Seminar: Narrative across Media: (Post-)Television
Monday, 11 am – 1 pm
Prof. Katja Kanzler
Television and the ‘post-television’ of digital media platforms have come to figure as major sites of storytelling in today’s culture. It is particularly the storytelling in the various forms of (post-)television series and serials that has received much scholarly attention in the past few years —attention not only to the contents of the stories serial tv tells but also to their narrative form. In fact, the prevailing paradigms of contemporary television—from “quality tv” to “narrative complexity”—all suggest that it is formal features that make serial television such a significant force in US culture at the turn of the millennium.
This seminar will focus on scholarship that approaches television series in term of their narrativity. We will explore concepts of television’s media-specific narrative strategies and, on this basis, ask how a narrative approach tackles the cultural work of television and how it conceives of some of the central aspects and phenomena tied to (post-)tv culture, such as seriality, popularity, genre, or media convergence.
Please note that this is a discussion- and reading-intensive graduate seminar. Students outside the MA American Studies are generally welcome to join the class, but should inquire for prerequisites with Prof. Kanzler (katja.kanzler@uni-leipzig.de).
Seminar: The New Hollywood – Film and US-Cultural History, 1965-1980
Tuesday, 11 am – 1 pm
PD Dr. Olaf Stieglitz
50 years ago, Hollywood in a way reinvented itself. The decline in cinema attendance and the breakdown of the old studio system, among other factors, triggered a brief period of artistic, experimental, and original filmmaking featuring some films that are today considered ‘classic,’ such as Bonnie & Clyde, Easy Rider, French Connection, or Network, to name just a few.
Nevertheless, this is not supposed to be a class in film history. Instead, the plan is to use some of the New Hollywood films from the mid-1960s to the late 1970s to discuss US society and culture, a time period during which the war in Vietnam, the results of Civil Rights activism, the rise of new social movements, the Watergate scandal, and a noticeable economic decline influenced the daily life of almost every American. The goal of this class is to embed the New Hollywood into the social and cultural history that made this wave of cultural productions possible.
All participants are requested to read the assigned texts for each class meeting and take an active part in group discussions. All films will be available for circulation among the class members. 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 (Studienleistung). Deadline for a term paper as module exam is September 30, 2021.
The module addresses the negotiation of socio-cultural difference in U.S.-American literature. It aims to deepen students’ understanding of ‘difference’ in its key manifestations ‘race,’ class, and gender with a focus on their articulation and contestation in literary texts. The seminars explore specific forms of difference in their historical, social, cultural, and aesthetic contexts. They will embed selected readings in ‘difference and literature’ within discussions of U.S. literary history and reflections on literary theory.
