PS The Literary Politics of Sleep: Walt Whitman, Djuna Barnes, Shelley Jackson (Nordamerikanische Literaturen und Kulturen) - Einzelansicht

  "Sleep (...) is political," Simon J. Williams, Professor of Sociology, argues in his most recent book The Politics of Sleep (2011). "Sleep Is the New Sex," ABC News headlines after the results of an investigation published by Forbes magazine were made public in 2006. Sleep clearly is something we all 'know;' something that dominates roughly one third of our lives; something we all need; and something we all lack (at times). Sleep therefore is a very common human activity.
   Over the past decades, 'sleep studies' have become a major field of interdisciplinary research. Via an analysis of literary representations of sleep and the sleeping body, this seminar tries to offer an approach to 'sleep studies' from the perspective of literary and cultural studies. Walt Whitman's poetry, Djuna Barnes's and Shelley Jackson's novels, as well as some shorter fictional pieces will serve as points of reference to ask ourselves some of the following questions: What is sleep? What can literature tell us about sleep? Which metaphors are used in connection to sleep? How can we deal with what Nathaniel Wallace has called the "fundamental antagonism between sleep and narrative"? What can we learn about sleeping habits and conditions? How is sleep controlled by external forces? Which social and cultural (sleep) norms are depicted in our texts? How are these norms constructed, deconstructed, questioned, and reconstructed in literature? Is there a transgressive potential to sleep? What do literary representations of sleep tell us about culturally and politically important categories like, e.g. the nation, the body, and sexuality? How do these meanings change from 19^th-century early capitalism to 21^st-century neo-liberalism?
 
Please buy and read the following books before the semester starts:

• Djuna Barnes Nightwood (1936) -

edition: Faber & Faber 2007, ISBN: 978-0571235285

• Shelley Jackson Half Life (2006) -

edition: Harper Perennial 2007, ISBN: 978-0060882365

Further readings:
A course reader including Walt Whitman's poem "The Sleepers," shorter fiction, and theoretical texts on sleep and sleeplessness will be made available for purchase.

Course requirements: Regular attendance, active participation, reading and writing assignments, short oral presentation, graded term paper/ final written exam (depending on your Studienordnung).

Die verbindlich geltenden Zulassungsvoraussetzungen entnehmen Sie eigenverantwortlich den Modulhandbüchern und Studienordnungen Ihres jeweiligen Studienganges.

Die zu erbringende Prüfungsleistungen sind den Regelungen der Modulhandbücher und der Studienordnung Ihres jeweiligen Studienganges eigenverantwortlich zu entnehmen.