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ENG10250

Academic Year 2026/2027

Horror Literature (ENG10250)

Subject:
English
College:
Arts & Humanities
School:
English, Drama & Film
Level:
1 (Introductory)
Credits:
5
Module Coordinator:
Dr Leanne Waters-Campbell
Trimester:
Autumn and Spring (separate)
Mode of Delivery:
Blended
Internship Module:
No
How will I be graded?
Letter grades

Curricular information is subject to change.

Module Coordinator:
Dr. Leanne Waters-Campbell

Module Description:
Why do we love to be scared? What makes us want to seek out those things that go bump in the night? Horror is an uncomfortable genre of physical pain, graphic gore, and nightmarish states. It provides us with cheap thrills and disturbing visions, which act as mapping tools for the complex, lived experiences of the modern individual. More broadly, horror also speaks to some of society’s deepest desires, anxieties, and troubled histories, and it challenges epistemological claims to knowledge, truth, reality, and belief. By identifying an aesthetic language for the otherwise unspeakable, horror interrogates the nature of cultural taboos, and it reveals the fears that secretly haunt us in radically new ways. This module helps students to cultivate a discipline-specific appreciation of literary horror in relation to modernity and popular culture by examining famous authors of the genre within their appropriate literary, theoretical, and socio-historical contexts from the nineteenth century to the present day.

Warning:
Please be mindful of the nature of the horror genre before continuing with the module or engaging with the material/ critical discussions about that material. Among other issues, texts on this module may depict or refer to: graphic violence, murder, torture, mutilation, cadavers, the grotesque, sexual assault, predation, voyeurism, rape, racism, domestic abuse, child abuse, animal abuse, religious profanity, substance abuse, addiction, psychosis, trauma, mental ill health, self-harm, or suicide.

About this Module

Learning Outcomes:

At the end of this module, students will:
1. Have a critical understanding of the relationship between horror and modernity.
2. Have a discipline-specific knowledge of literary techniques, devices, and writing styles that are prevalent in the genre.
3. Be able to conceptualise the genre theoretically and creatively through engagement with horror theory and creative exercises.
4. Be able to outline the evolution of horror from the nineteenth century onwards, paying particular attention to literary and socio-historical contexts.

Indicative Module Content:

Workshop Schedule:
-- Week 1: Introduction to Horror (no reading required).
-- Week 2: Robert Louis Stevenson.
-- Week 3: Henry James.
-- Week 4: Edgar Allan Poe, Dorothy Macardle, and Daphne du Maurier.
-- Week 5: Shirley Jackson.
-- Week 6: William Peter Blatty.
-- Week 7: Assessment Information and Preparation (no reading required).
-- Week 8: Reading Week (no lecture or workshop).
-- Week 9: Koji Suzuki.
-- Week 10: Clive Barker, Victor D. LaValle, and Tananarive Due.
-- Week 11: Stephen King, Mariana Enriquez, and Jeanette Winterson.
-- Week 12: Conclusion and Assessment Preparation (no reading required).

Key Themes and Topics:
-- Modernity and the long shadow of the Enlightenment.
-- Epistemological anxieties, i.e. crises in knowledge, truth, reality, and belief.
-- The gothic, the haunted house, and the modern family.
-- The grotesque, the body in pain, violence, and contagion.
-- The supernatural, i.e. monsters, hauntings, and possessions.
-- Popular culture, mass media, and cultural taboos.
-- Science, medicine, technology, and AI.
-- Trauma, psychoanalysis, and Cartesian dualism.
-- The city, urbanisation, class dynamics, the individual vs. the collective.

Key Skills:
-- How to distinguish between personal opinions and critical analysis.
-- How to interpret subtext by examining literary devices, mechanics, and styles.
-- How to write effective close textual analyses.
-- How to form an academic argument (a thesis statement).
-- How to situate texts within broader literary trends, historical backdrops, and philosophical ideas.
-- How to use secondary scholarship effectively in written work.
-- How to develop creative writing skills, particularly in relation to the horror genre.

The United Nations identified seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as core to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and UCD contributes in general to SDG 4 Quality Education. Further SDGs explored within this module if relevant are listed below. A scale of 1 - 5 indicates the extent to which the SDG is covered.


 

Student Effort Hours:
Student Effort Type Hours
Tutorial

12
Specified Learning Activities

51
Autonomous Student Learning

50
Online Learning

12
Total

125

Approaches to Teaching and Learning:
Learning Strategies:
1. Weekly workshops are in person. These include group discussions and written exercises.
2. Weekly lectures are recorded as videos and available on Brightspace.
3. Other resources on Brightspace include lecture slides, handouts (with critical questions, prompts, and selected close readings), and recommended secondary readings.
4. Students submit a single assignment worth 100% of the module grade at the end of term, so that they can focus on reading throughout the trimester.
5. Students are invited to submit a short, mid-term assignment (optional/ungraded) for feedback.
6. Students are invited to participate in a short story competition (optional/ungraded) in which they write a horror story of no more than 1000 words. Prizes for the top 3 horror stories are awarded in the final workshop of the module.


AI Policy and Moderation:
The use of AI tools is NOT permitted in this module. Students are expected to engage directly with module materials and activities without the use of AI tools. The use of AI may result in a fail grade in assignments for this module and/or referral to the School Academic Integrity Committee. For further details, see UCD’s Policy on Generative AI. Please also see UCD’s Guide to Plagiarism and Academic Integrity. Please note that a proportion of written assignments in each module in the School of English, Drama and Film are subject to moderation, meaning they undergo a second layer of review by another grader. This is to promote consistency within and between modules in the same level and discipline.

Requirements, Exclusions and Recommendations

Not applicable to this module.


Module Requisites and Incompatibles
Not applicable to this module.
 

Assessment Strategy
Description Timing Component Scale Must Pass Component % of Final Grade Component repeat (in-module) Offered
Assignment(Including Essay): Single assignment (100%) due at end of term. Students choose one option:
a) Essay of 1800-2000 words.
b) Video Presentation of 8-10 minutes.
c) Short Story of 800 words + Analysis of 1200 words.		 Week 14 Graded No
100
 No

As part of UCD's student support, under the Additional Consideration policy, extensions may be available for the following assessments in the module: Assignment (including essay/poster), Portfolio, Reflective Assignment, Report(s), and Individual Project.


Carry forward of passed components
Yes
 

Remediation Type Remediation Timing
Repeat Within Two Trimesters
Please see Student Jargon Buster for more information about remediation types and timing. 

Feedback Strategy/Strategies

• Feedback individually to students, post-assessment

How will my Feedback be Delivered?

Written feedback is provided to students individually via Brightspace.

Students are encouraged to source/purchase and begin reading texts as early as possible/ in advance. Many of the texts are available for free online. All short stories, 19th-century texts, and recommended secondary readings are provided on Brightspace. Jackson, Blatty, and Suzuki must be sourced/purchased by students. If you do not have time to read the longer novels (by Blatty and Suzuki) in full, you can read selected excerpts provided on Brightspace instead.

Novels:
-- Robert Louis Stevenson, "The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" (1886).
-- Henry James, "The Turn of the Screw" (1898).
-- Shirley Jackson, "The Haunting of Hill House" (1959).
-- William Peter Blatty, "The Exorcist" (1971).
-- Koji Suzuki, "Ring" (1991).

Short Stories:
-- Edgar Allan Poe, “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1843).
-- Dorothy Macardle, “The Prisoner” (1924).
-- Daphne du Maurier, “The Birds” (1952).
-- Clive Barker, “The Forbidden” (1985).
-- Victor D. LaValle, “Ghost Story” (1999).
-- Stephen King, “The Things They Left Behind” (2003).
-- Mariana Enriquez, “An Invocation of the Big-Eared Runt” (2016).
-- Tananarive Due, “The Rider” (2023).
-- Jeanette Winterson, “App-arition” (2023).

Timetabling information is displayed only for guidance purposes, relates to the current Academic Year only and is subject to change.
Autumn Lecture Offering 1 Week(s) - Autumn: All Weeks Wed 17:00 - 17:50
Spring Lecture Offering 1 Week(s) - 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33 Wed 17:00 - 17:50
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