The making of a mass murderer-- In english class::By Mary Grabar

"If you were a student at Virginia Tech last fall and had a propensity for the gruesome and violent you could have satisfied your thirst for the bloody and course requirements by enrolling in Professor Brent Stevens’s English 3984 class, “Special Studies: Contemporary Horror.” And, as a plus, you wouldn’t have to read many books because some of the “texts”--as they increasingly are in English classes today--would be movies.
Guess who took that class that watched The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and explored in papers and a “fear journal” how “horror has become a masochistic pleasure,” according to the course description? Guess who read a graphic novel (a book with pictures, i.e., a comic book) titled From Hell by Alan Moore, presented by Professor Stevens as “one of the most popular and accomplished writers in the medium,” as well as the work of scholarly “criticism,” Men, Women and Chainsaws? Guess who was drawn to the course described by the professor with these words: “We are consuming horror on an unprecedented scale. But the rules have changed. Until recent years, lead characters could be counted on to survive the invasion of zombies/homicidal maniacs/vampires. But this margin of safety no longer exists; horror has become a masochistic pleasure”? Guess who said to himself, “Bingo! That’s the course I want!” to a course description that ended with the words, ‘WARNING: Not for the faint of heart.” "

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