In Love and Death in the American Novel, Leslie Fiedler claims that “of all the fiction of the West, our own is most deeply influenced by the gothic, is almost essentially a gothic one.” But how and why did a nation founded during the Enlightenment on the principles of democracy and rationality appropriate a literary genre associated with haunted castles, blood-thirsty vampires, and brooding aristocrats? In an attempt to answer this question, this course will trace the history of gothic literature (and TV and film) in the United States from the late 18^th century to the present. Along the way, we will examine many of the standard motifs of gothic literature, such as haunting, the uncanny, violence and madness, inheritance and decay, doubling, live burial, and the resurrection of the dead. But we will also spend a lot of time thinking about what makes the American gothic “American” and discussing some of the themes and motifs that are especially important to gothic literature in the United States. How do American gothic texts support or challenge the myths of American culture, and how do they deal with the darker aspects of American culture, such as slavery, religious fanaticism, and inequalities of race and gender? We will read prose and poetry by authors such as Washington Irving, Poe, Hawthorne, Emily Dickinson, Charles Chesnutt, William Faulkner, Sylvia Plath, and Toni Morrison. We will also look at manifestations of the American Gothic in popular culture, including movies such as Night of the Hunter and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and TV shows such as True Blood, Sleepy Hollow, The Following, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.