32115

SoSe 21: (Counter-)Narratives of American Nationhood and Citizenship in the Antebellum Period

Alexander Starre

Kommentar

The antebellum period saw the rise of an extended literary culture in the U.S. – attached to the classic works of writers such as Dickinson, Emerson, Hawthorne, Melville, and Thoreau – but, as David Reynolds famously argued, there was a welter of messy cultural activity “beneath the American Renaissance.” In this seminar, we will embrace this messiness, surveying the cultural landscape of an increasingly refined and artistically ambitious but also sensationalist, expansionist, and violent America that grappled with the modernization of ideas like “the nation” and “the citizen.” Alongside a selection of primary materials from the period that showcase competing national narratives and counternarratives, the course introduces foundational scholarship as well as recent critical interventions from C19 American Studies in areas such as popular/visual culture studies, Black studies, Native American studies, gender studies, transnational studies, and New Southern Studies. A key area of concern in this course will be scholarly practice, including methodology and archival research, as well as the composition of scholarly prose. During yet another digital semester, the seminar will also be an experiment in a more collaborative style of learning, as students will actively contribute to the shape of the syllabus while they develop individual research projects. ----- This seminar is taught in close conjunction with the lecture “Reform, Diversity, and Cultural Nationalism in the Age of Romanticism”; students are encouraged to attend the lecture alongside the seminar. ----- Due to the Coronavirus situation, the seminar will be offered as a synchronous online course via Webex. Schließen

14 Termine

Regelmäßige Termine der Lehrveranstaltung

Mi, 12:00 - 14:00 14 Termine

Mi, 14.04.2021 12:00 - 14:00

Dozenten:
Dr. Alexander Starre