Lehrende/r: Dr. Bärbel Höttges
Veranstaltungsart: Proseminar
Anzeige im Stundenplan: Proseminar II
Semesterwochenstunden: 2
Unterrichtssprache: Englisch
Min. | Max. Teilnehmerzahl: - | 44
Anmeldegruppe: Proseminar II 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
Voraussetzungen / Organisatorisches: Students are expected to have read all novels (Twain, Salinger, Morrison) by the beginning of the semester.
Inhalt: Stories of initiation—narratives describing a protagonist’s passage from childhood to adulthood—play an important role in American literature. Male and female authors alike have chosen adolescent characters to describe the sometimes painful process of individual maturation. Often, a single moment—a realization, an experience, or a choice—marks the end of childhood in these stories and leads the protagonist into the world of moral choices and responsibilities. Through their combination of personal decisions with larger questions of integrity, conformity, and loyalty, stories of initiation do thus not only deal with personal development and growth, but they also describe and evaluate social conditions and the society surrounding the individual. In this class, we will analyze several stories of initiation and explore their literary, social, and cultural backgrounds. The course will focus on novels and short stories by Mark Twain, J. D. Salinger, Toni Morrison, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and Sarah Orne Jewett, but we will also discuss representations of initiation in film and popular culture. Please purchase the following texts: Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn (Penguin, 2003; ISBN-13: 978-0141439648) J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (Penguin, 2004; ISBN-13: 978-0140237498) Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon (Random House, 1998; ISBN-13: 978-0099768418) The short stories will be available online (ReaderPlus) by the beginning of the semester.
