PS British Romanticism [AE_PSBRom]

Dozent/in:

Sandra Dinter

Angaben:

Proseminar, 2 SWS

Termine:

Mi, 14:15 - 15:45, KH 2.014

Voraussetzungen / Organisatorisches:

Das Proseminar gehört in folgenden Studiengängen jeweils zu folgenden Modulen:

• Lehramt Englisch an Grund-, Haupt- und Realschulen: Seminarmodul L-UF Literature

• Lehramt Englisch an Gymnasien: Zwischenmodul L-GYM Literature

• BA English and American Studies: Zwischenmodul II Literature

• BA English and American Studies: Zwischenmodul II Culture

Scheinerwerb: Hausarbeit

Inhalt:

Many contemporary cultural concepts, e.g. the notion of literature as an expression of an author's unique emotions, the idea of childhood as a state of innocence and the understanding of nature as a realm that facilitates self-recognition and pleasure, derive from Romanticism, an artistic movement that prevailed in Europe from the late eighteenth century to the early nineteenth century. Following the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, the Romantics challenged rationalism and industrialisation by emphasising spontaneity, emotions and individualism. In this seminar, we will take a closer look at this period by examining selected poetry and prose of the so-called 'Big Six' (William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Blake, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron), of various female writers (e.g. Charlotte Smith and Mary Shelley) and of lesser-known authors (e.g. John Clare). We will also analyse and contextualise examples of visual and material culture and scrutinise which different roles gender, class, race and age play during the period. Among the literary works that we will discuss in this seminar are Wordsworth and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads (1798) and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818).

PS Hamlet and other Revenge Tragedies [AE_PSHamlet]

Dozent/in:

Christian Krug

Angaben:

Proseminar, 2 SWS

Termine:

Mo, 18:00 - 19:30, KH 0.023

Voraussetzungen / Organisatorisches:

Das Proseminar gehört in folgenden Studiengängen jeweils zu folgenden Modulen:

• Lehramt Englisch an Gymnasien: Zwischenmodul L-GYM Literature

• BA English and American Studies: Zwischenmodul II Literature

• BA English and American Studies: Zwischenmodul II Culture

Scheinerwerb: Referat + Hausarbeit

Inhalt:

This seminar will look at three Early Modern revenge plays (Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy [c. 1587], Middleton’s The Revenger’s Tragedy [1606], and, specifically, Shakespeare’s Hamlet) and their reverberations in contemporary films (Cox’s The Revenger’s Tragedy of 2003, Mike Hodges’s Get Carter [1971]).

Representations of Gender in British Consumer Culture and Advertising [AE_PSBCon]

Dozent/in:

Ronja Holzinger

Angaben:

Proseminar, 2 SWS

Termine:

Mo, 10:15 - 11:45, KH 1.012

Voraussetzungen / Organisatorisches:

Das Proseminar gehört in folgenden Studiengängen jeweils zu folgenden Modulen:

• Lehramt Englisch an Gymnasien: Zwischenmodul L-GYM Literature

• BA English and American Studies: Zwischenmodul II Literature

• BA English and American Studies: Zwischenmodul II Culture

Scheinerwerb: Referat + Hausarbeit

Inhalt:

"Come Buy! Come Buy!" - this line from Christina Rossetti's poem Goblin Market might represent 19th-century consumer culture as well as the consumer society of our modern day. In this seminar we will look into the historical context of consumer culture in Britain and the development of advertising.
We will analyse a selection of advertisements from the 19th, 20th and 21st century. Our main focus will lie on the representation of gender. How are myths created? Which (hidden) ideological projects can be detected? How are gender ideals represented? Is there a change in the representation of gender stereotypes and identities? The sources will come from a wide range of literary and non-literary material.

Empfohlene Literatur:

Reading will be announced in the first session.

PS Holocaust Fiction [AE_PSHolo]

Dozent/in:

Gerd Bayer

Angaben:

Proseminar, 2 SWS

Termine:

Di, 8:30 - 10:00, KH 0.024

Voraussetzungen / Organisatorisches:

Modulzugehörigkeit

• Lehramt Englisch an Grund-, Haupt- und Realschulen: Seminarmodul L-UF Literature

• Lehramt Englisch an Gymnasien: Zwischenmodul L-GYM Literature

• BA English and American Studies: Zwischenmodul II Literature

Scheinerwerb: Hausarbeit

Inhalt:

The Holocaust stands as one of the most formative moments of the twentieth century. Numerous artists have taken on the difficult task of representing some of the events related to it. In this course, we will look at narrative fiction dealing with the Holocaust. Topics such as memory, remembrance, the ethics of writing, and the limits of representation will structure the course discussions.

Empfohlene Literatur:

In addition to the texts listed below, we will read shorter texts made available through StudOn.

• Martin Amis, The Zone of Interest.

• Rachel Seiffert, The Dark Room.

• D.M. Thomas, The White Hotel.

PS The English Ghost Story [AE_PSGhost]

Dozent/in:

Mike Pincombe

Angaben:

Proseminar, 2 SWS

Termine:

Mi, 10:15 - 11:45, KH 1.013

Voraussetzungen / Organisatorisches:

Modulzugehörigkeit

• Lehramt Englisch an Grund-, Haupt- und Realschulen: Seminarmodul L-UF Literature

• Lehramt Englisch an Gymnasien: Zwischenmodul L-GYM Literature

• BA English and American Studies: Zwischenmodul II Literature

Scheinerwerb
Students must write a Hausarbeit of 10 to 12 pages.

Inhalt:

We will look at a selection of texts from the anthology by Cox and Gilbert (see below). There will be two main points of emphasis. On the one hand, we will examine these stories as examples of a genre, so we will explore some concepts in genre theory, especially those elaborated by the Russian formalists. On the other, we will examine them as instances of a tradition, and here we will turn to Marxist theories of literature as a source of inspiration. But there will alo be plenty of time to discuss other matters of the ghostly kind.

Empfohlene Literatur:

Michael Cox & R. A. Gilbert (eds). The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories. Any edition will do but you will need to buy one. Second-hand copies are cheaply available via Abebooks, Amazon, etc.

PS Utopian and Dystopian Literature [AE_PSTopL]

Dozent/in:

Rudolf Freiburg

Angaben:

Proseminar, 2 SWS

Termine:

Mo, 10:15 - 11:45, C 301

Voraussetzungen / Organisatorisches:

Modulzugehörigkeit

• BA English and American Studies: Zwischenmodul II Literature (Zulassungsvoraussetzung: Zwischenmodul I: Thematisches Kombinationsmodul)

• Lehramt Englisch an Gymnasien: Zwischenmodul L-GYM Literature (Zulassungsvoraussetzung: Basismodul Literature)

• Lehramt Englisch an Grund-, Haupt- und Realschulen: Zwischenmodul L-UF Literature (Zulassungsvoraussetzung: Elementarmodul Literature)

Inhalt:

In this seminar, we will focus on the English history of utopian and dystopian writing. After analysing Thomas Morus’s Utopia (1516), we will study Sir Francis Bacon’s utopian concept of science in New Atlantis (1627). Whereas these early texts may be looked upon as ‘utopias of space’, a shift towards ‘utopias of time can be discovered in the second half of the 19th Century, among them William Morris’s News from Nowhere (1890) and H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine (1895). Towards the 20th Century, the descriptions of other unknown worlds reveal a dystopian nature. In class we will read three classical negative utopias: George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1931), and Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange (1962). The seminar will end with a discussion of Kazuo Ishiguro’s dystopian novel Never Let Me Go (2005).