Courses - Winter Term 2010/2011

Prof. Dr. Cecile Sandten

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 Ansgar and Vera Nünning's Introduction to the Study of English and American Literature, 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: None

Requirements for credit/ Type of module exam:
Apart from regular attendance, active participation will be expected. For the successful completion of this course there will be a 90-minute written exam at the end of the semester (PL; re-examination PVL, where necessary). The Tutorial for the Lecture "Introduction to the Study of Literatures in English" is obligatory. Time and room will be announced.

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 English and American Literature. Klett. (neueste Auflage) (Reihe: Uni-Wissen Anglistik / Amerikanistik); € 12,95. 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. 214). Please register there.

Prof. Dr. Cecile Sandten

Content:
This lecture course is the first (B_AA_1, PL, Modul 2.3) and second (B_AA_3, PVL, Modul 2.4) 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, Sanders, The Short Oxford History of English Literature, or Paul Poplawski English Literature in Contexts. A detailed course schedule will be available at the beginning of the semester.

Prerequisites: None

Requirements for credits/Type of Module Exam:
Apart from regular attendance, active participation will be expected. For the successful completion of this course there will be a 90-minute written exam at the end of the semester: PL Modul 2.3 and PVL Modul 2.4.

Set Texts: Set Texts will be announced at the beginning og 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 students will basically focus on the "black" characters in a selection of Shakespearean plays 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, which has eventually been critically analysed by postcolonial literary scholars.

Purpose:
In current critical writings, which will be subject to discussion, this interest in the "other" has frequently been defined in connection to the concept of race especially as depicted in the relationship between Prospero and Caliban in Shakespeare's The Tempest, in Othello and its eponymous hero as the "extravagant and wheeling stranger" (1.1.136), or in constructions of the Jew the Renaissance embodiment of a desire for bloody sacrifices as represented in the character of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. Students of this seminar will learn that Shakespeare's "others" are remarkably few in number – Othello, Caliban, Shylock, Jessica, and Morocco, but that in representing them as "other" fragments of alien worlds through which Shakespeare explores the distortions and caricatures that cultures create of one another, will be perceived.

Objectives:
In addition to Othello, students will analyse The Merchant of Venice as well as The Tempest by also taking into consideration contemporary critical writings as have been produced in the field of postcolonial studies. A selection of movie adaptations will round up discussions and help to visualise contemporary views on the selection of successful completion of the course students are required to give an oral presentation (PVL) and hand in a substantial term paper (PL).

Prequesites:
Intermediate Exam (Magister); BA English (Master). Attendance is highly
recommended.

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 (PVL) and hand in a substantial term paper (PL).

Set Texts:
William Shakespeare (1998 [1604]): Othello. E.A.J. Honigmann (ed.) Walton-on-Thames, Surrey: Arden.
William Shakespeare (1997 [1955] [1596]): The Merchant of Venice. J.R. Brown (ed.) Walton-on-Thames, Surrey: Arden.
William Shakespeare (1954 [1611]): The Tempest. Frank Kermode (ed.) (1998). Walton-on-Thames, Surrey: Arden.

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

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.

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 which revolve around transnational themes reflecting multicultural realities.
Though sited in different parts of the world, these writers voice localised concerns that have global relevance. Thus, their multi-layered texts are often directed at a double audience: apart from a young readership, children’s writing tends to also address an adult reader by implying 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 Sea of Stories (1990) and Beverly Naidoo’s The Other Side of Truth (2000), set against a background of military rule in Nigeria, 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 socio-historical contexts in which contemporary 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.

Prequisites:
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 theoretical texts will be provided at the beginning of the semester.

Birte Heidemann, M.A.

Content:
In Northern Ireland, two groups of people with significantly conflicting senses of their own national and cultural identity inhabit the same territory. This has led to the emergence of a century-long conflict which resulted in the so-called ‘Troubles’ in the late 1960s. Though this political turmoil officially came to an end with the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, Northern Irish culture is still marked by split identities. In particular, Northern Irish writing is representative of these splits and struggles manifested in the recent past.

Objectives:
By focusing on contemporary Northern Irish fiction, this seminar exposes students to historically informed literary, cultural and socio-political contexts for an understanding of the complexities inherent in Northern Ireland’s divided society. Revolving around a terrace house in suburban Belfast, Glenn Patterson’s Number 5 (2003) follows its successive occupants from the 1950s to the millennium. Through this text, students will be introduced to individual experiences before, during and after the breakdown of violence. As one of the most recent post-Troubles novels, David Park’s The Truth Commissioner (2008) draws on issues such as revenge, redemption and reconciliation thereby demonstrating how much the past still permeates the present. In addition to novels, we will analyse two films: the discussion of Paul Greengrass’s Bloody Sunday (2002) and Florian Hirschbiegel’s Five Minutes of Heaven (2009) will add an additional angle to the representation of today’s Northern Ireland.

Prequisites:
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. 215). Please register there.

Set texts:
Park, David (2008): The Truth Commissioner. London: Bloomsbury.
Patterson, Glenn (2003): Number 5. London: Penguin.

Pavan Malreddy, MA

Content:
The Twentieth Century is marked by a movement of people through displacement, emigration, and forced (re)settlements. The rise and fall of socialism, colonialism, dictatorial regimes, and the geopolitics of the Cold War era have led many individuals, ethnic groups, and marginalized communities to leave their homelands for stranger shores. Though not explicitly a post-colonial literary phenomenon, imaging homelands from newfound cultural topographies has often resulted in a rich corpus of literature in the form of poetry, fiction, memoir/travel, and political biography. This seminar is designed to bring various genres of literary representations to a conceptual platform in order to define, debate, and theorize exile in contemporary English literature.

Purpose:
Much of the exile literature today is appropriated by postcolonial studies, although 'exile' writing is not strictly a colonial invention. Socialism (Russia, China), Cold Warled expansionism (Vietnam, Congo, Cuba), internal colonialism (Scotland, Ireland), and even the post-9/11 War on Terror (Afghanistan, Iraq) have played an instrumental role in the production of exile experience (and literature). This seminar is mindful of
the political backdrop(s) of the literary production on exile, while carefully distinguishing it from diaspora, immigration and/or economic migration.

Objectives:
Students will be able to identify the distinction between cultural and political exile, forced migration, ethnic displacement, among other implicit themes in the selected texts. Students will familiarize with complex layers of the texts through opinion pieces, presentations, and conceptual synthesis. Students will gain an in depth understanding of how political events shape literature. These include, but are not limited to, the dictatorship regimes of Africa and Latin America, Cold War legacy in East Asia, and the imperialist interventions by the CIA (United States).

Prequesites:
Intermediate Exam; BA English. Attendance is highly recommended.

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 (PVL) and hand in a substantial term paper (PL).

Primary Texts:
Said, Edward. 1996. Reflections on Exile. New York: Verso.
Koestler, Arthur. 1968. Darkness at Noon. New York: Scribner.

Registration:
There will be a list at the door of my office (Rh 39, Zi. 213). Please register there.

Pavan Malreddy

Content:
Since the 1960s, the notion of ‘margins’ has become almost synonymous with Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction. Accordingly, ‘margins’ is often seen as a place where unspoken, unheard, or the un-represented voices/texts meet in order to depose the center. For Walter Benjamin, historical construction is dedicated to the memory of the nameless, because it is the nameless who make history. For William Golding, story-tellers and fabulists are relegated to the margins for they inculcate moral lessons against the political tyranny and human greed. For Deleuze and Guattari ‘margins’ is where a ‘minor literature’ enacts an entirely new system of codes which is impossible for the mainstream (major) literature to decipher the symbolism of its implied resistance.

Purpose:
Abrogation/appropriation, decolonizing or nativizing English language have been the most commonly celebrated conceptual themes in English literature today. This seminar, however, takes the notion of resistance (to the dominance of English) in literature a step further. The seminar borrows from the literature of Franz Kafka, and the theories of Deleuze and Guattari to elaborate the notion of minor literature/theory.

Objectives:
Students will familiarize with how theories/concepts travel ( “travelling theory”) across texts, places, and contexts. Students will articulate the distinction between the major literature (mainstream) and the minor literature in terms of form, content, literary technique, use of language, and textual parameters.

Prequisites: Intermediate Exam; BA English. Attendance is highly recommended.

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 (PVL) and hand in a substantial term paper (PL).

Primary Texts:
Ailaih, Kancha. 1997. Why I am Not a Hindu. Calcutta: Somya.
Cardinal, Harold. 1969. The Unjust Society: The Tragedy of Canada's Indians.
Edmonton Alberta: M. G. Hurtig.

Registration:
There will be a list at the door of my office (Rh 39, Zi. 213). Please register there.