Courses
Courses - Summer Term 2009
Prof. Dr. Cecile Sandten
Course Description
Content:
India is many Indias, many people, many cultures and many languages. India is a very complex and exciting country, where people write in many languages. With the term "Indian-English Literature" already three aspects are encountered: a possible or supposed Indianness, a specific form and the use of a non-Indian language as a creative language/medium. This implies that stylistic influence from the local languages seems to be a particular feature of much Indian literature in English as well as an acculturated English within a South Asian context. An often veritable war of arguments between "localists/traditionalists" (Indian) and "internationalists/modernists" (English) has characterised much of the debate around "Indian English Literature". With the advent of a writer like Salman Rushdie and his publication of Midnight’s Children (1981) a departure from the predominant realist mode of the Indian English novel, which was practised since the 1930s, took place.
Objectives:
In this seminar, students will learn about the use of English in India by being presented earlier Indian writers who made English their creative language, often adhering to the English literary tradition especially with regard to the genres of novel and poetry. The question of history and culture plays a decisive role when discussing the production of English literature in India. Hence, students will integrate these aspects when focussing on several writers and their works, e.g. Mulk Raj Anand, Khushwant Singh, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, or Salman Rushdie. Providing an overview as well as underlining arguments by giving concrete examples will be the basic mode of this seminar in order to introduce students to the notion of “Indian English Literature” and the dialectics of "tradition" and "modernity" which have characterised much of what has been produced on the Indian sub-continent.
Prerequisites:
In order to participate students of Anglistik/Amerikanistik need to have completed the lecture course “Introduction to the Study of Literatures in English” successfully. Attendance will be taken every class. Students will be allowed two unexcused absences for the semester.
Requirements for credits/Type of module exam:
Apart from regular attendance, active participation will be expected. For the successful completion of the course you are required to give an oral presentation and hand in a substantial term paper.
Set texts:
Anand, Mulk Raj (1935): Untouchable.
Chandra, Vikram (2000): Love and Longing in Bombay: Stories.
Desai, Anita (1988): Baumgartner's Bombay.
---. (2004): The Zigzag Way.
Deshpande, Shashi (2004): Moving On.
Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer (1999): Out of India: Selected Stories.
Rushdie, Salman (1994): East, West: Stories.
Registration:
There will be a list at the door of my office (Rh 39, Zi. 214). Please register there.
Prof. Dr. Cecile Sandten
Content:
In this seminar students will explore the importance of the metropolis as a political and cultural centre and as a social microcosm reflecting the state of its transcultural society due to its colonial past and its postcolonial effects. They will investigate the political, social, cultural and architectural history of a diverse range of metropolises (e.g. London, Hong Kong, Bombay, Delhi), especially through the study of written, oral and visual representations (paintings, photographs, films, literary and academic texts/presentations).
Objectives:
In an interdisciplinary and comparative mode, by looking at neighbouring disciplines such as gender studies, arts, music, film and sociology, students will get an in-depth knowledge of some of the main issues of postcolonialism (diaspora, migration, dislocation, hybridity) and become familiar with aspects related to earlier (flaneur) and contemporary concepts describing metropolises (spacial-semantic layering). An interesting film programme will be provided.
Prerequisites:
Intermediate Exam; attendance will be taken every class. Students will be allowed two unexcused absences for the semester.
Requirements for credits:
The format of this seminar will consist of oral reports and discussions. Each student will present an oral report (approx. 15 minutes), chair a session or prepare questions for a discussion and write a substantial seminar paper (15-18 pages). A reader with seminal material on postcolonialism and the metropolis will be provided at the beginning of the semester.
Set Texts:
Adebayo, Diran (1996): Some Kind of Black.
Chandra, Vikram (1997): Love and Longing in Bombay: Stories.
Ho, Louise & Klaus Stierstorfer (eds.) (2006): Hongkong Poems / Gedichte [engl.-dt].
Singh, Khushwant. (1990): Delhi: A Novel.
Film
Comrades - Almost a Love Story. Hong Kong 1996, dir: Peter Chan
Registration:
There will be a list at the door of my office (Rh 39, Zi. 214). Please register there.
Prof. Dr. Cecile Sandten
Content:
In this seminar students will basically focus on the "black" characters in a variety of canonical texts in relation to their various representations such as the "oriental", the "other", the "exotic outsider", or the "colonial subject". For instance, Shakespeare’s tragic hero Othello may be considered in the context of early Renaissance anxieties about 'heathens' and 'Moors,' which has later served helpful regarding the colonial celebrations of a civilizing mission premised on the 'barbarism' of non-Europeans. More recently, within postcolonial struggles, the Moor’s race has helped as a marker for continuing racial oppression and a rallying cry for resistance.
Objectives:
In addition to Othello, students in this seminar will analyse Aphra Behn’s most accomplished novella of the Restoration era, Oroonoko: or; The Royal Slave, which is set in Surinam, a British colony in the West Indies, today Guyana, in comparison to Daniel Defoe’s classic novel Robinson Crusoe and Defoe’s depiction of Robinson’s slave/servant Friday. In a further step, students will look at different contemporary texts, e.g. South-African writer J.M. Coetzee’s Foe as an example of a postcolonial text, which is a novel based on a re-imagining of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe with a woman, Susan Barton, cast away on the same island as Robinson Crusoe (here called Cruso) and Friday.
Prerequisites:
Intermediate Exam; attendance will be taken every class. Students will be allowed two unexcused absences for the semester.
Requirements for credits:
Apart from regular attendance, active participation will be expected. For the successful completion of the course students are required to give an oral presentation and hand in a substantial term paper (15-18 pages).
Texts:
William Shakespeare. Othello (Arden edition)
Aphra Behn. Oroonoko, the Royal Slave (org. 1688)
Daniel Defoe. The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719)
J.M. Coetzee. Foe (1989)
Registration:
There will be a list at the door of my office (Rh 39, Zi. 214). Please register there.
Prof. Dr. Cecile Sandten
Course description:
The Forschungskolloquium/Examenskolloquium is open to students preparing for their final and for their intermediate oral and written exams. It is intended to give students the opportunity to present their research projects and to raise specific questions and/or difficulties at an early stage. Further, students are encouraged to engage in critical debates over approaches and topics with their peers. Students will also revise general and specific topics required for intermediate and final exams and discuss required reading lists.
Registration:
There will be a list at the door of my office (Rh 39, Zi. 214). Please register there.
Dr. Ines Detmers
Content:
This lecture course is the second in a two-part sequence. It aims at providing an overview over the periods and key works of English literature from the Romantic era to the global diversification of contemporary literature(s) in English. As literature asks questions about both its own history as well as about the processes by which cultural knowledge and understanding are shaped, the starting point of this lecture will be the merits, pitfalls and governing principles of writing literary histories. Subsequently, the focus will be on Romanticism, Victorianism, Edwardianism, Modernism, Postmodernism and – last but not least – Postcolonialism and the so called New English Literatures. The comments on exemplary key texts of each period will be preceded by brief introductions which cover major historical and cultural events alongside key literary developments.
Objectives:
Each survey unit will broadly follow a four step structure, including a general historio-cultural overview, a literary overview, an introduction to main texts and issues and exemplary readings. Furthermore, the lectures will move beyond facts and events in order to characterize the broad sweep of ideas and the main concerns of British writers of the periods mentioned above. For a better orientation in the field, please get hold of a copy of one of the following standard literary histories: Seeber, Englische Literaturgeschichte; Sampson, Cambridge Guide to English Literature; or Sanders, The Short Oxford History of English Literature. A detailed course schedule will be available at the beginning of the semester.
Prerequisites
Attendance will be taken every class. Students will be allowed two unexcused absences for the semester.
Please note: More than two unexcused absences will lead to the exclusion from the final exam.
Requirement for credits/type of module exam
Apart from regular attendance, active participation will be expected: as this lecture class also is a community, you are all required to support that community. For the successful completion of the course there will be a 90-minute written exam at the end of the term.
Registration:
Students do not need to register. Please attend the first meeting of the lecture course.
Dr. Ines Detmers
Content:
This course attempts to introduce modern literary theory to students of English Literature in order to make it intelligible and attractive alike. It will be shown that none of the different approaches, ranging from New Criticism, Formalism, Structuralism, Semiotics, Post-Structuralism, Psychoanalysis, Gender Studies, Intertextuality, Post-Colonialism, or New Historicism, is simply concerned with literary studies in a narrow sense. On the contrary, the above mentioned theories emerged from other areas of the humanities, and have implications well beyond literature itself. However, in this seminar we will explore the different theories and theoretical approaches by looking at their origins, premises and implications and by extracting their underlying messages.
Objectives:
As the main focus is placed on both the understanding as well as the application of theoretical premises and paradigms, we shall concentrate on Joseph Conrad’s short novel Heart of Darkness (1902) in order to make the different theoretical approaches comprehensible. A detailed course schedule will be available at the beginning of the semester.
Prerequisites:
In order to participate students of Anglistik/Amerikanistik need to have completed the lecture course "Introduction to the Study of Literatures in English" successfully. Additionally, you are asked to have read Conrad’s Heart of Darkness by the beginning of the semester. Attendance will be taken every class. Students will be allowed two unexcused absences for the semester.
Requirements for Credit:
Apart from regular attendance, active participation will be expected. For the successful completion of the course you are required to give an oral presentation and hand in a substantial term paper.
Reading List:
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1902).
Besides, a reader with seminal material will be provided at the beginning of the semester.
Registration:
There will be a list at the door of my office (Rh 39, Zi. 215). Please register there.
Birte Heidemann, M.A.
Content:
Since the late 1960s Northern Ireland has exploded onto the contemporary poetry scene with the works of poets such as Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley, Paul Muldoon, Ciaran Carson and Medbh McGuckian. For a population of just one and half million, Northern Ireland is somehow adept at producing poetry giants.
Apart from poetry, Northern Ireland is also famous for its Troubles, the conflict that erupted out of the Civil Rights movement in 1969 and which came to an uneasy truce with the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. Hence, times have changed, and Northern Ireland continues to produce poets: Sinéad Morrissey, Colette Bryce, Martin Mooney, Alan Gillis, and Nick Laird. They make up the “new generation” of Northern Irish poets and will be the focus of this seminar.
Objectives:
Students will analyse a selection of contemporary Northern Irish poetry by using various approaches. As the poets of the “new generation” were all born in the 1960s and 1970s and, thus, grew up during the Troubles, it will be interesting to find out to what extend they artistically engage themselves with the conflict. Besides, their poetry is defined by the notion of home and flight. Therefore, students will further scrutinise their work in terms of the need for belonging and the need to remain outside Northern Ireland. In addition, students will actively deal with the subject of poetry through creative writing assessments. In order to understand this convoluted conflict in the North of Ireland, a historical framework will be provided in the first sessions of the seminar.
Prerequisites:
In order to participate students of Anglistik/Amerikanistik need to have completed the lecture course "Introduction to the Study of Literatures in English" successfully. Attendance will be taken every class. Students will be allowed two unexcused absences for the semester.
Credit requirements:
Apart from regular attendance, active participation will be expected. For the successful completion of the course you are required to give an oral presentation and hand in a substantial term paper.
Suggested secondary reading:
A bibliography with relevant secondary texts will be made available in the first session of the course. Besides, a reader with seminal material will be provided at the beginning of the semester.
Registration:
There will be a list at the door of my office (Rh 39, Zi. 213). Please register there.
Dr. Hans-Joachim Hermes
Content/Objectives:
In this Seminar we will study Shakespeare’s famous Tragedy of King Lear, which was first performed in the limits of 1605 to 1606 between Othello and Macbeth. Subjects of interest will be the structure of the plot, analysis of major characters, themes, motifs, symbols and language (imagery!). Among the themes and motifs will be those of human cruelty, justice, authority and chaos and madness. Shakespeare’s sources, among them Raphael Holinshed’s Lear will be studied. Attention will also be paid to Shakespeare’s dramatic features: King Lear is a true specimen of a Jacobean play, and the seminar will trace for characteristics of Jacobean playwriting. The Dresden production of the play may be seen in the Dresden Staatsschauspiel either in late April, May or June 2009. The students will get a chance to talk to the performing cast.
Required reading:
Text of King Lear in any scholarly English edition. Recommended: Shakespeare, William: King Lear, English edition . Penguin Popular Classics, ISBN 0140620658, € 2,30, Supplier: Universitas.
Requirements for credits/Type of module exam:
Regular attendance, 1 oral presentation, term paper (deadline: 1 July 2009; size: 10-15 pp.; language: English; format according to style sheet).
Prerequisites:
Students need to have completed the lecture course “Introduction to the Study of Literature in English”.
Registration:
Via email to hermes@phil.tu-chemnitz.de
N.N.
Content:
The tutorial will provide a forum to discuss the reading materials required for the lecture course.
Objectives:
Students will have to read a number of assigned texts. A reader will be available.
Prerequisites:
The students must be able to read and intelligently discuss the assigned texts.
Type of module exam:
There will be no exam in the tutorials.
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