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Mythical figurations, posthuman assemblages, and gothic hauntings abound in the Caribbean. Focusing on literary writing, film and television, visual culture, and cultural performance, this seminar examines the monsters that populate the Caribbean and explores the cultural work they perform.
We will engage a range of critical perspectives and theoretical frameworks – from postcolonial criticism and gender studies to environmental criticism – to situate and analyze monstrous bodies, malevolent spirits, and mythical tricksters within four interrelated contexts: racial capitalism, environmental and ecological formations, gender ideologies, and regimes of knowledge production.
Materials for discussion will include contemporary speculative short fiction by authors like Junot Díaz (“Monstro”), Andy Duncan (“Zora and the Zombie”), and Nalo Hopkinson (“Inselberg”); Zora Neale Hurston’s travelogue Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica (1938); selected films like Zombi Child (dir. Bertrand Bonello, 2020), White Zombie (dir. Victor Halperin; 1932), and The Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti (dir. Cherel Ito, Teiji Ito, Maya Deren, documentary; recordings 1947–1954), music; painting and photography; oral storytelling; and the carnivalesque traditions of the Caribbean. |
eG