Courses - Winter Term 2011/2012

Prof. Dr. Cecile Sandten

Content:
Britain possesses a rich literary heritage. This lecture course (the first of a two-part series; first part for BA_1, second part for BA_3) will provide insights into the richness, diversity, and continuity of that tradition. The lecture will cover the history of English literature from the Renaissance to the Romantic period. The various schools and the historical periods that represent English literature include: Renaissance and Reformation Literature 1510-1620; Revolution and Restoration Literature 1620-1690; Eighteenth-Century Literature 1690-1780; and the Literature of the Romantic Period 1780-1830. Shakespeare, a towering figure of the English literary pantheon, will take the centre-stage. In addition, the writings of other major literary figures such as Donne, Milton, Behn, Defoe, Blake or Wordsworth will remain central to the lecture course.
Objectives:
Students will learn the biographical details, and the socio-cultural contexts in which the literatures were produced.. In addition, students will be able to articulate the genealogical roots of literature and literary figures between various historical periods, and their succession and continuity to present times.
Prerequisites:
Regular attendance and active in-class participation will be expected. Students are expected to read the assigned texts for the course.
Requirements for credits/Type of module exam:
For the successful completion of this course there will be a 90-minute written exam at the end of the semester. BA_3 students must have successfully completed the lecture course of Modul 2.3 English Literatures and Cultures I, History of Literatures in English.
Registration:
Students do not need to register. Please attend the first meeting of the lecture course.
Set Texts:
William Shakespeare (1564-1616): The History of King Lear (1605-1606)
William Shakespeare (1564-1616): The Tempest (1611)
Aphra Behn (1688): Oroonoko, or the Royal Slave
Daniel Defoe (1719): Robinson Crusoe
In addition, a reader with seminal material will be provided at the beginning of the semester. An excursion to König Lear performed at the Schauspielhaus Chemnitz will be on the agenda.

Prof. Dr. Cecile Sandten

Content:
This seminar is designed to introduce students to ‘cityscape’ literature in general, but Vancouver writings in particular. The course will explore the growing importance of city cultures, metropolitan life styles, and their traces in literary and filmic representation. Vancouver, which is often touted as the new ‘New York’ of the world, consists of a melting pot of multicultural fabric. This seminar will take students on a literary walk of Vancouver through ethno-scapes, urban imaginaries, including its ‘overworlds’ and ‘underworlds’. In the process, the course will open up to an architectural imagery of Vancouver through written as well as visual materials (paintings, photographs, public sculptures, films, literary and academic texts).
Objectives:
Students will gain an interdisciplinary insight into the representations of Vancouver through poetry, short stories, films, and a novel. This interdisciplinary approach includes gender studies, arts, music, film and sociology, and postcolonialism (diaspora, migration, dislocation, hybridity). In addition, students will become familiar with flanêur-like images of the metropolitan inhabitants, and other pertinent concepts of cultural studies.
Prerequisites:
Students must have completed the two seminars pertaining to the MA-Modul 4, “Cultural Encounters”.
Requirements for credits:
The format of this seminar will consist of oral presentations and discussions. Each student will make an oral presentation (approx. 25 minutes), and chair a session or prepare questions for discussion (PVL), and complete an oral exam (15 minutes, PL) at the end of the semester.
Set Texts/Required Reading:
A reader on postcolonialism and the Canadian city 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:
Typically, colonial detective fiction revolved around the adventures of “English Detectives” in ‘native’ lands. However, with the influence of postcolonialism and postmodernism, the genre of detective fiction has become a global literary (cultural) phenomenon. This seminar is designed to introduce students to how detective fiction is being appropriated and reapplied to the Indian context. The seminar covers a selection of Indian Sherlock Holmes-rewrites including Jamyung Norbu’s The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes (1999), Vitha Rajan’s Holmes of the Raj (2006) and Partha Basu’s The Curious Case of 221B: Notebooks of John H Watson, MD - (2006).
Objectives:
Students will explore the ways in which Sherlock Holmes “rewrites”hybridize the canon and challenge the metropolitan authority exerted by the archetypal figures of Sherlock Holmes and his assistant Dr. Watson. In addition, we will examine the cultural and political implications of postcolonial crime fiction in the Indian context. In particular, we will explore how the ‘comic undertones’ of the Indian “rewrites” dilute the cultural authority of canonic detective fictions.
Requirements for credits:
The format of this seminar will consist of oral presentations and discussions. Each student will present an oral report (approx. 25 minutes), chair a session or prepare questions for a discussion (PVL: MA_1, MA_3) and write a substantial seminar paper (15 – 20 pages; MA_1, PL) or choose an oral exam (15 minutes; MA_3).
Am 28. und 29. 10. 2011 findet die Tagung “Detective Fiction in American Popular Culture” statt. Parallel zur Tagung wird der erste Chemnitzer Krimipreis verliehen. Studenten sind aufgefordert, daran teil zu nehmen. Das Tagungsprogramm finden Sie unter

http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/phil/english/amerikanistik/download/Krimitagung.pdf

Texts/Required Reading:
A reader with seminar 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 my office (RH 39, room 214). Please register there.

Prof. Dr. Cecile Sandten

Content:
The Forschungskolloquium/Examenskolloquium is open to students who are preparing for their final oral and written exams. It is intended to give students a platform to present their research projects and to raise questions and/or difficulties they may be facing at an early stage. Further, students are encouraged to engage in critical discussions, and gain feedback from their peers concerning their research projects. We will also discuss a wide range of general topics and individual topics required for final exams.
Requirements for credits:
The format of this seminar consists of a close reading of texts, discussions and thesis presentations. Each student will present an oral report (approx. 15 minutes), chair a session or prepare questions for a discussion (PVL).
Set Texts/Required Reading:
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.

Pavan Malreddy

Content
As a literary genre, Avant-Garde challenges the dominant cultural norms without a decisive political program of its own. Minor literature, on the contrary, is a predominantly political project which is gaining momentum in the non-Western world. If the Avant-Garde movement influenced Marxism, existentialism, and postmodernism, minor literature resists any paradigmatic affiliation by virtue of its rhetorical ploy and politics. Nevertheless, given the re-emergence of the Avant-Garde novel in the past two decades, this course attempts to uncover its political effects, including its influence on minor literature/theory. And given the ‘anti-establishment’ nature of both the genres, the course will explore the politics of pluralism (‘anti-foundational’) and post-modernism.
Objectives
Students will learn the cultural origins of Avant-Garde, including modernity, Enlightenment ethos and the pathos of scientific reason. Student will become familiar with an array of definitions and conceptions surrounding minor literature/theory. Although both Avant-Garde and minor literature originated in Europe, students will be introduced to the diverse geo-political contexts of their implications and literary significance. In addition, students will articulate the distinction between major literature (mainstream) and minor literature in terms of form, content, literary technique, use of language, and textual parameters.
Prerequisites:
Intermediate Exam; BA English.
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 term paper (PL).
Set Texts:
McCarthy, Tom. 2007. Remainder. New York/London. Vintage,
Ailaih, Kancha. 1997. Why I am Not a Hindu. Calcutta: Somya.

Pavan Malreddy

Content
The success of English as a global language would not have been possible without the legacy of its rich literary tradition. Of course, while colonialism played a significant role in the dispersal of English, it also provided a cultural context for writing, reading, and even consuming literature as part of one’s inherited cultural aesthetics. This lecture course will provide an accessible introduction to the fundamentals of English literary studies. 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) and periods (17th to 20th Century) will be introduced from an engaging perspective.
Objectives
Students will learn the diverse contexts in which English literature(s) were produced. This includes the methods, genres, and the literary figures themselves who became instrumental to the success and succession of English literature. In-class discussion and short assignments will provide a platform for students to sharpen their skills to read, interpret and critically analyse texts. The lecture will be accompanied by a weekly tutorial (details will be announced at the beginning of the course).
Prerequisites:
None
Requirements for credits/Type of module exam:
Apart from regular attendance, active participation is expected. Students are required to take a 90-minute written exam (PL) at the end of the semester for the successful completion of the course. The Tutorial for the Lecture “Introduction to the Study of Literatures in English” is obligatory. Time and room will be announced.
Required Textbooks:
Ansgar and Vera Nünning, Introduction to the Study of of English and American Literature. Klett. (neueste Auflage) (Reihe: Uni-Wissen Anglistik / Amerikanistik).
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:
Until recently, Indigenous children in both Australia and Canada have been taken away from their parents in order to be educated ‘white’. Taught to reject their Aboriginal heritage, these children were uprooted not only from their families but from their entire cultural milieu; language and oral traditions. Dominated by child abuse, racism, violence, rape or unemployment, such silenced (hi)stories have resulted in alcohol and other drug addictions, depression, mental illness and, frequently, ended in suicide. The literary genre of life writing allows to both document a dispossessed past and articulate a disrupted present. The course revolves around the conceptual underpinnings of postcolonial autobiography as a narrative that looks backwards and inwards, and postcolonial life writing as something that looks forward.
Objectives:
By looking at a selection of Aboriginal Australian and Canadian life writing, students will be introduced to the socio-cultural histories and institutionalised politics of both settler colonies through the eyes and voices of Indigenous peoples. To that end, students will examine the genre of (postcolonial) life writing, the indigenous practices of storytelling and performative cultures. Based on a true story, Phillip Noyce’s film Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002) on Australia’s ‘Stolen Generations’ will add an additional angle to our discussion of indigenous life writing.
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:
Campbell, Maria (1973): Halfbreed. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart.
Culleton, Beatrice (1983): In Search of April Raintree. Winnipeg: Pemmican Publishers.
Harrison, Jane (2000 [1998]): Stolen. Strawberry Hills: Currency Press.
Kartinyeri, Doris E. (2000): Kick the Tin. Melbourne: Spinifex Press.

Birte Heidemann, M.A.

Content:
Set against the social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment, the artistic, literary and intellectual movement of Romanticism originated in mid/late 18^th century Europe. By emphasizing emotion over reason and the pastoral over the urban, the Romantic Movement advocated nature and imagination as the locus of aesthetic experience. In that sense, Romanticism defied the norms of reason, order, and rationalism by centre-staging art, imagery, subjectivity, spontaneity and the transcendental. This has had an immense impact on the literary facet of modernism and even post-modernism.
Objectives:
This seminar exposes students to historically informed literary, cultural and socio-political aspects of Romantic Poetry. We will initially look at selected works by the canonical ‘Big Six’ male poets William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, John Keats and Percy B. Shelley, followed by their female counterparts Mary Shelley, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Charlotte Turner Smith, Mary Robinson, Hannah More and Joanna Baillie. While primarily focusing on the formal-aesthetic features of their poetry, we will also discuss the poets’ literary response to and their individual involvement in the socio-cultural transformation(s) of the Romantic period.
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:
A reader with selected poems and theoretical texts will be provided at the beginning of the semester.