4 Fridays, 2/6/2026 – 2/27/2026

Horror, as a genre, has often been dismissed as low-brow, inexpensive, or sensationalist fare. But in spite of, or perhaps because of, this dismissal, the history of horror is also a history of what we, as a society, fear. In this class, we’ll take a look at how our concerns have been mirrored by movies over time and what horror says about those fears. Starting with its origins in Gothic fiction, we’ll trace modern horror from the silent era through the monster films of the 30s, the atomic era and the Red Scare of the 50s, and onward with madmen-next-door, environmental threats, technological innovations run amok, religious extremism, immigration, and other fears. And we’ll look at how vampires, zombies, ghosts, haunted houses, and all the other trappings of the genre have become flexible containers for what really scares us about the other… and ourselves.