Formerly relegated to scheduled weeks on Jane Austenâs Northanger Abbey (1818) and its accompanying horrid novels, or else, considered only in passing in wider surveys of the Enlightenment in traditional English degrees (Powell and Smith 2006: 2; Hughes 2006: 16â18), the Gothic has, since the 1980s, crept its way into the syllabi of schools and universities and become a crucial literary mode. As the critical reputation and value of the Gothic have gone from strength to strengthâespecially since the foundation of the International Gothic Association in 1991 and the journal Gothic Studies in 1999âthe desire to learn about it has also grown at an exponential rate. 1 The study of the Gothic first spread via specialised MA programmes in the UK and Ireland. 2 Andrew Smith identified four programmes that contained a significant amount of Gothic material in 2006: those provided by the Universities of Stirling, Glamorgan and Kingston in the UK, and by Trinity College Dublin in Ireland (Smith 2006: 182). To these, we must now add the MA English Studies: The Gothic, offered by Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU), and the MA in Gothic: Culture, Subculture, Counterculture, offered by St Maryâs University, Twickenham, as well as MAs elsewhere that include at least one Gothic module (those offered by, for example, Birkbeck College (University of London), Lancaster University and the University of Hertfordshire). 3 Since 2009, the Gothic has also been part of A-Level English literature options (Priest 2011), which has meant, firstly, that students come to BA degrees having some notional knowledge; secondly, that universities like Manchester Metropolitan now run A-Level Gothic Study days; and, thirdly, that Continuing Professional Development courses on the teaching of the Gothic have also begun to blossom. 4 It is, currently, difficult to find degree programmes in the UK which do not teach the Gothic, however cursorily, as part of broader modules on Romanticism, the Enlightenment, Victorian fiction and the fin-de-siècle. 5 The interest in contemporary permutations of the Gothic, especially since Catherine Spoonerâs well-received book on the topic (2006), has also meant that universities increasingly have research expertise in this area to offer specific modules covering the Modern (twentieth century) and the Contemporary Gothic (post-millennial, generally, but also turn-of-the-century).
The gradual growth in teaching in Modern and Contemporary Gothic has developed alongside a sustained critical enthusiasm for the field and its texts, and this in turn has led to the publication of a number of introductions to the topic (Groom 2012; Botting 2013; Smith 2013), as well as study guides and companions (Stevens 2000; Hogle 2002; Punter and Byron 2004; Wright 2007; Chaplin 2011). 6 What is interesting is that debates around the limitations connected to the genre/mode debate, most obviously the laxity of the term âGothicâ and its indiscriminate application to all things dark, can play out, on a micro-level, in the classroom, where generic questioning may be at its most active. This chapter seeks to expand on previous research on the teaching of the Gothic (Hoeveler and Heller 2003; Powell and Smith 2006) and to explore some of the key issues that lie at the heart of Gothic Studies today.
As a researcher in the Gothic, I am familiar with the landscape of the field, but my conclusions are largely grounded on my own experience co-teaching, leading or co-designing the following Gothic modules in the UK: âScreening the Gothicâ (MA level 2015), âGothic and Modernityâ (MA level 2013), Modern Gothic (final year undergraduate 2014) and Gothic and Gender (second year undergraduate 2011), as well as âContemporary Literature in Englishâ (final year undergraduate 2012), which included a Gothic component. 7 However, my thoughts are also influenced by my participation in Catherine Spoonerâs âContemporary Gothicâ MA module (Lancaster University 2010â11), which originally made me consider the possible generic constraints of the Gothic, and in two Contemporary Gothic reading groups: the Modern and Contemporary Gothic reading group at MMU, which I have attended from 2013 to 2016, and the Contemporary Gothic reading group in Lancaster, which I attended from 2009 to 2012. These groups have been invaluable in assessing contemporary perceptions of the Gothic, especially as they affect evaluations of recent texts that may, in some cases, have received little or no critical attention. 8 In this chapter, I will focus on how the pedagogic challenges connected to curriculum design of Modern and Contemporary Gothic modules reflect the difficulties of the theorisation of the Gothic in academic research. I propose that, whilst the notion of the Gothic is fuzzy and difficult to define, curriculum design actually benefits from the process of questioning what constitutes this artistic mode in its twenty-first century context. As such, this chapter is also intended as a supportive introduction to practitioners who are considering developing related modules.
Generic Indeterminacy as Pedagogic Challenge
Any process of curriculum design requires decision-making and, where teaching groups are involved, compromises may inevitably have to be reached according to areas of expertise, as certain academics may want to give priority to texts they deem foundational. Periodisation, the identification of key texts or finding the right thematic balance and critical input are challenges which are not exclusive to the study of the Gothic, post-millennial or otherwise, and which all teaching practitioners face. Other practical considerations, such as making sure that texts are available, that they are not too expensive (that the bibliographic cost of different modules is similar) or excessively long, as well as doing everything possible to guarantee that modules will provide a reflection of current areas of debate and that the delivery of the module will be lively and provide students with the right tools to study a specific area (as well as comply with general QAA benchmarks for English in the UK context), affect Module Leaders across English degree programmes. All survey modules have also been thoroughly revised in the light of the impact of feminist, queer and postcolonial areas of enquiry, among others, which have pushed lecturers to rethink literary traditions and go beyond the Leavisite approach to literature so popular in the past. Specific agendas, and the ever-changing focus of research funding bodies, are also having a substantial effect on the shape of certain modules, especially at MA level.
Genre modules, whether they are specifically about one single genre or cover more than one, will typically focus on landmark texts that have been historically or critically significant. As such, if The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973) were to be selected on a module about Horror film, the logic behind the choice would necessarily rely on the film being a good example of that genre, whatever its specific purpose. Alternatively, a hybrid or generically ambiguous film, such as Donât Look Now (Nicolas Roeg, 1973), may offer students the possibility of discussing the limits and limitations of generic ascription, or indeed, the process behind it and the way in which this might, ultimately, escape the hands of the film and its marketers. It would be peculiar to pick an example that very obviously does not belong in a genre or that shows very few of its characteristics. One may, for example, struggle to imagine teaching Casper (Brad Silberling and Phil Nibbelink, 1995) as a useful example of the Horror film genre simply because it contains a ghost, a figure that appears in countless Horror films. The inclusion of this film would probably raise a few eyebrows: not only does it present itself as a fantasy comedy for a young adult demographic, it also never affectively resorts to Horror. This generic marker is significant, as the film does take place in settings (a haunted castle) that are readily, and generically, recognisable. In this case, it is easy to explain why the choice feels intuitively wrong: Horror is a genre named after the emotions it aims to generate (see Carroll 1990: 10â41; Aldana Reyes 2016) and, as such, is not only, or substantially, defined by its settings and characters. The obvious comparison, a genre that is delimited by these situational, historical and narrative bounds, is the Western (Prince 2013: 252).
The same cannot be said for the Gothic. Unlike Horror, if it was ever premised on an emotional or affective driveâand debates around terror and horror in Ann Radcliffeâs own posthumous âOn the Supernatural in Poetryâ (1826), among others, would seem to suggest so (Aldana Reyes 2015a)âthis has been lost in recent approaches that have focused much more obviously on aesthetic and thematic identifiers. For Catherine Spooner, one of the most influential academics working on the contemporary Gothic today, the Gothic is a revivalist artistic form that, in twenty-first century fashion or film production, âcan be recognised by a combination of features, including intensive chiaroscuro, crowded space, intricate detailing, distorted proportions, a saturated colour palette and deliberately retro or aged stylingâ (Spooner 2014: 184). The Gothic looks a specific way; we recognise it when we see it because it shows a very particular dark aesthetic allegiance, one that is borne of numerous layers of referentiality and recycling. In terms of its thematic concerns, the Gothic is also obsessed with
Derived from the narratives of well-known Gothic classics such as Mary Shelleyâs Frankenstein (1818), Robert Louis Stevensonâs Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) or Bram Stokerâs Dracula (1897), the modeâs motifs create a dense net of referentiality that potentially empties the Gothic from a/effect and from its critical potential (Botting 1999; Aldana Reyes 2015b). 9 Any permutation of the vampire myth, regardless of its purpose, needs to be considered, if we are to follow this approach, as Gothic: from romantic hero Edward Cullen in Stephenie Meyerâs Twilight series (2005â8) to kiddie cereal character Count Chocula. In these instances, the Gothic works aesthetically. Twilight does not aim to affect negatively, nor necessarily to negotiate social or cultural anxieties. Count Chocula is a referential character, recognisably vampiric but, ultimately, part of a brand whose purpose is to sell chocolate cereal. For this reason, and to separate aesthetic Gothic from rawer, trauma-centred Gothic, Spooner has proposed the term âHappy Gothicâ, meant to designate âGothic that isnât at all anxious, at least not in a straightforward way, but which privileges comedy, romance, pleasure and consumptionâ (Spooner 2011). 10 In this way, the Gothic has been appropriated, like most subversive discourses, by a late capitalist machine that has rendered it another potentially hollow intertextual and allusive image.the legacies of the past and its burdens on the present; the radically provisional or divided nature of the self; the construction of peoples or individuals as monstrous or âotherâ; the preoccupation with bodies that are modified, grotesque or diseased. (Spooner 2006: 8)
Yet, the Gothic also appropriates. Since the mid-to-late 2000s there has been a huge interest in the Gothic as an acceptable area of academic study, one capable of producing notable scholarly work that matters and has impact, and this has helped legitimise the field and propelled further study. The termâs association, in the public imagination, with the past (medieval, initially, but increasingly Victorian), is also significant. The Gothic as an architectonic style that has, since the eighteenth century (Groom 2012: 54â62), but especially through the âwar of stylesâ in 1834 (Townshend 2015), been associated with a patriotic and nationalistic sense of Englishness and heritage cannot be underestimated. The popular turn to the Gothic in public media and by organisations such as the British Film Institute and the British Library, both of which ran important, well-attended seasons and exhibitions in 2013â14 and 2014â15, respectively, have continued to contribute to the Gothicâs visibility and to its connection with all things dark and creepy. For example, while slashers and contemporary trends like torture porn have been harder to locate as Gothic (Aldana Reyes 2014), films such as The Innocents (Jack Clayton, 1961) or The Haunting (Robert Wise, 1963), which were previously understood as Horror, are now also read as Gothic. In a process of reversalâsome Horror would have previously been labelled Gothic if it took place in certain settings, time periods or included certain characters and tropesâit is now âGothicâ that is invoked as an umbrella term covering other generic subdivisions. In fact, as Peter Hutchings once noted (1996: 89), the privileging of the Gothic may have come hand-in-hand with a pejorative rhetoric that reads Horror (its viscerality and explicit nature) as Gothicâs poor cousin. This process whereby the Gothic has subsumed other genres has also included the assimil...