Please offer any insights or suggestions–I definitely need to reread some of these works 😐 there may be far better film examples to use too… especially since Get Out isn’t even screening yet >.<

From Femme Fatale to Final Girl: Feminist Theory and the Horror Genre

Amanda Martin Sandino, PhC, MFA

amartins@ucsd.edu

Intro…

Description…

Office hours and contact info…

Grade breakdown and assignments…

Policies…

Required Texts:

• The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film. Ed. Barry Keith Grant. 2^nd ISBN-10: 0292772459

 

Course Schedule:

Week One: Intro to Feminist Film Theory

• Film: Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006)
• Readings:
  • Hollinger, Karen, “What is Feminist Film Studies?”

 Week Two: The Oppositional Gaze: Whose Horror is This?

• Film: A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014)
• Readings:
  • hooks, bell, “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators”
  • Williams, Linda, “When the Woman Looks” in Grant’s The Dread of Difference

 Week Three: The Madonna-Whore Dynamic and the Final Girl

• Film: Night of the Slasher (2016) (http://www.nightoftheslasher.com/); The Virgin Whore Dichotomy (2016) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emzfp0k4Qzc)
• Readings:
  • Totaro, Donato, “The Final Girl: A Few Thoughts on Feminism and Horror”: http://offscreen.com/view/feminism_and_horror
  • The Cambridge Diaries, “The Madonna/Whore Dichotomy”; https://thecambridgediaries.wordpress.com/2015/05/05/the-virginwhore-dichotomy/

 Week Four: The Monstrous Feminine

• Film: The Witch (2015)
• Readings:
  • Feminist Frequency, “Sinister Seductress”: https://feministfrequency.com/series/tropes-vs-women-in-video-games/
  • Creed, Barbara, “Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine: An Imaginary Abjection,” in Grant’s The Dread of Difference

Week Five: Birthing the Devil: Mystical and Monstrous Pregnancies

• Film: Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
• Readings:
  • Feminist Frequency, “#5: The Mystical Pregnancy (Tropes vs. Women)”; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rhH_QGXtgQ
  • Creed, Barbara, “Woman as Monstrous Womb: The Brood”
  • Fischer, Lucy, “Birth Traumas: Parturition and Horror in Rosemary’s Baby,” in Grant’s The Dread of Difference

Week Six: Bad Mamas

• Film: Goodnight Mommy (2014)
• Readings:
  • Faculty of Horror, “Episode 36: Mommy Dearest: The Babadook (2014) and Goodnight Mommy (2014)”, http://www.facultyofhorror.com/2016/03/episode-36-mommy-dearest-the-babadook-2014-and-goodnight-mommy-2014/

Week Seven: Transphobia and Monstrous Gender

• Film: The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
• Readings:
  • Benshoff, Harry M., “The Monster and the Homosexual,” in Grant’s The Dread of Difference
  • Stahl, Lynne, “Assuming Identities: Gender, Sexuality, and Performativity in The Silence of the Lambs”

Week Eight: The First to Die: Race and Victimhood

• Film: Get Out (2017)
• Readings:
  • Hollinger, Karen, “Feminist Film Studies and Race”
  • Complex, Valerie, “Will It Get Better For Black People In the Horror Genre?”, https://blackgirlnerds.com/will-it-get-better-for-black-people-in-the-horror-genre/
  • Smith, Ariel. “Indigenous Cinema and the Horrific Reality of Colonial Violence.”

 Week Nine: Mad Women: Disability, Sex, and the Horror Genre

• Film: What Ever Happened to Baby Jane (1962)
• Readings:
  • Sutton, Travis, “Avenging the Body: Disability in the Horror Film”
  • Brooks, Jodi, “Fascination and the Grotesque: Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?”

Week Ten: Reflections: So, Whose Horror is This Anyway?

• Film: Teeth (2007)
• Readings:
  • Creed, Barbara, “Medusa’s Head: The Vagina Dentata and Freudian Theory”
  • Derry, Charles, “Postmodern Remakes, the Averted Gaze, and Some Glimmerings of the New”
  • Bennett, Rémy, “Horror Films And Feminism: Women Who Don’t Run From Danger, But Step Up To It (Thank You, Mary Shelley)”: http://bust.com/movies/15093-horror-films-and-feminism-women-who-don-t-run-from-danger-but-step-up-to-it-thank-you-mary-shelley.html