120020 SE Literary Seminar / BA-Arbeit / MA American/North American Lit./Studies (2010S)

Since the second half of the twentieth century observers of the social and cultural scene in the United States and in Canada have noted a strong interest in ethnic diversity, a fact which is related to changes in immigration policy in both countries resulting in significant demographic changes in Canada and several regions of the United States. The adoption of the Multiculturalism Act in Canada had significant consequences for the willingness of "New Canadians" to acknowledge and preserve their heritages in the face of the continuing inclination to acculturate in the new country. In the U.S.A. the multiplicity of origins was similarly acknowledged in the wake of the struggle for civil rights and the desire to end the discrimination of African Americans and of indigenous peoples.
In the seminar elected texts composed by members of various ethnic groups in both countries will be considered and individual short stories, poems and novels will be contextualized by taking into account demographic facts, social patterns and cultural practices of various ethnic groups (waves of immigration, relative pace of acculturation, location of settlements, literary and cultural heritage).
Among the authors to be discussed will be Jewish immigrants in the U.S.A. and in Canada (Henry Roth, Call It Sleep, 1964, and stories by Anzia Yezierska, as well as texts by Mordecai Richler, The Street, and Henry Kreisel, "The Almost Meeting", 1979, and "The Broken Globe", 1965), Ukrainians in Canada (e.g. Janice Kulyk-Keefer, "Prodigals", 1990, and two essays) and Chinese immigrants (Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior, 1976 und Fred Wah, Diamond Grill, 1996), as well as African Americans (Zora Neale Hurston, "The Gilded Six-Bits", 1933; und Ernest J. Gaines, "The Sky Is Gray") and Africadians.