Courses

Courses - Winter Term 2008/2009

Prof. Dr. Cecile Sandten

Course Description

Content:
Britain possesses a great literary heritage. This lecture course (the first part in a twopart sequence) will offer the richness, diversity, and continuity of that tradition. Thus, the history of English literature from the Renaissance to the Romantic period will be covered. Apart from conveying the pleasure and exhilaration of literature, this lecture will provide a concise outline of schools and periods of writing: Renaissance and Reformation: Literature 1510-1620, Revolution and Restoration: Literature 1620-1690, Eighteenth-Century Literature: 1690-1780, to The Literature of the Romantic Period 1780-1830. At the heart of the lecture towers the figure of Shakespeare, who has a special session devoted entirely to himself. In addition, the lecture offers detailed treatments of other major writers such as Donne, Milton, Behn, Defoe, Blake or Wordsworth and their texts.

Objectives:
More than a mere chronology, the lecture provides a basic core of information and material, including suggestions for further reading, maps, a chronological table of dates, and details regarding birth and death dates of individuals. It will also move beyond these facts and events to characterise the broad sweep of ideas and the main concerns of British writers of the periods mentioned above. 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.

Requirements 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.

Set texts:
William Shakespeare (1564-1616): The History of King Lear (1605-1606)
William Shakespeare (1564-1616): The Tempest (1611)
* Reader (will be provided at the beginning of the semester)

Registration:
Students do not need to register. Please attend the first meeting of the lecture course.

Prof. Dr. Cecile Sandten

Content:
In this seminar we 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. We will investigate the political, social, cultural and architectural history of a diverse range of metropolises (e.g. London, Kolkata, Delhi, Lagos), 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, we 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 metropolises (spacial-semantic layering). An interesting film programme will be provided.

Prerequisites:
Zwischenprüfung; 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).

Set Texts:
Abani, Chris (2005): Graceland: A Novel. London: Picador
Banerjee, Sarnath (2005): Corridor: A Graphic Novel. Penguin Global
Chandra, Vikram (1997): Love and Longing in Bombay: Stories. London: Faber
Chaudhuri, Amit (2002): A New World. London: Vintage
A reader with seminal material on postcolonialism and the metropolis will be provided at the beginning of the semester.

Registration:
There will be a list at the door of Frau Zenner’s office (Rh 39, Zi. 214). Please register there.

Prof. Dr. Cecile Sandten

'I had rather than forty shillings I had my Book of Songs and Sonnets here.'
(The Merry Wives of Windsor, l,1)

'Will you then write me a sonnet in praise of my beauty?'
(Much Ado About Nothing, V, 4)

Content:
Some time between 1593 and 1599 William Shakespeare wrote a series of 154 sonnets which were published for the first time as a collection in 1609. Since then, they have become not only an icon of the art of the sonnet in English but have also provided material for one of English literature's greatest mysteries: Who is the 'dark lady'? Who was the 'Mr. W. H.' to whom the publisher dedicated them? Was Shakespeare bi-sexual? And what has the Earl of Southampton got to do with anything?

Objectives:
We will, first and foremost, read the sonnets intensively to discern any thematic or literary patterns and to ascertain why exactly they have worked such magic on poetry lovers and poets. We will also look at the origins of the sonnet in Italy and how exactly Shakespeare took over his models, like Petrarch, and adapted them to the rhythms of English speech and poetry. In addition, we will study how Shakespeare's poems have resonated through English literature, from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the Romantics (especially Wordsworth and Keats), via Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Wilfred Owen through to our own time (for instance Seamus Heaney or Edwin Morgan).

Prerequisites:
Zwischenprüfung; Attendance will be taken every class. Students will be allowed two unexcused absences for the semester.

Requirements for credits:
Regular attendance and active participation in class, a presentation or group presentation, and a final paper (15-18 pages) or creative writing assessment.

Texts:
Shakespeare, William, Shakespeare's Sonnets, ed. by Katherine Duncan-Jones, Arden Edition, 1997.
Don Paterson (ed.), 101 Sonnets from Shakespeare to Heaney. London: Faber, 2002.
A reader will be made available at the beginning of the semester.

Registration:
There will be a list at the door of Frau Zenner’s 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. 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 Frau Zenner’s office (Rh 39, Zi. 214). Please register there.

Dr. Ines Detmers

Content/Purpose:
Conducting literary studies at the university level, this lecture course will provide an accessible introduction to the fundamentals of literary studies, such as terms, concepts, and methods. Based on Paul Poplawski’s textbook English Literature in Contexts (2008), an essential resource and reference guide, texts of different genres (i.e. poetry, drama, narrative fiction) have been selected from the 17th and 20th century British literature and the so called ‘New English Literatures’. Discussions in class and short assignments will emphasize close reading skills and the development of effective strategies for critical and analytical thinking. Moreover, this lecture will be paying attention to working and research techniques. To that end, you will all be exposed to the essential library and reference tools for serious literary research. You will also learn how to access and evaluate electronic resources. The lecture will be accompanied by a weekly tutorial (details will be announced at the beginning of the course).

Prerequisites:
Attendance will be taken every class. Students will be allowed two unexcused absences for the semester – no questions asked. Please note: More than two unexcused absences will lead to the exclusion from the final exam. Furthermore, it goes without saying that it is your responsibility to catch up on the material and assignments from classes you miss.

Requirements 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.

Required textbooks:
Paul Poplawski (ed.), English Literature in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (2008) ISBN: 978-0-521-54928-8; € 17,99.
Ansgar und Vera Nünning, Introduction to the Study of of English and American Literature. Klett. (neueste Auflage) (Reihe: Uni-Wissen Anglistik / Amerikanistik); € 12,95.

Registration:
There will be a list at the door of my office (Rh 39, Zi. 215). Please register there.

Dr. Ines Detmers

Content/Purpose:
Speaking of “mediating Elizabeth I” implies that the cultural imaging of Queen Elizabeth I will be examined from both a synchronic and diachronic perspective. In order to analyse the (self-)construction of what may be called an “intermedial Elizabethan iconography”, a number of texts, encompassing, for example, excerpts from Edmund Spenser’s lyrical work The Faerie Queene (1590/1596), Shakespeare’s play Midsummer Night’s Dream (1600), or Lavinia Greenlaw’s poem "In the Time of Elizabeth R" (1993) will be discussed. Furthermore, we are going to deal with visual representations, such as the famous portraits by George Gower (1588) or Marcus Gheeraerts (1592) and films, including Elizabeth (1999) directed by Shekhar Kapur or the less well-known BBC 4 TV-production, Elizabeth I: The Virgin Queen (2005).

Prerequisites for participation and credits:
Apart from regular attendance and fluent English, active participation will be expected: as this seminar also is a community, all students are required to support that community. In this respect, for the successful completion of the course you are required to give an oral presentation and hand in a term paper of approximately 20 pages.

Required textbooks:
A reader will be available at the beginning of the semester.

Registration:
There will be a list at the door of Frau Zenner’s office (Rh 39, Zi. 215). Please register there.

Birte Heidemann, M.A.

Content:
“I mean I grew up in Ireland, so one would have to be consciously blinkered not to have reflected on the issue of political violence because that was the story since I was 19 years old or 20”. Even though Irish writer and director Neil Jordan has artistically engaged himself with a diverse range of thematic aspects, he, again and again, focuses his camera on the Northern Irish conflict – which has euphemistically been called the Troubles.
In his cinematic depiction of Northern Ireland, Jordan uses different perspectives to present the conflict: in several films, the Troubles are just reminiscent, in movies like Michael Collins, however, he directly depicts its historical dimension. In order to get am broad understanding to Neil Jordan’s screening of Northern Ireland, we will watch and analyse his directorial debut Angel (1982), The Crying Game (1992), for which Jordan won an Academy Award for Best Screenplay as well as Michael Collins (1996), a biographical motion picture about the eponymous Irish revolutionary, and Breakfast on Pluto (2005), the latter based on the novel by Irish author Patrick McCabe.

Objectives:
Aside from discussing the above-mentioned films, the students will also work with theoretical texts on Irish film studies to supplement our discussions. Furthermore, a historical framework is relevant to understand this convoluted conflict in the North of Ireland. Nevertheless, this class is designed to mainly focus on its visual depiction. It should be of great interest to compare several films by one and the same director and put the results in the (Northern) Irish context. During the course of the seminar, we should be able to find an answer to the following question: Is Jordan’s cinematic involvement in the Northern Irish conflict his coping strategy to overcome a life in a divided country?

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: as this seminar also is a community, you are all required to support that community. 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 seminar reader with theoretical texts 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.

Birte Heidemann, M.A.

Content:
"To be, or not to be: that is the question". Another question might be whether Hamlet is a self-righteous brooding type, a depressive melancholic, a mummy's boy or a rebel and social revolutionary. Or is he, according to Laurence Olivier, even the "first real pacifist"? During the course of the seminar, students will not only read and discuss Hamlet but will also be introduced to the highly complex relationship between a literary text and its film versions. Therefore, we will watch and analyse Laurence Olivier's 1947s Hamlet-adaptation, Franco Zeffirelli's (1991) stripped-down, two-hour version of Shakespeare's play which stars Mel Gibson as a rather robust version of the ambivalent Danish prince, Michael Almereyda's 1999 adaptation which is set in New York in the year 2000, as well as Christoph Schlingensief's Hamlet – This is Your Family (2005), directed by Peter Kern, in which Hamlet is performed in Zürich with Nazis who want to quit.

Objectives:
Besides analysing the play and a selection of its different cinematic adaptations, students will also engage themselves with further forms of media. They will evaluate the representation of Hamlet in the Internet and work with audio versions of the play. Thus, they will be encouraged to explore the literary, artistic, musical, cultural, and historical milieus of Hamlet in order to share their discoveries with the other students in the class through active participation.

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: as this seminar also is a community, you are all required to support that community. For the successful completion of the course you are required to give an oral presentation and hand in a substantial term paper.

Required reading:
Shakespeare, William (1983 [1601]): Hamlet. Harold Jenkins (ed.) Walton-on-Thames, Surrey: Arden.

Suggested secondary reading:
A bibliography with relevant secondary texts will be made available in the first session of the course. Besides, a seminar reader 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 Macbeth, which was first performed in the limits of 1606 to 1611. 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 ambition, aggression and violence followed by paranoia. Attention will also be paid to Shakespeare’s dramatic features. Macbeth is a true specimen of a Jacobean play; the seminar will trace for characteristics of Jacobean playwriting. A forthcoming Chemnitz production will premiér in the Schauspielhaus late in 2008. The students will get a chance to see the performance and talk to the performing cast.

Required reading:
Text of Macbeth in any scholarly English edition. Recommended: Shakespeare, William: Macbeth, English edition. Penguin Popular Classics Repr. , 124 p., ISBN 0140620796, 3,20 EUR

Requirements for credits/Type of module exam:
Regular attendance, 1 oral presentation, term paper (deadline: 1 April 2009; size: 10- 15 pp.; language: English; format according to style sheet)

Prerequisites:
Einführungskurs “Introduction to the Study of Literature”.

Registration:
Via email to hermes@phil.tu-chemnitz.de