32213

WiSe 12/13: Liberty's Loss: American Genres of Dis/Possession

Mary Ann Snyder-Körber

Information for students

Course requirements will follow the requirements of the current "Prüfungsordnung" for the Master of American Studies. Adjustment to suit the requirements of older degree requirements and/or other university programs can be arranged with the instructor. close

Comments

Liberty has been an ideal of modernity since at least the Enlightenment. Its loss consequently provokes reflection on issues of agency, subjectivity, determination, and, within the US-American context particularly, the question of national community. The captivity narratives that begin to emerge as a distinct genre in the colonial period come to serve as nation-building forms. They allow the reader to identify with a beset, but ultimately triumphant subject who gains liberty. Sympathy with this subject becomes the basis for community. The aggressor, in turn, can be effectively villianized as a savage. This seminar explores what happens when the captivity narrative is expanded beyond the gender, racial, geographic, and temporal matrixes of colonial, Puritan account such as iconic Mary Rowlandson's The soveraignity and goodness of God (1682). For example, how does the experience and symbolic function of captivity change when the its protagonist is male rather than female? What happens when the aggressor is not darkly "savage," but lily-white and cultured? What other shifts occur when liberty is lost not in the New England wilderness, but on the North African Coast or in the Caribbean? How can these stories be retold from the perspective of the current moment? Using the model typified by Rowlandson as our backdrop and a point of comparison, we will consider male narratives of captivity to be found in John Smith's General Historie (1624) as well as in the tales of Puritan males captured and transported to New France and female French-Canadian captors later in that century. Reading so-called "classic," nationally bound slave narratives alongside transatlantic versions of the form such as narratives of capture by Barbary pirates provide further comparative case studies. This backround helps us to follow the captivity narrative do the present where we will think about how older captivity experiences can be explored in genres like Toni Morrision's neo-slave narrative A Mercy (2008). We will also consider newer forms of personal dispossession, looking at how recent literary texts such as Emma Donogue's well-received novel Room (2010) rework the scenarios of domestic imprisonment and sexual enslavement exposed in the Fritzl incest case or the Natascha Kampusch abduction. The seminar will conclude with a symposium that brings together course participants and established scholars. Liberty has been an ideal of modernity since at least the Enlightenment. Its loss consequently provokes reflection on issues of agency, subjectivity, determination, and, within the US-American context particularly, the question of national community. The captivity narratives that begin to emerge as a distinct genre in the colonial period come to serve as nation-building forms. They allow the reader to identify with a beset, but ultimately triumphant subject who gains liberty. Sympathy with this subject becomes the basis for community. The aggressor, in turn, can be effectively villianized as a savage. This seminar explores what happens when the captivity narrative is expanded beyond the gender, racial, geographic, and temporal matrixes of colonial, Puritan account such as iconic Mary Rowlandson's The soveraignity and goodness of God (1682). For example, how does the experience and symbolic function of captivity change when the its protagonist is male rather than female? What happens when the aggressor is not darkly "savage," but lily-white and cultured? What other shifts occur when liberty is lost not in the New England wilderness, but on the North African Coast or in the Caribbean? How can these stories be retold from the perspective of the current moment? Using the model typified by Rowlandson as our backdrop and a point of comparison, we will consider male narratives of captivity to be found in John Smith's General Historie (1624) as well as in the tales of Puritan males captured and transported to New France and female French-Canadian captors later in that century. Reading so-called "classic," nationally bound slave narratives alongside transatlantic versions of the form such as narratives of capture by Barbary pirates provide further comparative case studies. This backround helps us to follow the captivity narrative do the present where we will think about how older captivity experiences can be explored in genres like Toni Morrision's neo-slave narrative A Mercy (2008). We will also consider newer forms of personal dispossession, looking at how recent literary texts such as Emma Donogue's well-received novel Room (2010) rework the scenarios of domestic imprisonment and sexual enslavement exposed in the Fritzl incest case or the Natascha Kampusch abduction. The seminar will conclude with a symposium that brings together course participants and established scholars. close