28781 - CARSON MCCULLERS’S GOTHIC FICTION (REMOTE)

Course Description

Carson McCullers interrupted writing her novel Member of the Wedding (1946) for a few months to write the novella Ballad of the Sad Café (1951). In this class, we will read the two works together, considering how they speak both to each other and to the reader about the Gothic South, gender, and community. Recent works such as Jenn Shapland’s My Autobiography of Carson McCullers (2020) and Mary V. Dearborn’s Carson McCullers: A Life (2024) have provided invaluable resources for reading McCullers, drawing upon only recently released archives (including McCullers’s own counseling notes); class meetings will include such supplementary material.

Read: Carson McCullers, Member of the Wedding; Carson McCullers, Ballad of the Sad Café