| Kommentar |
First Session: October 22, 2019
This course provides an introduction to the discipline of American Studies and engages the prevailing theoretical approaches to the study of American literatures and cultures. Emphasizing key texts and methods for critically understanding the term ”American,” this class offers an interdisciplinary investigation into North American literature, history, culture, and identity. On the one hand, we will follow a ”classic” American Studies approach and identify a series of foundational myths and scenarios that have contributed to the making of the nation and we will trace them through the centuries. On the other hand, we will also show how a focus on such foundational myths is limiting, as it is dictated by a national and nationalist narrative of the US. Addressing the important shift in its focus and method of analysis of American literature and culture from a nation-state based type of area studies to a transnational American Studies, we will show how recent re-conceptualizations of the field of American Studies have contributed to a remapping of American literature that pays attention to the multi- and transcultural realities of the United States.
Course Readings:
There will be a course reader, which you can order through NamLitCult and pick up at our offices. |
