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Lehrende/r: Dr. Damien Schlarb
Veranstaltungsart:
Übung
Anzeige im Stundenplan:
05.866.215
Semesterwochenstunden:
2
Unterrichtssprache:
Deutsch
Min. | Max. Teilnehmerzahl:
- | 45
Voraussetzungen / Organisatorisches:
Requirements:
• Regular attendance
• In-class participation
• Two short written responses
• Leading one class session
• Final exam
Inhalt:
This class is designed to critically survey American attitudes towards faith and spiritualism from the antebellum period to the late twentieth century. Our readings will include literary, theological, historical, and theoretical texts dealing with Calvinism, Unitarianism, Transcendentalism, as well as more skeptical articles of faith. Although we will investigate the roots of American creeds this is not a survey of American denominationalism, but rather an introduction to American spiritual attitudes expressed through literary and cultural texts. In other words, we will investigate what kind of spiritual issues are contested in the American context, what kind of questions are raised, and what cultural issues (history, economy, etc.) shape these debates. In terms of literary history, an emphasis will be put on the American Renaissance as the literary period that formally commenced the project of cultural nation building. We will explore and discuss American responses to fundamental metaphysical and epistemological questions: How and what can we know with certainty? Where does such spiritual certainty come from? What is our relation to God? How does this relationship affect our moral world? The answers to these initial questions will lead us towards more specific inquires: Is there an American brand of spiritual certainty? And if so, how does this faith inform American relations to nature, history, and the body?
Empfohlene Literatur:
Engler, Bernd and Oliver Scheiding, eds. Key Concepts in American Cultural History: From the Colonial Period to the End of the Nineteenth Century. WVT, Trier: 2005. (this will be our course reader)
Additional texts will be provided via the university's online reader platform (ILIAS).
Authors:
Bradford, Mather, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, a.o.
Zusätzliche Informationen:
Our readings will be compiled of a diverse range of texts: Primary literary sources, literary theory, philosophy, and popular culture. The readings will be diverse and at times difficult. Be prepared to work through some denser materials that will occasionally have to be dissected and read multiple times.
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