53-532 Key Concepts: Frontiers in U.S.American History and Culture (ENG-6a, ENG-7, ENG-7a, ENG-13, AA11, LAA9, LAA11, LAA12, LAA13, IAA22, IAA24, SLM-WB, Master-WB, SG)

Lehrende: Prof. Dr. Astrid Böger

Veranstaltungsart: Vorlesung

Anzeige im Stundenplan:

Semesterwochenstunden: 2

Credits: 2,0

Unterrichtssprache: Englisch

Min. | Max. Teilnehmerzahl: - | 200

Kommentare/ Inhalte:
The notion of a frontier or a boundary between nature and culture, wilderness and civilization or along other bifurcations delineating ‘us’ from ‘them’ has been a constitutive myth in U.S.-American cultural history from its inception. In roughly chronological fashion, this lecture course will highlight moments in American history when the notion of a frontier was invoked in order to chart the geographical as well as the intellectual terrain of today’s United States of America, sometimes at the expense of those either not considered to be part of it or else pushed into positions of marginality (or not even allowed into the country, as the case may be). Using a broad, diachronic approach will allow us to consider texts and other artefacts across media from different eras including maps, literature, painting, photography, and film. In the latter part of the lecture course, we will focus our attention on activist movements roughly of the past two decades such as the Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter movements, whose aim has been to expand the inclusion of formerly marginalized voices and positions into the ‘American project’.

Course Requirements:
Regular attendance as well as readiness to participate in discussions/analyses of individual texts and visual artefacts. Additionally, students in the Master of Education (M.Ed) course as well as Erasmus students will be required to submit a short research paper at the end of the term.

Recommended Reading:
In order to appreciate U.S. American literature in its cultural contexts, reading any literary history would make for useful preparation. We especially recommend Hubert Zapf (ed.), Amerikanische Literaturgeschichte (Metzler 1996) or Richard Grey, A History of American Literature (Wiley & Sons, 2011).