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Instructors: Prof. Dr. Jochen Achilles
Event type:
Seminar
Displayed in timetable as:
05.866.512
Credits:
8,0
Language of instruction:
Englisch
Min. | Max. participants:
- | 25
Registration group: AS 512
Priority scheme: Senatsrichtlinie
Contents:
This course will discuss texts from the colonial period in conjunction with later documents, which either thematize early America or both develop and expand its trajectories. We will scrutinize the diversity as well as the range of both individual and cultural identity formation that manifest themselves in written expression, ranging from travel reports, poems and essays to short fiction. Among the dimensions of such self-expression are the definition of the relationship to Europe in the transition from colony to independent Republic; the notion of intercultural synthesis and its deconstruction; the westward movement with its specific semanticization of space and its mystification of the frontier; urbanization, industrialization and the concomitant changes in conceptualizations of nature; the psychological dimension of definitions and redefinitions of masculinity, femininity, and ethnicity.
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