Ghosts and Haunting in Literature

Week 1: Getting Started

This week sets a foundation for the semester by presenting expectations of students, modeling some of the activity’s students will see throughout the course and clarifying communication tools. Additionally, we will explore and share our own ideas of what happens to use after death and thinking about our own beliefs in ghosts.

Week 2: Views of the Afterlife

We'll continue our exploration of how different religions and cultures have understood the afterlife and the presence of ghosts in our world. We will explore one of the course's core questions: How are ghosts represented in literature? and we will consider what purpose or function ghosts serve in stories from different cultures.

Week 3: The Meaning Behind Ghosts

This week is all about the meaning of ghosts. We will begin by reading about an early English writer who changed how ghosts were presented in literature: Shakespeare. We’ll read the “Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and begin an interview project where you find and ask someone from your own life about their beliefs.

Week 4: Early Ghost Stories

We will read “The Tapestried Chamber" and explore how it connects to the Gothic literary tradition. We will also discuss a poem by renown scary writer, Edgar Allan Poe, and will continue with the interview project.

Week 5: The Golden Age

This week, we'll read excerpts from Ukrainian author Nikolai Gogol's story "The Overcoat" and consider how the ghost in that story differs from ones we've read thus far in the course. We’ll also share our interviews, looking for connections between how contemporary people think of ghosts.

Week 6: Real Life Ghost Stories

This week begins a 3-week-long group project exploring the history of a real-life ghost. In addition, we'll read master storyteller Charles Dicken's short ghost story, "The Signal-Man," and interpret the meaning.

Week 7: In Literature and Film

We will read and watch a ghost story by M. R. James and compare the film and print versions. We'll continue to work with our groups to explore real-life ghost and get ready to share our findings next week.

Week 8: What Do Ghosts represent?

This week we'll plan for the longer essay in this class. In the essay, we will take on the central question: What do ghosts represent in literature? Students will also choose to read and analyze a ghost story by Edith Wharton, and comment on the research from other groups about real life ghosts.

Week 9: The Haunting of Hill House

This week, we'll shift our focus to that of haunted places, by taking on Shirley Jackson's iconic and seminal work The Haunting of Hill House. In her novel, Jackson explores the impact of a haunted place: Hill House. Students will continue work on their literary essay.

Week 10: Haunted Places

This week we’ll continue reading The Haunting of Hill House, and we'll focus on the nature of haunted places by doing some independent research about real-life haunted places.

Week 11: Peer Review

This week, we finish The Haunting of Hill House and we will look back and ask ourselves how the depiction of ghosts has changed since the first stories we read in this class. We will provide each other feedback on our literary essays.

Week 12: The Day of the Dead

This week we'll wrap-up our conversation about The Haunting of Hill House and transition away from Europe and American to Latin America. We will learn about Dia de los Muertos, or the Day of the Dead, and read the graphic novel, Ghosts, that takes inspiration from that holiday. We will compare and contrast this representation of ghosts with the ones we’ve read about earlier in the course.

Week 13: Creative Writing

This week, we'll take inspiration from Ghosts and use the drawings and story as the basis for a short piece of creative writing. We’ll look back at effective descriptive passages from other stories we've read and learn some best-practices for how to write descriptively. This week is also the start of our final project, where students will get to determine and present their own personal view on ghosts and haunting - in both literature and life.

Week 14: Coco and Comparisons

This week we'll once again look at how ghost stories are represented in film - this time by looking at Disney-Pixar's Coco; we'll also discuss which portrayal of ghosts most resonates with students. Students will continue to work on their final projects, choosing to share their work as either an audio piece, a video, or a visual.

Week 15: Saying Goodbye

This week we'll focus on wrapping-up the course well: saying goodbye, sharing our final projects, completing the post-assessment, and reflecting on your work in the course. Students will need a proctor present when taking their 45-minute post-assessment.