Section 1: The Spectral

Chair: Susan Gustafson, University of Rochester

As mythological or religious narratives show, spectral figures have haunted human thoughts, hopes, and fears as long as history remembers. They appear in such diverse forms as the spirits of the Greek underworld, the Dybbuk in Jewish mythology, the Holy Ghost in the Bible, or the Jinn in the Quran. The presence of ghosts in folklore and spiritual texts also inspired and stimulated the rise of ghosts in literature (such as the Nordic Edda or Dante’s Divine Comedy) and in popular culture (The Sixth Sense or Paranormal Activity). In addition, it served as a trope for social, philosophical and economic theories; such as Marx’s spectral communism, which then triggered Derrida’s reflection on capitalism by evoking Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Ghosts may haunt places and minds, but they also seem to haunt both (in) fiction and reality, in and from the past, present and future.

Exemplary Topics:
- Which forms of spectral figures haunted literature in its genesis?
- Which innovative narrative strategies are employed to conjure up different spectral figures?
- How powerful are ghosts and spectral figures as instruments of social criticism and resistance and as vehicles for political or cultural change?