Vorlesungen und Übungen
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American Literature II (Realism-Postmodernism) -
- Dozent/in:
- Christine Gerhardt
- Termine:
- Mo, 14:00 - 16:00, KR12/02.18
Einzeltermin am 24.7.2023, 14:00 - 16:00, U9/01.11
- Inhalt:
- This lecture provides an overview of US-American literary history from the 1870s until today, highlighting characteristic features of realism, naturalism, modernism, and post-modernism, as well as key trends in 21st-century literary production. For each of these periods, the thematic, formal, and stylistic elements of a wide range of novels, stories, poems, plays, and essays will be discussed in connection with broader cultural and political developments.
Several questions that revolve around the tensions between coherence and difference will guide our explorations. For one, we will investigate how from the end of the Civil War until today, various groups of American writers have engaged, and frequently exploded, the possibilities of specific literary genres to re-imagine the world. This also means that we will discuss the ways in which changing notions of gender, sexuality, race, class, religion, and region have intersected with the development of American literature as a pluriform, multi-voiced field of expression. Finally, we will interrogate the significance of core thematic and conceptual concerns that have been identified in American literature over the years, including processes of modernization and the ideal of democratization, a sense of national self in relation to other cultures, and the challenges of living with the natural environment without destroying it.
- Empfohlene Literatur:
- All readings will be provided via the VC!
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One Hundred Years of Herland: Reading Gilman and Piercy’s Feminist Utopias -
- Dozent/in:
- Yildiz Asar
- Termine:
- Do, 16:00 - 19:15, U5/01.18
The course consists of regular and double sessions. The exact schedule will be announced in the first session (April 20).
- Inhalt:
- In 1915, as the globe lamented the biggest war that humankind had hitherto seen, the first monthly installment of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland serial appeared in The Forerunner magazine. Herland, along with its prequel Moving the Mountain (1911) and sequel With Her in Ourland (1916), presented to its readers a fictional utopian society – composed entirely of women who lived in harmonious isolation without conflicts, and procreated without men. With its bold and progressive critique of traditional approaches to gender and procreative rights, Herland was discussed quite controversially at the time, but swiftly forgotten. It was not until the 1960s and 70s, that the oppositional political culture – shaped by the civil rights, feminist, and environmental movements – rediscovered Herland and occasioned a revival of feminist utopian writing more broadly, including a range of now-classic novels such as Joanna Russ’s The Female Man (1975), Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time, (1976), Sally Miller Gearhart’s The Wanderground (1979), and Ursula K. Le Guin’s Always Coming Home (1985). Like Gilman’s much earlier novels, these feminist critical utopias imagined ambiguous female spaces in ways that also navigated early ecofeminist themes, such as “partnership with nature rather than domination, non-hierarchical cooperation as a social principle, abolition of antagonistic dualisms (like body and spirit), acceptance of change (including death), and an ethic of care” (Donawerth 62).
In this course, we will revisit the 20th-century feminist critical utopia with a focus on works by Gilman and Piercy, engaging intersectional, non-binary approaches to explore how issues of gender, race, age, class, species, ecology, etc. are addressed by these literary texts. It is from the perspective of contemporary, early 21st-century debates about social, ecological, and gender injustices, and in the attempt to develop a critical but optimistic reading practice, that we will discuss the cultural work performed by Gilman’s and Piercy’s novels in their respective historical contexts.
- Empfohlene Literatur:
- Please acquire and start reading these texts BEFORE the beginning of our class!
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland (1915)
- Marge Piercy, Women on the Edge of Time (1976)
Further primary readings will be announced here by mid-March.
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The Monstrous Other in American Literature and Culture -
- Dozent/in:
- Nicole K. Konopka
- Termine:
- Mo, 12:00 - 14:00, U5/01.18
Einzeltermin am 14.7.2023, 12:00 - 18:00, U5/02.17
- Inhalt:
- Following W. Scott Pool s claim that from our colonial past to the present, the monster in all its various forms has been a staple of American culture, this class is designed to identify and critically analyze the multiple and contradictory presences of such monsters in American literature and culture.
We will start with a brief historical and conceptual overview, consulting historical maps of the world, the anonymous Physiologus (200 AD), medieval almanacs, transatlantic travel accounts, freak show advertisements, medical journals, criminal records, and court files. Moving through North American history from pre-colonial times to the present, we will then study a variety of texts, such as Native American tall tales, crafts and imagery, short stories, poems, newspaper articles, pictures, TV shows and movies with an analytical focus on their changing representations of monstrosity as a particular kind of otherness.
As we navigate through the complex universe of surreal distortion, we will try to answer the following questions: How have monsters been defined in America, and how have these definitions changed over time? What is culturally specific about American monsters? Which culturally and historically specific fears (and perhaps also longings) have been projected on these monstrous others , and to which effects?
- Empfohlene Literatur:
- Most of the material used in class will be provided via the Virtual Campus ahead of class. Students are, however, required to purchase the following books BEFORE THE START OF THE SEMESTER:
- Arthur Miller, The Crucible (1951)
- Kirsten Bakis, Lives of the Monster Dogs (1997)
- Chris Dingess, Manifest Destiny, Volume 1: Flora and Fauna (2014)
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