Search
Hopkins Students Explore Dark Romanticism in Downtown New Haven
On Friday, April 24, English Instructor Terence Mooney’s Dark Romanticism classes traveled to the Grove Street Cemetery and the Yale Center for British Art in downtown New Haven for an out-of-the-classroom learning experience. The excursion was part of the students’ ongoing studies in Gothicism, and aimed to connect them to both New Haven history and their exploration into the macabre.
After taking the CTtransit bus downtown, the group took a walking tour led by Mooney followed by a site visit to the historical Grove Street Cemetery, the oldest established burial ground in the United States. Both the cemetery and the surrounding architecture reflect the Gothic aesthetic the students have been studying in class. They walked around the 18-acre burial ground individually, writing in their journals about what they observed before sharing their findings with the group.
After the cemetery, the group walked a few blocks to the Yale Center for British Art to observe and discuss several Dark Romantic paintings, including The Deluge by John Martin, Study of a Head by Francis Bacon, and Any Number of Preoccupations by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. The museum tour was in tandem with the course’s ongoing exploration of ekphrastic poetry, a form of writing that engages with and describes works of art, allowing students to connect visual observation with imagined narrative.
More About Dark Romanticism
Mooney’s Dark Romanticism course studies the spectral, supernatural, sublime, and the uncanny. The course dives into early conventions and innovators of the Gothic across literary forms, and then explores contemporary recreations of the Gothic within the works of Yoko Ogawa, Jesmyn Ward, and Silvia Moreno-Garcia, among others.
Hopkins is a private middle school and high school for grades 7-12. Located on a campus overlooking New Haven, CT, the School takes pride in its intellectually curious students as well as its dedicated faculty and staff.
Hopkins School admits students of any race, color, national and ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school. It does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national and ethnic origin in administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, scholarship and loan programs, and athletic and other school-administered programs.