquired interpretative tools;

3. understands the critical and philosophical potential of the weird as a concept;

4. knows and is able to apply a variety of research techniques and methodological approaches for the purposes of writing a longer research paper.

Continuous assessment during classes (preparation and participation) - 40%, research essay - 60%.

Essay grading scale:

100-97% 5!

96-91% 5

90-84% 4+

83-78%

67-60% 3

59-0% 2