05.866.132 Cultural Studies III - American Studies

Lehrende/r: Ben Stroud

Veranstaltungsart: Übung

Anzeige im Stundenplan: CS III - American

Semesterwochenstunden: 2

Unterrichtssprache: Englisch

Min. | Max. Teilnehmerzahl: - | 45

Anmeldegruppe: Cultural Studies III - American Studies

Prioritätsschema: Senatsrichtlinie
Zulassung gemäß Richtlinie über den Zugang zu teilnahmebeschränkten Lehrveranstaltungen vom 07. März 2007.

Nähere Informationen hierzu entnehmen Sie bitte www.info.jogustine.uni-mainz.de/senatsrichtlinie

Inhalt:
Culture Studies III - Contemporary American Fiction—Fear, Hard Times, and the Reshaping of the Nation since 2000
In this class, we will read fiction from three different strains in recent American fiction—literary fiction that uses elements of genre fiction, writing of the new immigrant experience, and realist fiction of difficult times in Mid-America—and consider how they reflect and illuminate the America of the last decade. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, a mixture of high literature and science fiction, takes the traditional American road novel and transports it into a post-apocalyptic landscape of fear. Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao describes the life of Dominican immigrants and their experience shifting between the US and the Dominican Republic. Bonnie Jo Campbell’s story collection American Salvage takes us to rural Michigan and the people struggling to make ends meet there. This class argues that you can understand the state of a culture by understanding its literature. Each of these novels were acclaimed by critics—The Road andThe Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao both won the Pulitzer Prize, and American Salvage was a finalist for the National Book Award—and each speak to recent currents in American culture: fear in the post 9/11 world, struggles in a post-industrial economy, and the reshaping of “America” by new waves of non-European immigrants. Some questions that will guide us: Why does McCarthy’s bleak vision resonate with so many American readers? How do novels of the new immigrant experience like Diaz’s resituate American culture? We’ll read the novels both as works of art and as artifacts of a culture, considering in what ways they represent America in its most recent form.
Please buy and begin reading these novels before the start of class.
The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz
American Salvage, by Bonnie Jo Campbell
Our reading of the novels will be supplemented by articles and film.