Current Release: September 11th, 2007 | Vol. XXIV Iss. 10

Illustration by andrew foster

The haunted semester at VWC

By Victoria Matthews

vamatthews@vwc.edu

Halloween was in October, but the haunted tales of vampires, zombies, and insanity have carried themselves over into spring semester this year. Prof. Angela Harrison, Gavin Pate and Mary Ann Mina have teamed up to make this a horrifying semester for students, and by that I don’t mean homework.

Harrison has been interested in horror since she was a student at Virginia Wesleyan College.

“There’s something fascinating, to me, about the different ways that people engage and respond to horror,” said Harrison.

This fascination led to Harrison starting up the “American Horror” class. The students in this course look at different literary works by authors such as Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen King and Stephen Graham Jones. Her students will also view films such as “Freaks” by Tod Browning, “Night of the Living Dead,” “Dawn of the Dead,” “Carrie,” and “Army of Darkness.”

“I tried to get a sampling of pieces from each time period,” said Harrison.

Now that Harrison is teaching about horror instead of learning about it, she gets a different kind of thrill.

“I get so excited in class when I’m explaining concepts and ideas, and when students respond to it

I get even more excited!” said Harrison.

Pate picked the topic of “The Haunted Self”. He chose contemporary novels and novels that dealt with different types of hauntings, such as “The Haunting of Hill House,” “Beloved,” “The White Hotel” and “House of Leaves”.

“I chose House of Leaves because I think it will intellectually hurt some people and I think that’s good sometimes,” he said.

The purpose of this class is to take a look at the ways people get scared and the different reasons for their fright. The literature Pate has his class read displays different types of hauntings, both real and imaginative. Pate’s favorite thing about the class is exposing his students to books they wouldn’t normally read otherwise.

“I want students to read something they will not forget,” said Pate.

Pate, along with Mina, is pleased with the enthusiasm from the students. Both professors had to add a second class due to the first offerings filling up so fast.

“I don’t think it’s accidental,” said Mina.

Mina believes with the Iraq war going on and tensions building up, writing and reading vampire literature helps map out the tension man feels at such a time as this. Mina believes that the act of a vampire sucking the life out of another being to prolong his or her life is a metaphor for what is going on in the world today. “I really think in a time of war the vampire is a cultural metaphor for what happens when a powerful country takes over the resources of a less powerful country,” she said.

Mina in the past has taught “Literature of the Sublime,” which looks at literature using poetic language to look at the perspective of the soul. This semester she chose to teach “Vampire Literature” because she wanted to develop a course from a more profane perspective.

“This is such a powerful class to teach on a Christian campus,” Mina said.

All three professors enjoy teaching each of their unique, haunted courses and hope to teach them again in the future.