Wintersemester 2017/18

This lecture provides a survey of important developments in US-American literature and popular culture over the past 60 years. Grounded in a number of selected primary readings, we will cover established literary periods and movements such as the Beat Generation, New Journalism, the Black Arts Movement and the way in which Postmodernism breaks with and continues Modernism in literature; at the same time, we will examine the rise of television, the Civil Rights Movement, the movements of the Counterculture, Feminism, Popular Music, Film and other developments that have shaped American culture since the end of World War II. Credits and grading: final exam. More information and study materials will be available online (elearning.uni-bayreuth.de).

Beyoncé currently ranks among the most successful artists in the music industry, with more than 100 million record sales, 22 Grammy awards, 24 MTV video music awards among her achievements. From the very beginning of her solo career in 2003, her art and her public persona raised questions and stimulated debate about race, gender, (post)feminism and body politics in the United States. In this interdisciplinary seminar, we will examine selected songs of her six studio albums to analyze, discuss and contextualize lyrics, music, live-performances and narrative elements in her music videos. The seminar brings together the critical perspectives of musicology, popular music studies and American studies, inflected and informed by feminist and queer theory as well as critical race studies. Primary material: “Crazy in Love” from the Album Dangerously in Love (2003); “If I Were a Boy” and “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on it)” from the album I am...Sasha Fierce (2008); “Run the World (Girls)” from the album 4 (2011); “Pretty Hurts” and “Drunk in Love” from the album Beyoncé (2013); “Daddy Lessons” and “Formation” from the album Lemonade (2016).

In Edward Said’s postcolonial analysis of Orientalism, the “East” known to the “West” is systematically constructed by western institutions, literary and cultural production. Since the 1980s, the presence of Asia and Asians in American popular fiction has shifted to a technological imagination, a phenomenon known as Techno-Orientalism. Prominent examples of this are the characters of Neo Seoul in Cloud Atlas (2012), or T-1000 in Terminator: Genisys (2015). After the introductory sessions we will focus on two novels: Andy Weir’s The Martian (2011) and Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl (2009). This Proseminar will introduce students to the theories and methods of narrative analysis and provide room for intensive close readings of these two novels.

This seminar will introduce major methods and theories in cultural studies with a focus on popular film. The seminar is project-based and will connect attention to film form with current theories of culture. After three introductory sessions, students will work in groups to develop original, methodologically sound readings of a contemporary film grounded in close shot-by- shot analysis and current theories of film and culture. While each group will develope its own approach using a selection of theoretical angles as a starting point, we will all analyze the same film, Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival (2016). Active participation in and completion of the project is required for taking the final exam (B2c/SM Kult).

Please purchase a copy of the film and watch it before the beginning of the semester.

This class is an advanced introduction to the theories of culture and literature that are the backbone of textual analysis and reading in literary and cultural studies, including Psychoanalysis, Feminist theory, Queer theory, New Historicism, Postcolonial Theory, and Ecocriticism. We will explore the ways in which these theories become productive in a reading of a classic American novel, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925). Please read the novel and purchase and explore our textbook before the beginning of the semester: Lois Tyson, Critical Theory Today (2014); I also recommend as an additional resource: Gregory Castle, The Literary Theory Handbook (Wiley-Blackwell 2013).