The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

Dozent/in:

Beatrix Hesse

Termine:

Di, 16:00 - 18:00, Raum n.V.

Inhalt:

tba

Empfohlene Literatur:

tba

American Dystopia: From Classical to Feminist and Young Adult Dystopian Literature

Dozent/in:

Yildiz Asar

Termine:

Di, 14:00 - 16:00, Raum n.V.
Einzeltermin am 22.11.2021, 19:00 - 21:00, Raum n.V.

Inhalt:

Dystopian accounts of non-existent places worse than the ones we live in are more popular today than ever before. But why? According to Tom Moylan in Scraps of the Untainted Sky, dystopian narrative is largely the product of the terrors of the twentieth century. A hundred years of exploitation, repression, state violence, war, genocide, disease, famine, ecocide provided more than enough fertile ground for this fictive underside of the utopian imagination (xi). In this course, we will inspect the dystopian turn in contemporary American literature. We will examine dystopia s form, central themes and subject-matters and its relation to the prevailing and shifting cultural discourses. Indeed, with the terrifying worlds that it portrays, dystopia can voice our worst contemporary fears and anxieties, cast a critical eye on the pressing global issues, warn and frighten, and also fill us with hope for a change, or perhaps a better future.

Starting from the post-WW2 era, we will first examine the rise of the Classical Dystopia (which British titles like Orwell s 1984 and Huxley s Brave New World came to embody) through Ray Bradbury s Fahrenheit 451 (1953), followed by the Feminist Critical Dystopia, focusing on Margaret Atwood s The Handmaid s Tale (1985) and Octavia Butler s Parable of the Sower (1993), and end with today s popular Young Adult Dystopia, with Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games (2008) as a key example.

In our readings, we will particularly pay attention to how gender, race, age, class and environmental issues are depicted in these texts. By the end of the semester, we will hopefully have a good grasp of the reasons behind dystopia s ever-increasing appeal for older and younger audiences and its relevance for our contemporary times.

Empfohlene Literatur:

Primary Readings:

• Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
• Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid s Tale
• Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower
• Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Only the first novel, but I would highly recommend the entire trilogy if you have the time!)

Throughout this course, we will also briefly refer to several other titles and critical texts which are to be announced.

American Literature of the 19th Century

Dozent/in:

Eva-Sabine Zehelein

Termine:

Di, 10:00 - 12:00, Raum n.V.
Class starts in the second week of term!

Inhalt:

This is a survey lecture aiming to introduce or help review major American developments, socio-cultural themes and literary genres, as well as a diverse choir of American literary voices of the "long 19th century."

Selected literary texts (to be found on VC) will be discussed together – seminar-like! – in class.

Empfohlene Literatur:

All readings will be provided via the VC.

From Know-It-All to Clearly Clueless: Exploring the Narrator in US-American and Canadian Fiction

Dozent/in:

Nicole K. Konopka

Termine:

Di, 12:00 - 14:00, U2/01.33
Class starts in the second week of term!

Inhalt:

No one likes a know-it-all – except perhaps when reading a story. Narrators often seem to know everything and share it with their eager audience – or do they? In this class will study models that describe the various options of how to tell a story, in order to understand how meaning is created and communicated.

We will discuss key texts on narrative typologies by Roland Barthes, Franz Karl Stanzel, Gérard Genetté, Mieke Bal, and Monika Fludernik, to understand the underlying models and principles those scholars observed and developed. We will also explore how narrative communication actually works in a wide variety of literary examples, most of which will be selected from the reading list of the American Studies department (https://www.uni-bamberg.de/amerikanistik/studium/leseliste/) and with reference to the "Staatsexamen" in Literary Studies.

The goal of this class is to develop a firm understanding of various models of narrative communication, while gaining a comprehensive insight into the development of North American literature and its socio-political and historical context.

Empfohlene Literatur:

While all shorter readings (essays, short stories, single chapters) will be provided via the VC (registered participants will be signed up for the VC course by the instructor in the first week of the semester!), the following novels will have to be purchased by each student in advance:

• Toni Morrison, A Mercy (2008)
• James Hannaham, Delicious Foods (2018)

Make sure to read the novels before the first session of this class!

In addition, the following textbook is strongly recommended as companion reading to this class: Monika Fludernik, An Introduction to Narratology (2009).