Veranstaltungen im Wintersemester 2011/12

B.A. Studiengang | Modul 9b: Spezialisierung Literaturstudien
Life Writing: American Autobiographies

This course will acquaint students with the genre of autobiography. It will familiarize students with the theoretical background of the subject and will then proceed to a focused reading, an intensive analysis, and a thorough discussion of representative selections from important and influential American autobiographies. Prospective participants are strongly encouraged to familiarize themselves in advance with the general aspects of the subject matter. They must be prepared to participate actively in class and to commit themselves to weekly reading and writing assignments. Reading material will be made available by the beginning of term.

To register for this class, please go to http://www.ovgu.de/hkersten and use the link to the Moodle online forum.

Even people without a solid knowledge of American culture have an opinion of food in the United States: It's McDonald's and it's bad. Few external observers suspect, however, that the discussion of food in American culture is a complex matter and requires a thoughtful approach to arrive at an adequate understanding of the phenomena involved. This course will offer participants an opportunity to study, analyse, and understand the various aspects that are a part of the cultural debate about food in the United States.

Since the class will be based on Michael Pollen's The Omnivore's Dilemma, prospective participants are expected to have purchased and read a copy of the book by the beginning of term. They are also strongly encouraged to familiarize themselves in advance with the general aspects of this subject. They must be prepared to participate actively in class and to commit themselves to weekly reading and writing assignments.

To register for this class, please go to http://www.ovgu.de/hkersten and use the link to the Moodle online platform.

• Required Reading:
  Michael Pollan. The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (New York: Penguin Press, 2006). ISBN-13: 978-0143038580
• Additional reading material will be made available by the beginning of term.

The American writer Mark Twain is mainly known as the author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, two publications that are often erroneously identified as "children's literature." However, as an intensive reading, analysis, and discussion of Twain's Connecticut Yankee will show, nothing could be more misleading than a simplified understanding of Twain as a "humorist" or a "children's books author." In view of the particular focus of this study module, it is worth pointing out that the novel addresses various dimensions of the issue of "culture contact": In depicting intercultural encounters between America and England as well as a time-spanning intercultural contact between the 19th century and the Middle Ages, this book creates numerous opportunities to investigate the processes that shape the (problematic) interaction between members of different cultural groups.

Prospective participants are expected to have purchased and read a copy of the novel by the beginning of term. They are also strongly encouraged to familiarize themselves in advance with the general aspects of this subject. They must be prepared to participate actively in class and to commit themselves to weekly reading and writing assignments.

To register for this class, please go to http://www.ovgu.de/hkersten and use the link to the Moodle online platform.

Required Reading:

• Mark Twain. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Ed. Bernard L. Stein. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2nd edition (June 21, 2002). ISBN-13: 978-0520235762
  » Please make sure that you order this edition edited by the Mark Twain Project (Berkeley). It is the only edition that reproduces all the original illustrations together with the text.
• Additional reading material will be made available by the beginning of term.

Ever since George W. Bush withdrew U.S. support for the Kyoto Protocol in 2001, the United States has been regarded as a nation with little or no interest in matters of environmental protection. The environmental disaster in the Mexican Gulf and the recent discussions surrounding mining techniques such as "mountaintop removal" or "fracking" has shown that even President Obama does not seem to favor major changes in America's environmental policies. At the same time, however, it is important to notice an intensive public debate about questions of the environment: Environmental organizations, print media, and internet websites have a very visible and active role in the debate about current problems. By contrast, Germany, with its recent decision to phase out nuclear energy, enjoys a fairly good reputation when it comes to environmental issues. Curiously, an initial survey of specialized print media and web sites indicates that the public debate and the visibility of environmental activists and writers seems to be less intensive than the one across the Atlantic.

This course will take an intensive look at the representation of environmental issues in the public sphere. In an effort to establish a comparative perspective, it will seek to identify leading publications and spokespeople and attempt to understand the historical, social, political, and economic factors and processes that govern the environmental debate in the United States and in Germany.

Prospective participants are strongly encouraged to familiarize themselves in advance with the general aspects of this subject. They must be prepared to participate actively in class and to commit themselves to weekly reading and writing assignments.

Specific reading material will be made available by the beginning of term.

To register for this class, please go to http://www.ovgu.de/hkersten and use the link to the Moodle online forum.