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Instructors: Mirjam Haas
Event type:
hybrid: Practice class
Displayed in timetable as:
05.874.131
Hours per week:
2
Credits:
4,0
Language of instruction:
Englisch
Min. | Max. participants:
- | 45
Registration group: ELC 131
Priority scheme: Senatsrichtlinie
Contents:
“What’s the play about?” Imogene asked.
“It’s about Jesus,” I said.
“Everything here is,” she muttered, so I figured Imogene didn’t care much about the Christmas pageant.
But I was wrong. (Robinson, The Herdmans 33)
For books continue each other, in spite of our habit of judging them separately. (Woolf, A Room of One’s Own 98)
This seminar is all “about” Christmas: its religious origins, its traditions, its cultural, media and literary history and present (no pun intended). We’ll explore Christmas and the stories, ideas and ideals that can be connected to it both from a cultural studies point of view as well as a literary one. For the latter, we’ll think about “Christmas Stories” as forming what is probably one of the largest “story webs” in existence throughout Western culture. Next to, of course, Odyssean stories - but they might come in, too, at some point. Hence, intertextuality will be one important focus of this class: how do narratives (of all kinds) relate to, complement and question each other? But we’ll also think about the way Christmas and its traditions have been adapted throughout various media, instrumentalised, commercialised and performed throughout the centuries. We’ll try to find links between the Nativity Stories of the Bible, early English play and prose texts, Christmas carols and songs, Victorian Christmas books, modern advertisement and TV series Christmas episodes. We’ll broadly cover five topics (these may still change): Merriment (Christmas and Performance), Christmas Books (Gifts), Epiphany (Wonder), Christmas at Home and Abroad (Home-Bound Journeys) and Christmas Specials (Now and Then).
Recommended reading list:
The “texts” we will read, watch and hear in this class will generally be made available to you in excerpt form. However, there will be small student groups in charge of specific themes, topics and texts and, within these groups, you will be expected to get access to and read/watch/hear the texts that are specific to your group in their entirety. There will also be a chance to bring your own text ideas.
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