Epidemic Fiction: Narrative & Contagion

Dozent/in:

Karin Höpker

Angaben:

Hauptseminar, 2 SWS, LAFV, Diplom, Master, Bachelor

Termine:

Mo, 14:15 - 15:45, Raum n.V.

Voraussetzungen / Organisatorisches:

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all winter term classes will be taught online.

Das Hauptseminar gehört in folgenden Studiengängen jeweils zu folgenden Modulen:

• Lehramt Englisch an Gymnasien: Hauptmodul L-GYM Literature
• BA English and American Studies: Hauptmodul A
• MA North American Studies - Culture and Literature: Modul 7, 8
• MA The Americas / Las Américas: Modul 3b, 4
• MA Literaturstudien - intermedial und interkulturell: Modul 4, 5, 7, 8

Für BA-Studierende ist an diesen Kurs eine Independent Study Group angeschlossen.

Inhalt:

This class focuses on narratives of contagion along a spectrum of US American fiction. We will discuss a range of examples from the early republic and 19th-century gothic imagination to the present. Course materials range across media to explore the changing tropes of contagion and epidemic as well as a history of biopolitical thought and techniques. We will discuss fiction in the context of scientific discourses of infection and disease, treatment and containment and trace the rich archive of an epidemic imaginary deeply informed by hierarchies of privilege and factors of race, class, and gender.

Empfohlene Literatur:

For syllabus and reading list, please consult StudOn.

Please buy and read in advance:
Steward O’Nan A Prayer for the Dying, Philip Roth Nemesis;
texts by Brown, Poe, Hawthorne, Wharton, Porter, Tiptree, Whitehead and others will be made available.

Feminist Literature and Politics in the 19th Century [AE_HSFeLi]

Dozent/in:

Antje Kley

Angaben:

Hauptseminar, 2 SWS

Termine:

Mo, 16:15 - 17:45, Raum n.V.

Voraussetzungen / Organisatorisches:

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all winter term classes will be taught online.

Das Hauptseminar kann wie folgt verwendet werden:

• MA North American Studies - Culture and Literature: Modul 7,8

• MA The Americas / Las Américas: Modul 3b,4

• MA Literaturstudien - intermedial und interkulturell: Modul 4,5,7,8

• MA Ethik der Textkulturen: M3, M4

• Lehramt Englisch an Gymnasien: Hauptmodul L-GYM Literature (Zulassungsvoraussetzung: Zwischenmodul L-GYM Literature)

• BA English and American Studies: Hauptmodul A mit begleitender Independent Study Group

• MA English Studies: "Freie Ergänzungsstudien/Wild Card" mit begleitendem Kurs

Inhalt:

This online seminar invites students to explore US-American First Wave Feminist Writing, both literary and political, from the early 19th century and the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 to the introduction of Women’s Suffrage in the US in 1920. Political readings include the Declaration of Sentiments, one of the most important documents of the American women’s movement, and Sojourner Truth’s African American intervention into its all-white self-conception, “Ain’t I a Woman?”. Literary readings span voices representing the early Republic (Catherine Sedgewick), mid nineteenth century transcendentalist thought (Margaret Fuller), the domestic novel (Harriet Beecher Stowe), the slave narrative (Harriet Jacobs), early regionalist articulations of self-determination (Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Kate Chopin), and the novel of manners (Edith Wharton). Additional critical material on the historical status of women in the US (Conny Brown/Jane Seitz), the ‘Cult of True Womanhood’ (Barbara Welter), the history of women’s writing (Sandra Gilbert/Susan Gubar, Elaine Showalter) as well as the criteria and authority employed to legitimate selected voices and texts as historically significant (Hayden White) will provide conceptual framing.
The seminar trains students in the practice of text-based and historically as well as theoretically framed interpretation. One course goal is to discuss and clarify in historical relation the degree to which social institutions and patterns of order – the family, questions of ownership and civil rights, the relation between private and public spheres, literary, cultural and political authority – are shaped by gender differentiations. Another goal is the explication of the cultural functions, the insight and weight of literary discourse in this exemplary context.

Empfohlene Literatur:

Please buy the following novels (in paper!):

• Fuller, Margaret. Woman in the Nineteenth Century.

• Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Written by Herself. 2. ed. New York: Norton Critical Edition, 2018.

• Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. 3. ed. New York: Norton Critical Edition, 2017.
  

All other materials will be provided online, some of them in excerpts.

Introducing North American Literary Studies [AE_VLNALS]

Dozent/in:

Antje Kley

Angaben:

Vorlesung, 2 SWS

Termine:

Do, 12:15 - 13:45, Raum n.V.

Voraussetzungen / Organisatorisches:

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all winter term classes will be taught online.

Die Vorlesung kann wie folgt verwendet werden:

• L-GYM Englisch: "Optionsmodul L-GYM Literature" (Zulassungsvoraussetzung: Zwischenmodul Literature)

• BA English and American Studies (neu): "Hauptmodul B Literature" (ausgenommen Studienrichtung American Studies)

• MA North American Studies Mastermodul 2: "Grundlagenmodul Literary Studies": VL plus Kurs

• MA English Studies: "Freie Ergänzungsstudien/Wild Card": plus Kurs

• MA Ethik der Textkulturen: M2, M3

Inhalt:

This lecture gives an overview of the development of literary studies in the US from the middle of the nineteenth century to the present. The lecture outlines the changes in the understanding of American literature and the function of literary studies. It also gives an advanced introduction to literary theory. We will start with attempts to define the special character of American literature; subsequently, we will discuss theoretical approaches such as New Criticism, structuralism, poststructuralism, African American literary criticism, and postcolonial criticism. The lecture is supplemented by an Übung in which students are offered the opportunity to discuss a broad range of texts from the history of North American poetics and literary studies.
The module closes with a 20 minutes oral exam on Monday, February, 15 (and Tuesday, February, 16).

Empfohlene Literatur:

• Vincent B. Leitch, American Literary Criticism Since the 1930s (New York: Routledge, 2010).

• Julian Wolfreys (ed.), Modern North American Criticism and Theory: A Critical Guide (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2006).
  

ISG zu HS Epidemic Fiction: Narrative & Contagion [AE_UEPFI]

Dozent/in:

Karin Höpker

Angaben:

Übung, 1 SWS, Bachelor

Termine:

Zeit und Raum n.V.

ISG zu HS Feminist Literature and Politics in the 19th Century [AE_UEFeLi]

Dozent/in:

Antje Kley

Angaben:

Übung, 1 SWS

Termine:

n. V.

Voraussetzungen / Organisatorisches:

Die Independent Study Group (BA) kann wie folgt verwendet werden:
BA English and American Studies (neu): "Hauptmodul A" (Zulassungsvoraussetzung Zwischenmodul II)

Kombiseminar Historicity

Dozentinnen/Dozenten:

Michael Klotz, Christian Krug

Angaben:

Kombiseminar, 4 SWS

Termine:

Mo, 12:15 - 13:45, Raum n.V.
Di, 16:15 - 17:45, Raum n.V.

Voraussetzungen / Organisatorisches:

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all winter term classes will be taught online.

The Kombiseminar belongs to the following modules in the indicated degree programs:

• BA English and American Studies: Zwischenmodul I: Thematisches Kombinationsmodul. (Requirements: completed Grundlagen- und Orientierungsprüfung)

Inhalt:

The course will focus on the language as well as the literature and culture of Renaissance England. Focusing on the state of the English language in Shakespeare's day, the linguistic part of the course will explore the development of the English language from its beginnings in the early Middle Ages to the present day. How did English sound around the year 1600, how did it differ grammatically and lexically from present day English? The emergence of standard English will be a recurrent theme throughout the course. The literary and cultural part will focus on Shakespearean plays and poems, including their production and consumption.
The course will be taught online and consists of two sessions per week. It will end with an oral exam including a short presentation.

Kombiseminar Linguistic Varieties and Cultural Difference [AE_KSLVCD]

Dozentinnen/Dozenten:

Brigitta Mittmann, Karin Höpker

Angaben:

Kombiseminar, 4 SWS

Termine:

Mo, 8:15 - 9:45, Raum n.V.
Mi, 8:30 - 10:00, Raum n.V.

Voraussetzungen / Organisatorisches:

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all winter term classes will be taught online.

The Kombiseminar belongs to the following modules in the indicated degree programs:

• BA English and American Studies: Zwischenmodul I: Thematisches Kombinationsmodul. (Requirements: completed Grundlagen- und Orientierungsprüfung)

Inhalt:

The linguistic part of this course provides an introduction to varieties of English, focussing on regional and social variation in the UK and the US. Topics include methods of dialectology, speech communities and social networks, language variation and gender, bi- and multilingualism, diglossia, code-switching, language change, attitudes to language variation, and language and power.
The literary and cultural studies part provides an introduction to concepts and categories of (cultural) difference such as race, gender, sexuality and class. Constructions of difference will be analyzed in the realm of cultural production including literature, film, and popular culture.

Empfohlene Literatur:

Study materials will be made available on StudOn.
Please acquire and read in advance: Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Penguin.

Lektüreseminar Literature [AE_SELit2]

Dozent/in:

Claudia Hachenberger

Angaben:

Seminar, 2 SWS

Termine:

Do, 10:15 - 11:45, Raum n.V.

Voraussetzungen / Organisatorisches:

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all winter term classes will be taught online.

Der Lektürekurs Literature kann wie folgt verwendet werden:

• Lehramt Englisch an Grund-, Haupt- und Realschulen: Elementarmodul L-UF Literature.
  

Zulassungsvoraussetzung ist der erfolgreiche Besuch des Grundseminares Literature (bestandene Klausur).
Der Leistungsnachweis erfolgt in einer 60-minütigen Klausur zum Semesterende (Modulteilprüfung).

Inhalt:

Ziel der Lehrveranstaltung ist die Einübung und Vertiefung der im Grundseminar erworbenen literaturwissenschaftlichen Analysekategorien und -verfahren an exemplarischen Texten der englischen und der amerikanischen Literatur des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts sowie die Vermittlung eines literaturhistorischen Überblickwissens zum genannten Zeitraum.

Research Colloquium American Studies

Dozent/in:

Antje Kley

Angaben:

Kolloquium, 2 SWS

Termine:

Di, 12:15 - 13:45, Raum n.V.

Voraussetzungen / Organisatorisches:

Reading material will be available on StudOn.

Inhalt:

The colloquium offers doctoral and advanced MA students in American Studies the opportunity to present their work and to discuss texts, other cultural artifacts and scholarship more generally. It also provides a forum for guest lectures on current topics in American Literary and Cultural Studies. Please sign up personally with Antje Kley