Eerie-sistible courses for Dearborn Wolverines

The carved pumpkins are out and scary stories are in — it’s officially Halloween.

UM-Dearborn might not be listed on the Paranormal Activity Network Investigation Center database, like our neighboring Henry Ford Estate, but the university does have spooky, scholarly courses that use tales of terror to address the horrors and unknowns of the past, present and future.

Reporter recently visited three College of Arts, Sciences, and Letters Foundations Program courses where ghost stories were shared, the meaning behind Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” came to light and students dressed as their favorite sci-fi and comics characters.

Ghosts as hosts for lived experiences

At the beginning of an October class, Lecturer of Spanish Sofia Calzada-Orihuela asked her “Fearing the Unknown: Horror Fantasy in Hispanic Fiction” students if they believed in ghosts. One student said her mother sees ghosts, including one of a young girl who plays in a shoe closet. Another shared that they smell lavender when someone close to death is near. Nearly all students in the CASL Building classroom took part in the discussion, some believers and others a bit more skeptical.

Calzada-Orihuela said ghosts — lost souls stuck between realms — are an integral part of Hispanic culture. To help explain why, Calzada-Orihuela said Catholicism, which teaches the concept of purgatory, is the dominant faith in Mexico, Spain and other Latin American countries. Calzada-Orihuela, who created the course, said she’s always enjoyed hearing unusual stories and teaching this Hispanic Studies-based class provides a platform for open discussion about experiences with the supernatural and how they may tie into cultural norms and beliefs.

In addition to discussion, students in the class watch and read horror-based media — not for the jump scares but for the social commentary. For example, the Spanish film The Orphanage (J.A. Bayona, 2007) focuses on characters who lived during Spain’s conservative dictator Francisco Franco’s reign.

Viewing The Orphanage, students audibly gasped when an image of a young child — a ghost — with a sack on his head appeared. As the movie progressed, it’s revealed that the child’s mother put it over the child’s face to hide a physical deformity. It's shocking, but rooted in reality. Influenced by an authoritarian rule, people often believed a mother’s sins caused a child to be born with a deformity or disability, Calzada-Orihuela said.

“Because of shame, people hide many things,” Calzada-Orihuela said. Unless it is your area of study, you might not find discussing the impact of a Spanish dictator from 50-plus years ago interesting. But it’s important to know the effect this had. Adding a pop culture element brings awareness to a larger audience

Not kid stuff

For Assistant Professor of Language, Culture and the Arts Wessam Elmeligi, the time to age out of reading comics and science fiction is never. These works, after all, present some of the most hallowed motifs in all of literature, particularly the notion, stemming from Aristotle, that tragedy elicits fear and pity. In “Cyberpunk, Steampunk, and Science Fiction Culture,” a first-year foundations course, Elmeligi teaches his students to apply psychoanalytic, feminist, post-colonial and other literary theories to these works. 

“Many of them read science fiction and comic books and usually there is this perspective that these are juvenile or for younger people. I want to show them that so much cultural theory, literary theory, psychoanalysis has been applied to the stuff that they already like and read,” Elmeligi said.

In a recent class, students embodied a favorite character from a book, film or game and discussed why they identified with the characters, from Dr. Frankenstein to Itachi Uchiha from “Naruto.” After discussing her affinity for the dark fantasy protagonist Coraline, Fatima Ismail, a third-year physics major, reflected on what makes comics – a genre she has enjoyed since childhood – so appealing. And so unsettling. “I feel like because it's science fiction, we're able to manifest more our subconscious thoughts and the way the world works, and have a freer voice because there's less commitment to back this up, put the evidence down, ‘give me facts,’” she said. “You're just able to express the way the world is without anyone questioning it.”

A monster lurking under the (book) cover

Authors in the 19th- and 20th-century  — like Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe and Stephen King — share oppressive horrors experienced by everyday people due to gender, race, disability, class, illness and other factors. Associate Professor of English Literature Erik Bond’s “Gothic Neighbors Next Door” Foundations course for first-year students highlights the legacy of their works.

In last week’s class, Bond led students in a discussion of Shelley’s 1818 novel “Frankenstein.” Bond said Shelley described scientist Dr. Victor Frankenstein’s humanoid creation as enormous with long, black hair, white teeth and a dull yellow eye. But, Bond asked, what is the creation named? Student replies included “creature,” “monster” and “Frankenstein.” 

The answer Bond was looking for? Shelley leaves the character nameless, Bond said. It’s a literary device used to reflect Shelley’s view that women were treated as subhuman: they’re not allowed an individual identity and — with high mortality rates in childbirth — there was an expectation to reproduce when it often led to an early death. The novel also grapples with the “perfect angel” role women were expected to fulfill and how they were viewed as monsters if they didn’t. “Mary Shelley recognized this was a lose-lose game,” Bond told the class. “So, she’s like, ‘All right, you want a monster? I’ll narrate female experience and do it in a way that terrifies men. I’ll write a book where femininity is relentlessly dismissed as monstrous and you will not be able to get it out of your brain — you’ll still be talking about it in a classroom in 2023.’”

The creature’s namelessness also adds to feelings of discomfort and fear in a society where people want to label everything and everyone. Bond said director John Carpenter did something similar in the first “Halloween” movie with Michael Myers. The franchise’s killer was originally named “the Shape” in the credits.

First-year student Kenya Foster said she likes how Bond’s class points out deeper meanings to what she previously only viewed as scary stories or Halloween characters. “Professor Bond teaches you how to go beyond the surface to get the real story,” Foster said. “The truth might be scarier than a monster in a book, but at least we’re talking about it.”

Like scary stories or learning about the unknown? Here are three more classes offered in Winter ’24.

PHIL 390: The Philosophy of Horror
A vampire’s mind is as sharp as their teeth and a zombie retains a functioning body — but would we consider either a person? This upper-level philosophy course, taught by Lecturer of Philosophy Alex Gromak, will examine personal identity through horror. It also will ask overarching questions like: What makes a film horror . . .and should we be watching?

FNDS 1304: American Horror Stories
Taught by Associate Professor of English Literature Shelly Jarenski, this first-year student course analyzes American culture through the lens of its horror industry. It explores film, stories, art and other forms of popular culture — like H.P Lovecraft short stories, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” characters and “A Nightmare on Elm Street” movies —  within social, political and historical moments. 

ASTR 133: Search for Life in the Universe
If E.T. phoned home, where would he call? In this astronomy course, Associate Professor of Astronomy Will Clarkson takes his class on a search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Topics include possible habitats in the solar system, their physical constraints on life and unusual chemistry that’s found there.

Registration runs now through Jan. 22, 2024. See the registration timetable.

If you are a faculty member whose course would be a good fit for this list, reach out to [email protected].