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Instructors: Dr. Damien Schlarb
Event type:
Seminar
Displayed in timetable as:
05.866.313
Hours per week:
2
Language of instruction:
Englisch
Min. | Max. participants:
- | 30
Registration group: AS 313
Priority scheme: Senatsrichtlinie
Requirements / organisational issues:
Recquired Prior Knowledge
- Internet access (weekly)
- Online access to JGU’s university library servers via VPN
- Proficiency in academic writing in English (Anglo-Saxon essay)
- Proficiency in academic research methods
- Proficiency with methodologies and research questions of the humanities, esp. literary criticism
- Familiarity with the basic themes and concepts in American Cultural Studies (courses I & II)
Active Particiaption Requirements
You must complete all of these in order to receive aktive Teilnahme.
- weekly online reading responses (6 over the course of the semester)
- group assignment
- paper proposal
Final Grade
Contents:
American literature of the early nineteenth century goes by many names: classic American literature, romanticism, literature of the American Renaissance. The texts canonized and ostracized under these labels inaugurated a national literature. They consider the ambivalence of the “American experiment,” its liberatory promise of an enlightened democratic republic of laws and its original sin of African slavery. They ponder America’s multivalent origins, from indigenous life to European settler-colonial imaginary, from its biosphere to its social worlds. This course, then, surveys major texts in American romantic literature (1820-1865) and connects them with readings in recent critical theory and methodology. We will learn about how recent theorists have thought about reading and texts and, on that basis, develop fresh approaches to classic texts.
Note that this is a reading-intensive literature class. You should therefore make time in your schedule to prepare readings that feature unfamiliar and archaic vocabulary.
Recommended reading list:
Mandatory Readings
- You must buy The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Vol. B. 9th ed. New York: Norton, 2017.
- I will provide electronic files of the required theoretical readings.
Additional information:
If you need help with academic writing, please contact the Schreibwerkstatt. While we will discuss academic writing and methodology, this course is not primarily devoted to teaching methods.
Digital teaching:
Some readings for the course will be available as e-books, courtesy of the JGU University Library. You need an active JGU account and a VPN to access these materials from home. Please refer to the ZDV help sites for detials.
Learning Platform
We will use ILIAS as our learning platform. Here you will find readings, assignments and other course materials.
Online Meetings
Depending on the policies in effect at the beginning of the semester, parts or even all of this course may be conducted online. If so, we will use MS Teams to meet for weekly online sessions.
Registered students will receive links to both platforms via email the first week of classes.
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