120082 AR Interdisciplinary Course (501) = Proseminar Cultural Studies = Excursion (2010S)

The course together with the excursion to the Mississippi Valley aims at fostering international exchange. Students will have the opportunity to engage in collaborative course work with students from Saarland University (Saarbrücken). Once in the U.S., you will engage in a three-week study of the cultures of the Mississippi River together with Saarland students and students from Bradley U in Peoria, Illinois (July 24-August 13, 2009). We will begin with readings and class work on the Bradley campus and then travel from Dubuque, Iowa all the way to New Orleans.
The preliminary course taught simultaneously at the University of Vienna and Saarland University focuses on intercultural learning and students' virtual encounters via Web 2.0 technology. It will establish a shared space in which students from different countries on both sides of the Atlantic can bring their distinct perspectives to collaborative Cultural Studies work and experience shared learning benefits through investigating issues of 'American' culture and identity and notions of 'Americanness' and 'Americanization.' These terms themselves, we will suggest, become 'contact zones' in the transatlantic learning experience. The object of our collaborative investigation will be the Mississippi Valley, a transregional space which will be conceived of historically and culturally as a contact zone of different (his)stories, cultures and cultural practices. We will, for instance, look at literary representations by William Faulkner and Mark Twain and their popularity in Europe. We will also deal with popular cultural developments of the Blues and the function of the Blues in the global formation of pop music. And we will look at historical developments (the Civil Rights Movement) and the diverse histories of specific places (Memphis, New Orleans), which have played a significant role in the "American" and global imagination.