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Instructors: Anne Bull
Event type:
online: 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
Contents:
Recent cases of racially motivated police brutality, both the support of and resistance to the rising Black Lives Matter movement, and the looming conflict over the removal of Confederate monuments and symbols are currently thrusting the Deep South into the glare of global attention. The current challenges seem to reassert longstanding stereotypes and myths about the American Deep South: a backward, white supremacist region in stark contrast to the rest of the nation.
The core set of questions in this class deals with the functions of literature and the unfolding of a literary tradition within key historical moments and a traditional social structure. In this context, we will attempt to comprehend long-established binaries along the lines of race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, locality, and socio-economic status, focusing on the Postbellum South and well into the early 20th century. The period following the civil war marks a significant historical stage in which the region’s various literary forces have struggled over the prevailing images and myths of the South. In this class, we will explore the literatures of the South, from romantic plantation myths to literary voices challenging such a generic nostalgia for the ‘Old South,’ to a literary modernism seeking to navigate its way through a South that ironically seems to lack modernity.
Recommended reading list:
Please purchase:
The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Vol. C (1865-1914): ISBN: 978-0-393-26448-7
The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Vol. D (1914-1945): ISBN: 978-0-393-26449-4
William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying (Vintage International)
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