160198 SE American Literature in a World Literature Perspective (2011W)

In this course we will read and discuss a number of samples from popular American genres that have also become ‘world’ genres. We will trace how the emergence and success of these genres is rooted in specific American, and world, historical, social, political and material conditions and circumstances that have inflected the contents and form of said genres. I will expect students to have read the four key texts before each corresponding class and to be able to discuss them in relation to a number of secondary materials that will be electronically available via the university website and that together will make up a Reader for the course. We will also discuss these texts in relation to movie materials I will show during the course. And we will regularly relate the texts and genres in question to canonical works of American literature. At the end of the course students should have a good grasp of the interplay between canonical and popular literature within the American cultural context, and of the relationship of both to the development of twentieth-century American society.

13-14. 10. 2011
Introduction
Popular Literature, Popular Literature in America, the Western
The Virginian (Owen Wister) the novel and the movie

17-18. 11. 2011
Crime Writing, Detective Fiction
The Maltese Falcon (Dashiell Hammett) the novel and the movie

15-16. 12. 2011
Popular Romance
Montana Sky (Nora Roberts) the novel and the movie

12-13. 01. 2012
Comics and Cartoons
Superman vol. I (Shuster & Siegel) the comics, the cartoons, and the movie
Conclusion