Courses

Die Teilnahme an der Überblicksvorlesung (in engl. Sprache) ist verbunden mit der Mitarbeit an einem der drei parallel angebotenen Proseminare, in denen ausgewählte Texte diskutiert werden (Beteiligung an einem Kurzreferat). Die ausgewählten Texte werden in einem Reader zusammengestellt, soweit sie nicht in der Shorter Norton Anthology of American Literature (7th edition) enthalten sind. Der Erwerb dieser Anthologie, die bei den Buchhandlungen Kiepert, Georgenstr./S-Bahnbogen bzw. Books in Berlin, Goethestr. 69, vorrätig ist, ist unverzichtbare Voraussetzung für ein Studium der amerikanischen Literatur. Den Reader erhalten Sie ab 12.4. 05 im Copy Haus, Georgenstr. 190.

Um für die vier Seminare etwa die gleiche Zahl von TeilnehmerInnen zu erreichen, tragen sich an den Seminaren Interessierte bitte ab Mitte März 2005 in eine der am Info-Brett gegenüber R. HG 2010 aushängenden Listen ein.

Designed as an introductory survey, the course will discuss major phenomena and processes of the social, cultural, and intellectual history of America/the U.S.A. from the first English settlements to the Second World War. Based upon selected cases studies the course will problematize some of the controversies that have informed recent debates about the interpretation of American history.

Grading in this course is based on regular participation in the class discussion and an oral presentation. More information will be available on the American Studies Homepage by the end of March.

Beginn: 21.4.04

Representations of Slavery, one of the formative institutions in U.S.-American history, have occasioned heated debates throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. After a brief look at differing historiographic interpretations and questions raised by visual representations, we will discuss selected literary portrayals ranging from antebellum slave narratives to late twentieth century novels such as Toni Morrison's Beloved and Sherley Anne Williams's Dessa Rose. Particular attention will be paid to the narrative techniques the texts employ to facilitate or complicate the reader's involvement and the political implications of their rhetorical strategies.

Recommended Reading:
Berlin, Ira. Many Thousand Gone: The First Two Hundred Years of Slavery in North America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998.
Wood, Marcus. Blind Memory: Visual Representations of Slavery in England and North America 1780-1865. New York: Routledge, 2000.
Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Knopf, 1987.

Beginn: 20.4.04

The Gothic novel, inaugurated by Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story (1764), flourished in the early 19th century. It is characterized by gloomy locales, mystery, and supernatural occurrences. The principal aim of such novels was to evoke 'chilling terror' in the reader. In America the genre conventions were employed in an extended and specific sense, from novels of Charles Brockden Brown and the tales of Edgar Allen Poe to Edith Wharton, Henry James, William Faulkner, Anne Rice, and Stephen King. General aims of the seminar will be(1) to introduce the theory of the Gothic as a genre, (2) to examine the role this mode of writing played in the early phase of American 'literary nationalism', and (3) to trace its ramifications in the American short story and novel of the 19th and 20th century. The seminar will explore topics such as: the 'subversive potential' of American Gothic texts, gender roles, 'racial' boundaries, the connections of Gothic fictions to industrialization, the distinction between 'high' and 'popular' culture, Gothic and realism. A reader with secondary sources will be provided at the beginning of the semester. Requirement: Please read the following texts before the start of the semester: Washington Irving, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," and Nathaniel Hawthorne, "Young Goodman Brown" (!). Both texts are in the Norton anthology, they will also be provided in the 'Semesterapparat'. You might also start reading Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Huntly

Beginn: 21.4.04

The works of William Shakespeare and his contemporaries have not ceased to both fascinate and terrify popular American culture. Examining some of the origins and developments of apparently polarizing capacity inherent in the texts, this course is designed to provide an introduction into Shakespeare and Early Modern Travel Writing, its tradition, reception and re-writing in different historical and cultural contexts, all revolving around the idea of America.

After an extensive study of The Tempest along with Early Modern fictional and non-fictional prose texts, a second part of the course will be concerned with the highly ambivalent reactions to Shakespeare during and after the American Revolution. Furthermore, we will look at Postcolonial attempts at re-writing dominant Shakespearean themes, and an analysis of contemporary approaches towards Shakespeare's plays e.g. in Hollywood-Film will round of our exploration into the idea of the 'brave new world' in Shakespeare and ideas about Shakespeare in the 'New World'.

Texts:
Morus, Thomas. Utopia. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969.
Raleigh, Sir Walter. The Discovery of Guiana and the Journal of the Second Voyage thereto. Leipzig, London, 1889. ('Kopiervorlage')
Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. Cambridge: CUP, 2002. The Tempest is to be studied in advance!

A reader containing further compulsory texts will be made available before the beginning of the semester.

Beginn: 20.4.04

In a now famous essay first published in 1963, Richard Hofstadter coined the term paranoid style for a discursive form he discerned in American politics. Paranoid thought, while not being a specifically American phenomenon, takes a certain form and has a specific function in the American context, Hofstadter concluded. Since its publication, the premises of this essay have continuously been discussed, further developed, but also criticized. More and more critics believe, however, that there is an affinity between American culture in particular or postmodern culture in general and a culture of paranoia (Timothy Melley).

Reading and discussing texts central to a theorization of a culture of paranoia, we will work out an apparatus for close analyses of literary (Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Bret Easton Ellis) and filmic texts. As a central point, we will ask what the functions of such a "paranoid style" within the broader context of contemporary culture are.

Requirements for this course are: regular attendance, thorough and critical preparation, participation in class discussion, a short (single or group) presentation (with hand-out), and a term paper.

Please read Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 over the break.

Participation in this seminar is limited, please register by signing your name in the respective list (on the bulletin board two weeks prior to the start of the semester).

Beginn: 19.4.05

This course explores the representation and performance of race and ethnicity in recent American drama. Studying dramatic texts, critical material and occasional video productions, we will analyze how various ethnic minorities have used the stage as a means of analyzing, questioning, subverting, and modifying dominant power structures as well as of defining, and redefining cultural identities. We will examine how Self and Other are represented, and how modes of representation change in accordance with evolving concepts of subjectivity. The overall goal of this course is to train your analytical skills in reading/viewing drama as well as to sharpen your critical awareness of how concepts of race and ethnicity are constructed, presented and performed, and to what effect. Aside from that, this course strives to acquaint you with some of the most exciting, energetic and complex plays and performances that have burst onto the American stage since the Civil Rights Movement and have fundamentally reshaped American theater and American identity.

Blockseminar; Anmeldung bis 20. April 2005 per e-mail an: Renate.Ulbrich@rz.hu-berlin.de

Beginn: 23.5.05

Die Veranstaltungsreihe will anhand markanter Prozesse in der amerikanischen Gesellschaft von den Anfängen bis zum 2. Weltkrieg eine Einführung in die Sozialgeschichte geben und dabei den Zusammenhang mit ideengeschichtlichen Konzeptionen und den darüber in den USA geführten Debatten herstellen. Dabei werden verschiedene Interpretationsansätze vorgestellt und Fragen der aktuellen Diskussion in der amerikanischen Historiographie problematisiert.

Als grundlegender Text für das Selbststudium dient: Alan Brinkley, The Unfinished Nation. A Concise History of the American People. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993.

Weitere Informationen zur Vorlesung können der homepage "Amerikanistik" (ab Ende März) entnommen werden.

Beginn: 18.4.05

Die Teilnahme an der Überblicksvorlesung (in engl. Sprache) ist verbunden mit der Mitarbeit an einem der drei parallel angebotenen Proseminare, in denen ausgewählte Texte diskutiert werden (Beteiligung an einem Kurzreferat). Die ausgewählten Texte werden in einem Reader zusammengestellt, soweit sie nicht in der Shorter Norton Anthology of American Literature (7th edition) enthalten sind. Der Erwerb dieser Anthologie, die bei den Buchhandlungen Kiepert, Georgenstr./S-Bahnbogen bzw. Books in Berlin, Goethestr. 69, vorrätig ist, ist unverzichtbare Voraussetzung für ein Studium der amerikanischen Literatur. Den Reader erhalten Sie ab 12.4. 05 im Copy Haus, Georgenstr. 190.

Um für die vier Seminare etwa die gleiche Zahl von TeilnehmerInnen zu erreichen, tragen sich an den Seminaren Interessierte bitte ab Mitte März 2005 in eine der am Info-Brett gegenüber R. HG 2010 aushängenden Listen ein.

Die Teilnahme an der Überblicksvorlesung (in engl. Sprache) ist verbunden mit der Mitarbeit an einem der drei parallel angebotenen Proseminare, in denen ausgewählte Texte diskutiert werden (Beteiligung an einem Kurzreferat). Die ausgewählten Texte werden in einem Reader zusammengestellt, soweit sie nicht in der Shorter Norton Anthology of American Literature (7th edition) enthalten sind. Der Erwerb dieser Anthologie, die bei den Buchhandlungen Kiepert, Georgenstr./S-Bahnbogen bzw. Books in Berlin, Goethestr. 69, vorrätig ist, ist unverzichtbare Voraussetzung für ein Studium der amerikanischen Literatur. Den Reader erhalten Sie ab 12.4. 05 im Copy Haus, Georgenstr. 190.

Um für die vier Seminare etwa die gleiche Zahl von TeilnehmerInnen zu erreichen, tragen sich an den Seminaren Interessierte bitte ab Mitte März 2005 in eine der am Info-Brett gegenüber R. HG 2010 aushängenden Listen ein.

Representations of Slavery, one of the formative institutions in U.S.-American history, have occasioned heated debates throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. After a brief look at differing historiographic interpretations and questions raised by visual representations, we will discuss selected literary portrayals ranging from antebellum slave narratives to late twentieth century novels such as Toni Morrison's Beloved and Sherley Anne Williams's Dessa Rose. Particular attention will be paid to the narrative techniques the texts employ to facilitate or complicate the reader's involvement and the political implications of their rhetorical strategies.

Recommended Reading:
Berlin, Ira. Many Thousand Gone: The First Two Hundred Years of Slavery in North America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998.
Wood, Marcus. Blind Memory: Visual Representations of Slavery in England and North America 1780-1865. New York: Routledge, 2000.
Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Knopf, 1987.

Beginn: 20.4.04

The Gothic novel, inaugurated by Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story (1764), flourished in the early 19th century. It is characterized by gloomy locales, mystery, and supernatural occurrences. The principal aim of such novels was to evoke 'chilling terror' in the reader. In America the genre conventions were employed in an extended and specific sense, from novels of Charles Brockden Brown and the tales of Edgar Allen Poe to Edith Wharton, Henry James, William Faulkner, Anne Rice, and Stephen King. General aims of the seminar will be(1) to introduce the theory of the Gothic as a genre, (2) to examine the role this mode of writing played in the early phase of American 'literary nationalism', and (3) to trace its ramifications in the American short story and novel of the 19th and 20th century. The seminar will explore topics such as: the 'subversive potential' of American Gothic texts, gender roles, 'racial' boundaries, the connections of Gothic fictions to industrialization, the distinction between 'high' and 'popular' culture, Gothic and realism. A reader with secondary sources will be provided at the beginning of the semester. Requirement: Please read the following texts before the start of the semester: Washington Irving, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," and Nathaniel Hawthorne, "Young Goodman Brown" (!). Both texts are in the Norton anthology, they will also be provided in the 'Semesterapparat'. You might also start reading Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Huntly

Beginn: 21.4.04

The works of William Shakespeare and his contemporaries have not ceased to both fascinate and terrify popular American culture. Examining some of the origins and developments of apparently polarizing capacity inherent in the texts, this course is designed to provide an introduction into Shakespeare and Early Modern Travel Writing, its tradition, reception and re-writing in different historical and cultural contexts, all revolving around the idea of America.

After an extensive study of The Tempest along with Early Modern fictional and non-fictional prose texts, a second part of the course will be concerned with the highly ambivalent reactions to Shakespeare during and after the American Revolution. Furthermore, we will look at Postcolonial attempts at re-writing dominant Shakespearean themes, and an analysis of contemporary approaches towards Shakespeare's plays e.g. in Hollywood-Film will round of our exploration into the idea of the 'brave new world' in Shakespeare and ideas about Shakespeare in the 'New World'.

Texts:
Morus, Thomas. Utopia. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969.
Raleigh, Sir Walter. The Discovery of Guiana and the Journal of the Second Voyage thereto. Leipzig, London, 1889. ('Kopiervorlage')
Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. Cambridge: CUP, 2002. The Tempest is to be studied in advance!

A reader containing further compulsory texts will be made available before the beginning of the semester.

Beginn: 20.4.04

In a now famous essay first published in 1963, Richard Hofstadter coined the term paranoid style for a discursive form he discerned in American politics. Paranoid thought, while not being a specifically American phenomenon, takes a certain form and has a specific function in the American context, Hofstadter concluded. Since its publication, the premises of this essay have continuously been discussed, further developed, but also criticized. More and more critics believe, however, that there is an affinity between American culture in particular or postmodern culture in general and a culture of paranoia (Timothy Melley).

Reading and discussing texts central to a theorization of a culture of paranoia, we will work out an apparatus for close analyses of literary (Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Bret Easton Ellis) and filmic texts. As a central point, we will ask what the functions of such a "paranoid style" within the broader context of contemporary culture are.

Requirements for this course are: regular attendance, thorough and critical preparation, participation in class discussion, a short (single or group) presentation (with hand-out), and a term paper.

Please read Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 over the break.

Participation in this seminar is limited, please register by signing your name in the respective list (on the bulletin board two weeks prior to the start of the semester).

Beginn: 19.4.05

(entfällt)

This course explores the representation and performance of race and ethnicity in recent American drama. Studying dramatic texts, critical material and occasional video productions, we will analyze how various ethnic minorities have used the stage as a means of analyzing, questioning, subverting, and modifying dominant power structures as well as of defining, and redefining cultural identities. We will examine how Self and Other are represented, and how modes of representation change in accordance with evolving concepts of subjectivity. The overall goal of this course is to train your analytical skills in reading/viewing drama as well as to sharpen your critical awareness of how concepts of race and ethnicity are constructed, presented and performed, and to what effect. Aside from that, this course strives to acquaint you with some of the most exciting, energetic and complex plays and performances that have burst onto the American stage since the Civil Rights Movement and have fundamentally reshaped American theater and American identity.

Blockseminar; Anmeldung bis 20. April 2005 per e-mail an: Renate.Ulbrich@rz.hu-berlin.de

Beginn: 23.5.05

Der Horrortext ist, als Umschlagplatz des monströsen kulturellen Imaginären, mehr als ein Untergenre des Fantastischen. Gleichzeitig ist er wesentlich geprägt von der Gothic novel des 18. Jahrhunderts. Die archetypischen Rollen von Monster/Täter und Opfer - männlichem Gothic villain und damsel in distress - werden im Horrorfilm der Gegenwart von serial killer und scream queen verkörpert. Doch in den letzten Jahren haben gerade Horrorautorinnen verstärkt an Neufassungen des Monsters gearbeitet - beispielsweise Suzy McKee Charnas mit Boobs (1989), der Geschichte einer Werwölfin. Auch im amerikanischen Horrorfilm gibt es neue Monster, so in Ginger Snaps (2000) und Monster (2003). Das Seminar will diese neuen Perspektiven untersuchen und dabei eine Einführung in aktuelle Fragestellungen zu Autorschaft, Gender und Genre geben.

Ausgewählte Texte
Rhoda Berenstein: Attack of the Leading Ladies. Gender, Sexuality, and Spectatorship in Classic Horror Cinema, New York, 1996.
Gabriele Dietze: Hardboiled woman. Geschlechterkrieg im amerikanischen Kriminalroman, Hamburg, 1997.
Lisa Tuttle. Introduction. In Skin of the Soul. New Horror Stories by Women, Lisa Tuttle (ed.), 1-6. London, 1990.
Gina Wisker. Love bites: Contemporary women's vampire fictions. In A Companion to the Gothic, David Punter (ed.), 167-179. Oxford, 2000. (Bitte den Text von Wisker vor Beginn des Seminars lesen.)

Beginn: 13.4.05

Representations of Slavery, one of the formative institutions in U.S.-American history, have occasioned heated debates throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. After a brief look at differing historiographic interpretations and questions raised by visual representations, we will discuss selected literary portrayals ranging from antebellum slave narratives to late twentieth century novels such as Toni Morrison's Beloved and Sherley Anne Williams's Dessa Rose. Particular attention will be paid to the narrative techniques the texts employ to facilitate or complicate the reader's involvement and the political implications of their rhetorical strategies.

Recommended Reading:
Berlin, Ira. Many Thousand Gone: The First Two Hundred Years of Slavery in North America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998.
Wood, Marcus. Blind Memory: Visual Representations of Slavery in England and North America 1780-1865. New York: Routledge, 2000.
Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Knopf, 1987.

Beginn: 20.4.04

In vielen theoretischen Ansätzen in der Literaturwissenschaften und auch in den Cultural Studies wird Marxismus vorausgesetzt aber selten gelehrt. Das Seminar möchte einerseits mit Primärtexten von Marx und Engels vertraut machen und andererseits diese Lektüren mit modernen und postmodernen angloamerikanischen und europäischen Anschlüssen an marxistische Paradigmen kreuzen. Es wird dabei um Werttheorien, Klassenanalyse, Revolutionstheorien, dialektischen und historischen Materialismus und Schriften zur Frauen- und zur Judenfrage gehen. Z. B. wird die Kategorie Geschlecht in Friedrich Engels "Vom Ursprung der Familie" mit sozialistischem Feminismus (Hartmann), marxismuskritischem Feminismus (Rubin) in Beziehung gesetzt. Klassische Kapitalismusanalysen sollen mit Analysen Spätkapitalismus (Jameson, Zizek) konterkariert werden. Ebenso sollen Kategorie des Warenfetischismus weitergedacht werden. Dem Marx'schen Ideologiebegriff werden spätere Weiterungen zu einer Vorstellung von Hegemonie (Gramsci, Althusser, Hall) und marxistisch/leninistische Imperialismus-Theorien mit Revisionen im Angesicht der Globalisierung wie Hardt/Negris Empire (2000) gegenübergestellt.

Begrenzte TeilnehmerInnenzahl. (auch als KW USA II - letztmalig - )

Um begründete Anmeldung wird gebeten bei gabriele.dietze@rz.hu-berlin.de.

Beginn: 19.4.05

In a now famous essay first published in 1963, Richard Hofstadter coined the term paranoid style for a discursive form he discerned in American politics. Paranoid thought, while not being a specifically American phenomenon, takes a certain form and has a specific function in the American context, Hofstadter concluded. Since its publication, the premises of this essay have continuously been discussed, further developed, but also criticized. More and more critics believe, however, that there is an affinity between American culture in particular or postmodern culture in general and a culture of paranoia (Timothy Melley).

Reading and discussing texts central to a theorization of a culture of paranoia, we will work out an apparatus for close analyses of literary (Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Bret Easton Ellis) and filmic texts. As a central point, we will ask what the functions of such a "paranoid style" within the broader context of contemporary culture are.

Requirements for this course are: regular attendance, thorough and critical preparation, participation in class discussion, a short (single or group) presentation (with hand-out), and a term paper.

Please read Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 over the break.

Participation in this seminar is limited, please register by signing your name in the respective list (on the bulletin board two weeks prior to the start of the semester).

Beginn: 19.4.05

(entfällt)

Der Horrortext ist, als Umschlagplatz des monströsen kulturellen Imaginären, mehr als ein Untergenre des Fantastischen. Gleichzeitig ist er wesentlich geprägt von der Gothic novel des 18. Jahrhunderts. Die archetypischen Rollen von Monster/Täter und Opfer - männlichem Gothic villain und damsel in distress - werden im Horrorfilm der Gegenwart von serial killer und scream queen verkörpert. Doch in den letzten Jahren haben gerade Horrorautorinnen verstärkt an Neufassungen des Monsters gearbeitet - beispielsweise Suzy McKee Charnas mit Boobs (1989), der Geschichte einer Werwölfin. Auch im amerikanischen Horrorfilm gibt es neue Monster, so in Ginger Snaps (2000) und Monster (2003). Das Seminar will diese neuen Perspektiven untersuchen und dabei eine Einführung in aktuelle Fragestellungen zu Autorschaft, Gender und Genre geben.

Ausgewählte Texte
Rhoda Berenstein: Attack of the Leading Ladies. Gender, Sexuality, and Spectatorship in Classic Horror Cinema, New York, 1996.
Gabriele Dietze: Hardboiled woman. Geschlechterkrieg im amerikanischen Kriminalroman, Hamburg, 1997.
Lisa Tuttle. Introduction. In Skin of the Soul. New Horror Stories by Women, Lisa Tuttle (ed.), 1-6. London, 1990.
Gina Wisker. Love bites: Contemporary women's vampire fictions. In A Companion to the Gothic, David Punter (ed.), 167-179. Oxford, 2000. (Bitte den Text von Wisker vor Beginn des Seminars lesen.)

Beginn: 13.4.05

Die Veranstaltungsreihe will anhand markanter Prozesse in der amerikanischen Gesellschaft von den Anfängen bis zum 2. Weltkrieg eine Einführung in die Sozialgeschichte geben und dabei den Zusammenhang mit ideengeschichtlichen Konzeptionen und den darüber in den USA geführten Debatten herstellen. Dabei werden verschiedene Interpretationsansätze vorgestellt und Fragen der aktuellen Diskussion in der amerikanischen Historiographie problematisiert.

Als grundlegender Text für das Selbststudium dient: Alan Brinkley, The Unfinished Nation. A Concise History of the American People. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993.

Weitere Informationen zur Vorlesung können der homepage "Amerikanistik" (ab Ende März) entnommen werden.

Beginn: 18.4.05

(entfällt)

In his essay "The Idea of Adolescence in American Fiction" (1968) Ihab Hassan argues that "the cult of adolescence" has played a constitutive role in the emergence of a distinctively American literature. Similarly, Leslie Fiedler has suggested that the themes of American literature "belong to the pre-adult world" as a reflection of an ongoing effort to come to terms with the ideas of innocence and experience as crucial coordinates of American cultural history. Based upon a critical discussion of these assumptions the course will explore various literary representations of the theme of adolescence and their corresponding aesthetic functions in selected novels and short stories and evaluate their relevance for the formation of American literature in the 19th and 20th century.

Among others, writings by M. Twain, St. Crane, S. Anderson, H. James, W. Faulkner, C. McCullers, J.D. Salinger, R. Cormier, L. Lowry, N. Garden will serve as case studies for a comparative analysis of the themes and narrative strategies underlying the construction of adolescent images in texts intended for adult and young adult readers.

More detailed information on the syllabus, bibliography and webliography will be available on the American Studies homepage by the end of March.

Beginn: 19.04.05

Literary Modernism has long been esteemed for its transgression of boundaries, with fluidity and multiplicity frequently being cited as hallmarks of its aesthetic and philosophical agenda. Yet, recent research, addressing modernist representations in terms of 'race,' class, and gender, has pointed to Modernism's continued involvement in the hegemonic discourses of its time. Following this line of inquiry, we will concentrate on texts written during the 1920s such Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones, Langston Hughes's The Weary Blues, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, John Dos Passos's The Big Money, Fanny Hurst's Lummox, H.D.'s HERmione, and others. Topics to be discussed include Modernism and primitivism, Du Bois's concept of the "double consciousness," white modernism, the apotheosis of the businessman, the invisibility of servants, sexualities, and the gender of Modernism.

Suggested Reading
Nies, Betsy L. Eugenic Fantasies: Racial Ideology in the Literature and Popular Culture of the 1920s. New York: Routledge, 2002.
North, Michael. The Dialect of Modernism: Race, Language, and Twentieth-Century Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Dos Passos, John. U.S.A. / The Big Money. 1936; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966.

Beginn: 21. 4.05

In this five-week period we will examine the theory, literature, and staging practices related to American political drama-that which is both explicitly and implicitly political. We will examine the historical (German) roots of political and documentary drama, and we will examine the methods of staging political drama (both German and American). In addition to examining the theoretical and literary aspects of the topic, we will also examine the practical notions of staging a political drama, culminating a public presentation of Eric Bentley's documentary play about the House Un-American Activities Committee's Hollywood tribunals, Are You Now or Have You Ever Been? Beginning with the theories of Erwin Piscator and continuing to the present, we will examine various "models" (actual staging) and create our own research model, which will be staged for the public at Humboldt University. We will also look at directorial theory and technique and multi-media effects and apply those aspects to our production.

More information on this course (time schedule, syllabus etc.) will be available on the American Studies homepage by the end of March.

Blockseminar; Anmeldung bis 20. April 2005 per e-mail an: Renate.Ulbrich@rz.hu-berlin.de

The continuing debate on education in the United States is part of a much larger critical discourse on (re)defining American culture(s) in the context of the political, social and cultural challenges of globalization at the beginning of the 21th century. The ongoing controversies in the United States fueled in particular by Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind (1987) and Lawrence W. Levine's The Opening of the American Mind (1996) clearly demonstrate that education has remained a crucial field of academic and public struggles over issues regarding American national identity, the construction of historical memory, and the meaning of democracy. Based on a thorough review of the historical and cultural foundations of the American educational system the course will discuss major positions in the recent debates on the directions, functions and forms of education in the United States. By having a closer look at educational models, curricula, institutional structures as well as new pedagogical concepts of digital learning both in school and higher education the course will explore major shifts in the production, distribution and reception of knowledge in the U.S.A. since the 1990s.

More detailed information on the syllabus, bibliography and webliography will be available on the American Studies homepage by the end of March.

Beginn: 19.04.05

The nexus of money and gender constitutes a central theme of U.S.-American literature and culture, yet it has rarely been analyzed in a systematic fashion. Drawing particularly on the theories of psychoanalyst and philosopher Luce Irigaray and sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, we will discuss a wide range of literary texts published in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (e.g., Melville, Moby Dick, Dreiser, Sister Carrie, Wharton, The Custom of the Country, Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, Larsen, Quicksand, Walker, The Color Purple, etc.), as well as cultural representations such as the figure of the vamp in early twentieth century media, Carl Barks's Uncle Scrooge, and a former trader's account of Wall Street's "money culture" in the 1980s. We will focus specifically on the gendered character of money, the role of economics in the construction of gender, and the relations between literary and pecuniary discourses.

Suggested Reading
Dijkstra, Bram. Evil Sisters: The Threat of Female Sexuality in Twentieth-Century Culture. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1996.
Tratner, Michael. Deficits and Desires: Economics and Sexuality in Twentieth-Century Literature. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. 1925; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979.

Beginn: 21.4.05

In den postcolonial studies spricht man von 'Orientalismus' (Said) und meint damit die Konstruktion einer orientalischen ‚Andersheit' der Kolonisierten und damit im Gegenzug einer abendländisch weißen Hegemonie. Amerikanische und europäische ‚Neo-Orientalismen' kombinieren in den Nachwehen des 11. September Ängste vor religiösem Fanatismus und politischem Terrorismus, die von ‚Außen' kommen könnten, mit "gruppenbezogener islamophober Menschenfeindlichkeit" (Heitmeyer) gegen traditionelle und angeblich parallele Lebensführung von muslimischen Migrationsbevölkerungen im "Inneren". Das Seminar möchte in der Tradition machtkritischer Selbstreflexion, wie z.B. Whiteness oder Masculinity Studies den Blick auf einen 'Okzidentalismus' abendländischer Hegemoniekonstruktionen werfen. Dazu werden neben den genannten Ansätzen insbesondere Theorien der governmentality zu Rate gezogen.

Lektüre:
Conrad, S., und Shalimi, R., Jenseits des Eurozentrismus, Campus 2002
Steyerl, H., Rodriguez Gutierrez, E., Spricht die Subalterne Deutsch, Unrast 2003
Pieper, A. et. al., Gouvernementalismus, Campus 2003

Beginn: 19.4.05

The colloquium continues the discussions on transnational American cultural studies we had during the Wintersemester, which dealt with a range of essays on redefining American Studies in a comparative, postnational mode and on analyzing the implications and repercussions of worldwide migrations, diasporas, and transnational communities for work in cultural studies. During the summer the focus will be on three more concrete areas/case studies of recent trends and developments in transnational American cultural studies: projects and visions of transnational urbanism, of the Black Atlantic, and of border discourses (as they relate to Chicano/a Studies). The texts to be discussed will be collected in a reader (Ordner in our library) to be purchased at Copy-Haus, Georgenstrasse, corner Universitätsstrasse.

Requirements: regular attendance, presentation in class.

Das Kolloquium richtet sich insbes. an ExamenskandidatInnen und fortgeschrittene Studierende, die an theoretischen Fragen der (postnational) American Studies interessiert sind. Bitte melden Sie sich in eine meiner Sprechstunden oder per e-mail an.

Beginn: 21.4.05

Das Kolloquium richtet sich an Studierende, die an ihrer Magisterarbeit oder ihrer Dissertation arbeiten und daran interessiert sind, Entwürfe für ihre Arbeiten oder auch einzelne Kapitel in der Gruppe zu besprechen. Auch theoretische Texte, die für einzelne Arbeiten zentral sind, können gemeinsam gelesen und diskutiert werden.

Damit wir den Arbeitsplan rechtzeitig zusammenstellen können, wird um Anmeldung und um Lektürevorschläge gebeten - per e- mail oder in der Sprechstunde (freitags 12 - 13 Uhr).

Beginn: 15.4.05

Das Tutorium begleitet die Vorlesung "Einführung in die Sozial- und Ideengeschichte USA". Wir werden die Inhalte der Vorlesung vertiefend besprechen und durch ein Quellenstudium ergänzen.
Beginn: 19.04.05

Das Projekttutorium soll in zwei Semestern einen Überblick über das breite Spektrum von Latino Culture in den USA verschaffen. Geplant ist eine Untersuchung der drei großen Latino Communities in den USA: Mexican Americans, Puertorikanern und Cuban Americans mit dem Ziel, kulturelle Räume und Überschneidungen zwischen der anglophonen und der hispanophonen Kultur und Literatur in den USA zu erkunden, um für das jeweilige Fachgebiet (Amerikanistik/Romanistik) ein besseres Verständnis der 'Nachbarkultur' zu etablieren. Das erste Semesters soll sich mit der Geschichte der Latino Communities, Performance-Art (Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Coco Fusco), Fotografie (Ana Mendieta) und Literatur der Latinos (Nuyorican Poets u.a.) beschäftigen, wobei Konstruktionen transkultureller Identität und interkulturelle Konflikte den Leitfaden bilden. Die Schwerpunkte des folgenden Semesters sollen dann bei Musik (Hip Hop) und Film liegen.

Beginn: 18.4.05

America constitutes not only a geographic entity; it is an idea that is communicated throughout the nation as much as all over the globe. The American nation has been formed not just through forces political and economic. Since its very beginning, the idea of the nation-to-be was strongly influenced by philosophical and cultural discourses. The American Revolution created an entity that would call on the responsibility of each citizen to help shape the nation, to contribute rather than just to be governed. Such participatory democracy, however, heavily relies upon an educated public able to partake in the continuing processes of creation, maintenance and re-creation required by democracy.

Based on the assumption of the specific nature of US-American democracy, our Fifth Annual Students & Graduate Conference will take a look at US-American Media and their functions in the production of cultural knowledge at home and abroad. It will particularly address the subsequent issues: How is the democratic system communicated through the media that picture America? How are divergent voices integrated or included? If we look at policy shifts, at moments of transition and rediscovery, be they violent or peaceful, how are they accompanied or prefigured by the media? How do we judge the role of cultural touchstones all kinds of media, like Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Birth of a Nation, the frontier thesis and the Western, The Catcher in the Rye, Jazz and Creole Culture or Star Trek? Is the abundance of law-and-order texts just a coincidence in a jury-reliant justice system? What role do more recent shows like The West Wing play in a democratic system?

What happens once texts that are imminent to a specific culture are transmitted globally? When John Wayne meets Karl May and Sergio Leone? When the Fresh Prince of Bel Air airs on Egyptian television? When the most widely known American best-seller becomes Stupid White Men? When the most patriotic of American movies are the products of German directors?

Moreover, what about constructions of the world "outside", a possible backlash that may be seen in global politics and global institutions being mimicked in movies like High Noon or on shows like Babylon 5? How are more or less specifically American themes like the frontier and horror films centering on the American nuclear family perceived in radically different cultural structures? How do non-American born American artists differ in their representation of America? How self-reflexive is America, how self-reflexive is Europe about its perceptions of America?

In which way is the emergence of a global culture accompanied by the emergence of global means of cultural production, such as the partial de-localization of texts through the internet, and internationally co-produced franchises like Farscape and James Bond? Are there differences in fan culture and reception of popular phenomena like Star Trek and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and what happens to such differences when they meet on the internet and in international conferences and conventions? Does America thus provide a global cultural language with enabling as well as overwhelming if not omnipresent structures?

The conference is organized by students of the American Studies Program at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. All students interested in the project are invited to join. The presentation of a paper is not a requirement for participation, so please feel free to come and enjoy exciting papers, interesting discussions and related events.

If you are interested in holding a 20-minute presentation, please submit a short abstract by the end of March, 2005.

For more information and the conference program, see the conference web site.