This class is an advanced survey course on major problems of American Literary and Cultural History. The objective is a repetition of the field combined with an exploration of one specific issue: visual history. For that purpose a powerpoint-presentation on some of the main issues of cultural history will be available on Moodle for everybody. In class we will briefly discuss questions related to this presentation and the classical period descriptions: Re-Discovery: 1492 (Old and New Inhabitants); City upon a Hill (The Puritan Experiment); Reason and Revolutions (The Age of Reasons and American Revolutions between Philadelphia and Seneca Falls); In and beneath the American Renaissance (a canon for 1850 and its multicultural and multi-gendered basis); Post-bellum Realisms and Naturalisms; Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance; Postmodernism and the old/new Diversity. The main part of the meetings will concentrate on questions of visual history: students will present one aspect of the visual history of the respective period (a painting, a building, a photograph, a sculpture, a movie excerpt etc.) and we will explore its implications. Students who need a more comprehensive introduction to American literary and cultural history are welcome to participate in the lecture for the BA students. Reading: · A reader with pertinent texts will be available the copyshop "Sprintout", Georgenstraße, S-Bahn Bogen 190. · The powerpoint-presentations discussed in the lecture will be available for viewing and downloading on the e-learning platform Moodle before each lecture. Course Requirements: As a Modul examination students will write a take-home exam with questions from this class and the class "Theories of American Studies". You have to register for this class in the e-learning platform Moodle. As a password use the last word of the course title. Link zu Moodle: http://moodle.hu-berlin.de/course/view.php?id=13954 Achtung: Am 9.11. müssen wir noch einmal in den Common-Room ausweichen. |
