universit ä tbochum seminarinternes vorlesungsverzeichnis ba-st

050 648 Freed
Paul Auster: Fiction, Nonfiction and Poetry, 4 CP
2 st. mi 10-12 GB 5/39 Nord
Paul Auster is a well known contemporary author often associated with issues of
postmodern metafiction. This seminar will read and explore a number of themes
related to fiction, authorship, human identity/subjectivity as they emerge in four of
Paul Auster’s works. These include The New York Trilogy, Moon Palace, Travels in
the Scriptorium, and his screenplay/movie script Lulu on the Bridge.
050 649 Freitag
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: Contemporary US Literature, 4 CP
2 st. mo 16-18 GABF 04/613 Süd
The course takes its title from Jonathan Safran Foer’s post-9/11 best seller Extremely
Loud & Incredibly Close (2005). It is devoted to US literary texts that have been
published after 2000 and highlight a range of important issues in U.S. literature and
culture after the turn of the millennium. The seminar is focused on close reading,
hence you should be prepared for a relatively high reading load of primary texts.
Texts to be discussed in the seminar will include Tom Pain’s “Will You Say
Something, Monsieur Eliot?”, Dao Strom’s “Guam, 1975,” Jumpa Lahiri’s
“Unaccustomed Earth,” “Joyce Carol Oates’s “Landfill,” Courtney Eldridge’s “Fits &
Starts” and “Summer of Mopeds,” Susan Straight’s Highwire Moon, and Michael
Chabon’s The Final Solution.
Make sure to have read Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and Straight’s
Highwire Moon before the course starts.
Shorter texts and secondary material: will be available in a Reader
Books to be bought and read before the course starts:
Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close,
Susan Straight Highwire Moon
Credits: attendance and active participation, reading journal (Übung) + presentation
(transformed into a paper)/paper (Seminar).