Universität Wien

123210 VO Literatures in English (2011W)

Writing America: U.S. Literature from the Revolutionary Period to Modernism

5.00 ECTS (2.00 SWS), SPL 12 - Anglistik
Moodle

Details

max. 295 participants
Language: English

Examination dates

Lecturers

Classes (iCal) - next class is marked with N

  • Thursday 13.10. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal D Unicampus Hof 10 Hirnforschungzentrum Spitalgasse 4
  • Thursday 20.10. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal D Unicampus Hof 10 Hirnforschungzentrum Spitalgasse 4
  • Thursday 27.10. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal D Unicampus Hof 10 Hirnforschungzentrum Spitalgasse 4
  • Thursday 03.11. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal D Unicampus Hof 10 Hirnforschungzentrum Spitalgasse 4
  • Thursday 10.11. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal D Unicampus Hof 10 Hirnforschungzentrum Spitalgasse 4
  • Thursday 17.11. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal D Unicampus Hof 10 Hirnforschungzentrum Spitalgasse 4
  • Thursday 24.11. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal D Unicampus Hof 10 Hirnforschungzentrum Spitalgasse 4
  • Thursday 01.12. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal D Unicampus Hof 10 Hirnforschungzentrum Spitalgasse 4
  • Thursday 15.12. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal D Unicampus Hof 10 Hirnforschungzentrum Spitalgasse 4
  • Thursday 12.01. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal D Unicampus Hof 10 Hirnforschungzentrum Spitalgasse 4
  • Thursday 26.01. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal D Unicampus Hof 10 Hirnforschungzentrum Spitalgasse 4

Information

Aims, contents and method of the course

The course is conceptualized as an introductory lecture series to American literature from the Early Republic to the Modern Era. It will start by looking at the first major attempts to formulate a unique ‘American’ consciousness during the American Revolution Hector de Crevecoeur’s famous question ‘What then is the American, this new man?’ (famously asked in his ‘Letters from an American Farmer’ from 1782) has since led to a number of literary discourses either manifesting or challenging the idea of ‘American Exceptionalism.’ This lecture course will explore a number of cultural images and self-concepts developed in American writing since the Revolutionary Era. To what extent have notions such as the ‘American Dream’ and the ‘Frontier’ permeated canonized literary works? The writing of American literature, in a way, also implies the writing of America itself. In writing about America, representative authors have also attempted to negotiate the underlying promises, challenges and limits of American society. Among others, we will discuss texts by Charles Brockden Brown, James Fenimore Cooper, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Frank Norris, and Ernest Hemingway.

Assessment and permitted materials

Reading assignments; final exam.

Minimum requirements and assessment criteria

The course wants to familiarize participants with representative writers, works, literary movements, and cultural concepts in American literature from the 1770s to the 1920s, that is from the American Revolution to Modernism.

Examination topics

Interactive presentations of important developments in American literature with close readings of representative texts as well as analyses of the cultural context (mainly in the form of PowerPoint presentations to be made available on Moodle after the session).

Reading list

Association in the course directory

Studium: Diplom 343, UF 344, ME 812, MA 844;
Code/Modul: Diplom 321, 326/328, 336/338, 721-723, UF 4.2.4-321, ME1, MA1;
Lehrinhalt: 12-0115

Last modified: Mo 07.09.2020 15:33