UnivIS
Information system of Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg © Config eG 
FAU Logo
  Collection/class schedule    module collection Home  |  Legal Matters  |  Contact  |  Help    
search:      semester:   
 
 Layout
 
printable version

 
 
 Also in UnivIS
 
course list

lecture directory

 
 
events calendar

job offers

furniture and equipment offers

 
 

  US Empire Studies (HS (interdisziplinär))

Lecturers
Dr. Herbert Sirois, Prof. Dr. Heike Paul

Details
Hauptseminar
2 cred.h, ECTS studies
LAEW, LAFV, LAFN, Master, Bachelor, Sprache Englisch, ECTS-Credits: gemäß Bestimmungen der Prüfungsordnungen
Time and place: Mon 12:15 - 13:45, C 301; comments on time and place: Beginn der Anmeldung für Lehrveranstaltungen des Lehrstuhls für Neueste Geschichte und Zeitgeschichte: 04.09.2016

Prerequisites / Organisational information
Die Veranstaltung ist partizipativ angelegt, entsprechend wird gemäß der Regelungen der Fakultät eine Teilnahmepflicht durchgesetzt. Die Arbeit mit Literatur und Quellen in englischer Sprache ist im Rahmen dieser Veranstaltung unumgänglich! Seminarsprache ist Englisch. Leistungsnachweis in der Veranstaltung wird über eine Kurzpräsentation und eine Hausarbeit (ca. 18 Seiten) erworben. Die Anmeldung erfolgt über StudOn.

Contents
Much scholarship has been addressing the question whether the US are a „postcolonial nation“ that has successfully struggled for independence from a repressive „mother country“ in a revolutionary war or an empire that has acted (and still acts) as conqueror and hegemon in the Americas as well as globally – and, should both apply, has debated when did it transform from one into the other. Still in 1955 William Appleby Williams suggests that „[o]ne of the central themes in American historiography is that there is no American empire,“ whereas more recently scholars like Paul Kennedy, Amy Kaplan, and Michael Rogin have considered the US in the light of empire-building and have pointed to the specific histories of an American empire lurking in the Puritan errand, the manifest destiny of westward expansion, and the oversea engagements since the 1890s. More recently, in the post 9/11 epoch, we find a renewed discussion regarding the „end of the American empire“ with the closing of the so-called „American century“ in rough analogy to classical historical predecessors (cf. Cullen Murphy’s Are We Rome?). In this seminar, we will discuss US history as well as cultural production in the light of Empire Studies and trace and reconstruct the different versions of the narrative of US imperialism. We will also analyze cultural productions (from the long-standing Western genre to the contemporary television series Rome and The Man in the High Castle) with regard to the construction and critique of (imagined/fictional) empires.

Recommended literature
  • Readings for this class will be available on StudOn by the beginning of the semester.

ECTS information:
Title:
AMERICAN EMPIRE - Fact or Myth?

Additional information
Expected participants: 15, Maximale Teilnehmerzahl: 15
Registration is required for this lecture.
Die Registration via: StudOn

Verwendung in folgenden UnivIS-Modulen
Startsemester WS 2016/2017:
North America: Culture and Literature (AM4)
North American Studies (AM3b)

Department: Chair of Modern and Contemporary History (Prof. Dr. Schöllgen)
UnivIS is a product of Config eG, Buckenhof