Course Catalog Winter Semester 2022/23

Seminar: Methods and Theories I

Wednesday, 1 - 3 pm, NSG 304
Prof. Dr. Katja Kanzler

This seminar is dedicated to some of the ‘grand’ theories of the humanities and social sciences that are both utilized and shaped by American Studies scholarship. We will read and discuss a selection of theoretical writings on narrative, media, ‘race,’ gender/sex, and justice. The selection will aim to strike a balance between classics in the field of American Studies and approaches that have recently come to the fore. Additionally, it will make a point in exposing you to diverse voices and registers in theoretical writing.

Seminar: Methods and Theories II

Thursday, 3 - 5 pm, NSG 404
Dr. Stefan Schubert

This seminar will address major paradigms of and theories used in American studies, tracing their evolution and contestation in the past sixty years of scholarship within the field. We will examine the history of American studies and the prevalence of different frameworks throughout the decades, from the myth-and-symbol school to the so-called ‘New Americanists.’ Our sessions will focus in particular on gaining an understanding of what ‘method’ and ‘theory’ entail, how they characterize a scholarly field, and how, for the humanities and American studies in particular, they are intrinsically connected to broader sociopolitical discussions. Students will learn to reflect on their own use of methods and theories and how to apply them in critical readings, scholarly arguments, and research projects.

Seminar 1: Memory Matters – Memory Studies & the African American Civil Rights Movement

Tuesday, 3 – 5 pm, NSG 305
Prof. Dr. Olaf Stieglitz

This class tries to accomplish three goals. First, it takes as its starting point the current debates about the public role of history and its memory within US society and culture. As we can see, hear, and read every day, the visible presence of statues, flags, buildings and other material or immaterial artefacts and ideas trigger enormous emotions and lead to heated and at times even violent controversies. This class interrogates the chronicle of these ‘history wars’ and asks, how the struggle for some usable past shapes political and cultural conflicts of the present.

On that base, the class, as its second main objective, shall offer an introduction to key texts and key issues of Memory Studies and Public History, asking for the increased relevance that these fields got within American Cultural Studies over the last decades. How do Memory Studies and Public History enrich our interest on North American history, society, and culture, and how did the field of American Cultural Studies in general change because of interpretations offered by scholars working within these areas?

On a third level, this class makes use of the memory politics revolving around the (long) African American Civil Rights Movement as a case study for discussing how the concepts of Memory Studies (and Public History) are transmitted into memory projects such as freedom trails, museums, educational programs, films, comic books, etc.

All participants are requested to read the assigned texts (primary sources and secondary texts) for each class meeting and take an active part in group discussions. Several class meetings will be moderated and additionally prepared by a group of selected students who “adopt” that meeting’s topic, selecting additional or different material and guide through our discussions.

To get full credit for this class, students write a term paper / essay of about 6,500 words, due March 31st, 2023.

Seminar 2: Space, Place, and Region: Spatial Imaginations and Imaginative Geographies in America

Tuesday, 11 am - 1 pm, GWZ 2 5.16
Prof. Dr. Gabriele Pisarz-Ramírez

When we talk about America, what do we talk about? A country, a continent, or a global archipelago? Where does “America” begin, and where does it end? And within the national borders of the United States, how do regional and local perspectives impact the ways space and place are constructed? How have specific regions such as borders and peripheries been invested with symbolic significance? How do categories of identity such as gender and race influence perceptions of space? In this course, we will discuss spatial thought and spatial theories  about “America” across different time periods as well as fictional texts that negotiate space on different scales. The last three sessions in this course will be dedicated to student group projects.

Applied Seminar (aspeers)

Monday, 3 - 5 pm, GWZ 2 5.16
Annika Schadewaldt

and

Thursday, 11 am - 1 pm, GWZ 3 5.15
Dr. Katja Schmieder

From identifying a topic of profound academic interest to writing a Call for Papers, from corresponding with authors to gathering financial support, from reviewing others’ work to suggesting modifications, from grouping articles to sections to writing an introduction – editing a scholarly publication entails a wide range of professional skills central to academia and to non-academic work settings alike.

In 2007/08, the first group of editors founded and published aspeers, the first and currently only graduate-level peer-reviewed journal for European American Studies, i.e. a journal that publishes the critical work of pre-PhD authors from (other) European universities.

This semester, we will work to edit the 16th issue of the journal and to refine its positioning in the market. This will include learning about different publication formats and about academic publishing in the US and Germany in general. Most of the time and workload, however, will go into the editing process outlined above. Mostly working in project groups, the module thus provides a truly unique opportunity to acquire and improve professional skills in areas such as critical reading and writing, word processing, public relations, and communication. Please be aware that the module will contain a quite extensive time commitment outside of the two slots indicated here, which you will spend on completing a variety of tasks individually or in groups. 

Seminar 1: Imagining and Producing Bodies and Spaces in the Americas

Tuesday, 5 - 7 pm, NSG 102
Prof. Dr. Olaf Stieglitz

This class offers a lecture series (six guest speakers) accompanied by reading texts written by these guests plus additional material. The class addresses the co-production of spaces and bodies in a series of case studies that focus on the ways bodies and spaces generate and constitute each other in the Americas. The lecturers will touch on the intersection of territories, bodies and borders, the embodiment of spaces and the spatiality of bodies as well as on the cultural imaginaries produced in the constitution of spaces and bodies.

To get full credit for this class, students write a term paper / essay of about 6,500 words, due March 30st, 2023.

Seminar 2: Postnarrative Politics? Towards New Models of Political Speech

Thursday, 11 am - 1 pm, GWZ 2 5.16
Dr. habil. Sebastian Herrmann

Over the past decades, ‘narrative’ has emerged as a key term in politics, punditry, and political journalism on both sides of the Atlantic. Successful politicians, so the general thinking goes, are “in control of the narrative,” populists tell “simple narratives” of good and evil, and the followers of Q-Anon have fallen for a “conspiracy narrative,” to give just some examples. In these and many other accounts of contemporary politics, the underlying assumption is that the formal principle of narrative is key to understanding the power of political speech. This view is indebted to the ‘narrative turn’: a conceptual framework that assumes “man is a storytelling animal” and that reality is the result of “narrative construction.”

In this seminar, we will first explore and understand this conceptual framework. However, we will then try to move beyond it to look for other formal principles that can similarly explain the persuasive or mobilizing power of political speech. Candidates for other such formal principles are play, spectacle, and database, but we will keep an open mind to look out for more.

As a research seminar that ventures out into somewhat uncharted academic territory, this class will require an extra degree of dedication and intellectual curiosity from its participants.

Seminar 1: Food, Identity, and Textuality in North American Literature and Film

Monday, 11 am - 1 pm, NSG 329
Prof. Dr. Katja Kanzler

From Mary Rowlandson’s ostentatious refusal to eat the food offered by her ‘Indian’ captors, to the unnamed protagonist’s emphatic “I yam what I am!” in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, North American authors have used food to unfold their stories. Their texts (in print and on screen) feature food – a wide variety of fare as well as scenes of its preparation, consumption, or refusal – as potent and multifaceted signifiers. In this seminar, we will explore some dimensions of this narrative tradition, along with selected critical paradigms by which literary and cultural scholarship have approached it. We will pay particular attention to the ways in which culinary signifiers have helped U.S.-American and Canadian narratives negotiate issues of national identity, ethnic belonging, gender roles, and psychological as well as bodily selfhood. We will discuss how food unfolds its signifying potential in a variety of cultural forms, such as poetry, autobiography, the novel, and film.

Seminar 2: The Narrative of American Sport

Thursday, 3 - 5 pm, GWZ 3 5.15
Prof. Emily Nemens (Picador Guest Professor)

American sports writing long ago transcended the newspaper recap and box score; in the last century and vibrantly today, writers have explored sports in genres as diverse as novels to literary essays to poems, examining the psychology of competition and the dimensions of fandom. In this discussion-based seminar for MA students, we’ll look at sports literature, including longform reportage, fiction, poetry, and film—to understand the history, contemporary breadth, and potential futures of sports storytelling, and what these literatures can tell us about American culture.

Seminar 1: American Mobilities: Migrants, Fugitives, Tourists, and Nomads in US Culture

Wednesday, 1 - 3 pm, NSG 220
Prof. Dr. Gabriele Pisarz-Ramírez

Mobility appears to be a very American trait: to be American is to be “on the move.” In the past two decades, the “mobilities turn” (Sheller, and Urry 2006, Addey 2013) has opened up new agendas of research, addressing globalization, migration, and mobile lifestyles as well as various mobility regimes and their production of uneven and differential forms of movement.  In this course we will discuss representations of mobility in US literature and culture with a focus on the interplay of power and mobility, as well as on marginalized, forced, and subjugated forms of (im)mobility. We will read theoretical texts from the field of mobility studies as well as fictional representations of mobility from different periods in American literature.

Seminar 2: Border Regimes: Practices of In-/Exclusion in US Immigration History

Wednesday, 11 am - 1 pm, NSG 305
Prof. Dr. Olaf Stieglitz

This course has a double purpose. On a first level, it offers a broad introduction into US immigration and deportation history, focusing on migrant groups from Europe and Asia since the 1830s and how they were welcomed (or not) by the American public. More importantly though, this class discusses and analyzes the long history of distinguishing and separating between wanted and unwanted immigrants at the United States’ borders. Undesirable immigration had been regulated since the 19th century on political, legal, economic, social, and cultural grounds; gender, race, class, nationality, political affiliation, sexuality, and characteristics of health or assumed physical disability were used to classify ‘un-Americans,’ ‘illegal aliens,’ and ‘subversives.’ A main emphasize of the course should revolve around the deportation regime that emerged around that selection process and how it was both politically and legally justified but also challenged. In addition, the course will focus on the strategies and practices immigrants used to circumvent official barriers and to struggle for their right to remain in the United States.

All participants are requested to read the assigned texts (primary sources and secondary texts) for each class meeting and take an active part in group discussions. Several class meetings will be moderated and additionally prepared by a group of selected students who “adopt” that meeting’s topic, selecting additional or different material and guide through our discussions.

To get full credit for this class, students write a term paper / essay of about 6,500 words, due March 31st, 2023.