ENG 380 Haunted Empires

Edited books contain chapters by multiple authors. You might find these in the MLA International Bibliography, where individual chapters are indexed, or you might find one in the library catalog by looking at Contents notes.  If you find a chapter you want to read, you may request it by using interlibrary loan if the library owns only the print book or if the library doesn't own the book at all.  In either case, you would use the interlibrary loan request form, Book Chapter.  See, Pepperdine Interlibrary Loan. In either case, you will receive an email with a link to the scanned book chapter.  Be sure to allow several days for your request to be filled.

If you do need to borrow an entire book, you will need to contact the Humanities liaison via the email link on this guide.  The book can be sent to you through UPS (so you will need to provide a mailing address and phone number).

One thing that almost all cultures around the world have in common is ghost stories. The idea of being haunted fascinates us, and we lean in to hear—and be frightened by—stories of spirits affecting us and the spaces in which we work, live, or travel. Often, ghost stories revolve around ghosts who were wronged in life seeking vengeance or attempting to set to rights unfinished business. But haunted tales are often more than a good story. They can expose not only our cultural fears and attitudes toward death, but also the ways that we are haunted by ideologies and history—ideas and events from the past that continuously invade the present in various forms. In this class, we’ll explore literature from postcolonial nations that feature ghosts and other motifs of haunting as a way of processing and commenting on the relationship of the imperial past to the present. The novels, poetry, and scholarly texts we read will help us to develop a nuanced understanding of the legacies of colonialism that continue to haunt us today.