Courses - Summer Term 2012

Prof. Dr. Cecile Sandten

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.
Requirements for credits:
Apart from regular attendance, active participation will be expected. For the successful completion of the course you are required to give an oral presentation (15 minutes = PVL) and to write a substantial seminar paper (12-15) pages = PL).
Reading List:
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, room 214). Please register there.

Prof. Dr. Cecile Sandten

Content:
In this seminar, students are concerned with the cultural context and material and economic conditions for the production and reception of Shakespeare’s theatre during the English Renaissance. Starting with an introduction to Shakespeare's theatre and the world view of its audience, this seminar will then attach great importance to the major thematic concerns of two plays, Shakespeare's comedy Much Ado about Nothing and his tragedy Othello.
Objectives:
Therefore, the aim of this seminar is to introduce students to two major Shakespearean plays that have become key texts in early modern Europe’s debate about race and ethnicity, on the one hand, and gender, on the other. While the tragedy Othello dramatises the cultural anxieties aroused by a black outsider occupying centre-stage, and discusses Europe’s relationship with Africa, the comedy Much Ado about Nothing focuses on two characters, namely Beatrice and Benedick, whose verbal combat is famous among Elizabethan dialogue between the sexes. Therefore, our analysis of the two plays will have to include a discussion of the extent to which Shakespeare drew upon, contributed to, or modified notions of otherness, womanhood, and patriarchy dominating in his own day. In a further step, this seminar addresses a number of considerations associated with ‘translating’ texts to the contemporary stage as well as to film, offering an in-depth analysis of the ways in which Kenneth Branagh’s 1993 rendition of Much Ado about Nothing, or Oliver Parker’s 1995 adaptation of Othello use imagery and film-editing techniques to capture aspects of the original script that would have been impossible on stage. Apart from an in-depths study of drama text and film adaptation, students will get the chance to watch – whenever possible – contemporary theatre performances of Shakespeare’s plays (excursions).
Prerequisites:
Master-students need to have successfully completed their BA in English.
Requirements for Credit:
Apart from regular attendance, active participation will be expected. For the successful completion of the course students are required to give an oral presentation (15 minutes = PVL) and write a substantial seminar paper (15-20 pages = PL).
Registration:
There will be a list at the door of my office (Rh 39, Zi. 214). Please register there.
Set Texts:
Shakespeare, William (1998 [1604]): Othello. E.A.J. Honigmann (ed.) The Arden Edition of the Works of William Shakespeare. London: Thomson. .
Shakespeare, William (2002 [1598/99]): Much Ado about Nothing. A. R. Humphreys (ed.) The Arden Edition of the Works of William Shakespeare. London: Thomson.

Prof. Dr. Cecile Sandten

Content:
Cape Town comprises a tale of two cities only. There is the city of the privileged, their rose and vanilla mansions hugging those contours of privilege close to the city's mountain chain, its forest slopes, and better beaches. However, there sprawls the immense city of the dispossessed and deprived, the apartheid dormitory towns and squatter camps, steadily filling up the waste ground between the city's mountain backbone and the barrier of range of the Hottentots Holland. Johannesburg is also divided – but now as much by poverty and violence as by race: there are the homeless people using manholes as cupboards; there are devastating changes along the postapartheid streets: walls grow higher; neighbourhoods are gated; the keys multiply. Security is one of the buzz words ringing in the streets of this city. In this seminar we will explore the importance of two South African metropolises as political and cultural centres and as a social microcosms reflecting the state of South Africa’s transcultural society due to its colonial past (apartheid) and its postcolonial (post-apartheid), effects. We will investigate the political, social, cultural and architectural history with a special focus on Cape Town and Johannesburg, especially through the study of written 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, sociology, or urban studies, we will get an indepth knowledge of some of the main issues of postcolonialism (diaspora, migration, dislocation, hybridity) and become familiar with aspects related to South Africa's recent history (apartheid). In addition, students will be introduced to concepts such as the flaneur and spacial-semantic layering.
Prerequisites:
None.
Requirements for credits/Type of Module Exam:
Apart from regular attendance, active participation will be expected. To successfully complete the course, students will have to give an oral presentation (15 minutes = Prüfungsvorleistung) and to write a substantial seminar paper (15-20 pages = Prüfungsleistung).
Registration:
There will be a list at the door of my office (Rh 29, Zi 214). Please register there.
Set Texts:
Schonstein Pinnock, Patricia (2000): Skyline. Cape Town: David Philip Publishers.
Vladislavic, Ivan (2006): Portrait With Keys: The City of Johannesburg Unlocked. London, New York: Norton.
In addition, a reader with set texts and seminal material on post colonialism and the metropolis will be provided at the beginning of the semester. A special film programme will be on offer.

Prof. Dr. Cecile Sandten

Content:
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. We 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. A reader will be provided at the beginning of the semester.

Pavan Malreddy

Content:
Was Mao Zedong wrong to claim that “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun”? After all, gunpowder seems to be the greatest invention of mankind, particularly for those in power, and even a cursory look at contemporary global affairs would reveal the most prolific yet destructive facet of “firepower”: over a two million deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan since 9/11. Is it death or just the fear of death that political power thrives on? Who is allowed to use fire guns and who is not? Is it only the “men in uniform” who have the right to carry guns and the license to kill? What if ordinary men (and women) wear uniforms and shoulder guns to defend their freedoms? This course provides an intellectual platform to address these questions from a literary perspective. Through a selection of stories, novels, travel narratives, and theoretical texts, the course draws upon the experiences of armed uprisings in the 21st century from Nepal to Peru, and to the Philippines.
Objectives:
Students will become familiar with an array of concepts in social theory: biopolitics, necropolitics, and other non-normative theories of “terrorism”. Furthermore, students will gain insights into the European conception of the “sublime”, one that is conceived to guard from the violence and terror “inherent” to the non-European Other, one that is also part and parcel of a culture that is directly responsible for the (legacies of) colonial violence.
Prerequisites:
Magister-Students need to have successfully passed the intermediate exam (Zwischenprüfung); Master-Students need to have successfully completed their BA in English.
Requirements for Credit:
Apart from active participation, regular attendance is strongly recommended. For the successful completion of the course you are required to give an oral presentation (PVL) and hand in a substantial term paper (PL).
Registration:
There will be a list at the door of my office (Rh 29, Zi 215). Please register there.
Set Texts:
Chakravarti, Sudeep. 2009. Red Sun: Travels in Naxalite Country. New Delhi: Penguin.
Khadra, Yasmina. 2006. The Attack. Translated by John Cullen. New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday.

Birte Heidemann, M.A.

Content:
By introducing students to the works of writers from Africa, the Caribbean, South Asia and Britain, this seminar focuses on contemporary literature for children and young adults reflecting multicultural realities. Though sited in different parts of the world, these writers voice localised concerns that have global relevance. Their multi-layered narratives are often directed at an equally multi-layered readership: apart from young readers, children’s writing tends to address adults through a political dimension.
Objectives:
Focusing on the ethnic diversity reflected in contemporary children’s literature, we will explore a wide spectrum of literary and theoretical texts from a postcolonial perspective. Ranging from Salman Rushdie’s modern fairy tale Haroun and the Seaof Stories (1990) and Beverly Naidoo’s youth novel The Other Side of Truth (2000) to short stories and poems by authors such as Jackie Kay, John Agard and Grace Nichols, students will get an in-depth knowledge of the literary, cultural and sociohistorical contexts in which postcolonial children’s literature is written and read. This seminar exposes students not only to a critical reading of postcolonial writing for children and young adults but above all to the power of storytelling.
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.
Requirements for credit:
Apart from active participation, regular attendance is strongly recommended. For the successful completion of the course you are required to give an oral presentation (PVL) and hand in a substantial term paper (PL).
Registration:
There will be a list at the door of my office (Rh 39, Zi 213). Please register there.
Set texts:
Naidoo, Beverly (2000): The Other Side of Truth. London: Puffin.
Rushdie, Salman (1990): Haroun and the Sea of Stories. London: Penguin.
A reader with selected poems, short stories and critical essays will be provided at the beginning of the semester.

Birte Heidemann, M.A.

Content:
Drawing upon what Paul Gilroy called the ‘Black Atlantic’, this seminar explores the spatio-temporal passages between Europe, America, Africa and the Caribbean as portrayed in a number of contemporary slave narratives. In particular, students will be introduced to texts (fiction, poetry and critical essays) and images (paintings and films) that reflect upon the Atlantic slave trade from various literary and (inter)medial perspectives. Positioned at the intersections of remembering and forgetting, the texts and images under discussion uncover the hidden histories of countless slaves that crossed the Middle Passage.
Objectives
By focusing on the politics and poetics of the British Empire, students will be first introduced to Aphra Behn’s prose text Oroonoko (1688). Other fictional works under consideration include Caryl Phillips’s Cambridge (1991), which is set in a sugar-cane estate in the West Indies, and Bernardine Evaristo’s Blonde Roots (2008), a slave narrative ‘in reverse’. In crossing both geographical and generic spaces, students will further explore intermedial slave narratives in order to gain visual insights into slave struggles in different cultural and historical contexts. The generic diversity of the slave narrative will familiarise students to the magnitude of the Atlantic slave trade that continues to shape the socio-cultural fabric of the postcolonial world.
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.
Requirements for credit:
Apart from active participation, regular attendance is strongly recommended. For the successful completion of the course you are required to give an oral presentation (PVL) and hand in a substantial term paper (PL).
Registration:
There will be a list at the door of my office (Rh 39, Zi 213). Please register there.
Set texts:
Evaristo, Bernardine (2008): Blonde Roots. London: Penguin.
Phillips, Caryl (1991): Cambridge. London: Bloomsbury.
A reader with selected poems and critical essays will be provided at the beginning of
the semester.