Englisches Seminar - Ruhr-Universität Bochum

CULTURAL STUDIES (USA)
Vorlesung
--- --- Freitag
U.S. Ethnic Literatures, 3 CP
2 st. mo 14-16 HGB 10
(vgl. Vorl.-Nr. 050 645)
Ethnic literatures have long been neglected in the U.S. literary canon. Yet slowly but
steadily texts written by Native Americans, African Americans, Mexican Americans,
and Asian Americans have been recognized: published in big publishing houses,
reviewed on the pages of the New York Times Book Review, and added to the
reading lists of schools and colleges. While this attention often tends to focus only on
the ethnic difference, the lecture will introduce ethnic texts as interventions in and
interactions with the traditional canon of US literature.
Text: Heath Anthology II
LN: attendance, written test
Oberseminar
050 695 Reed
Transnational Queer Studies, 5 CP
2 st. mi 12-14 GB 5/39 Nord
In the late 1980s, queer studies began as a literary-critical endeavor, devoted
primarily to reassessing canonical works by European and American writers such as
Thomas Mann, Herman Melville, and Marcel Proust. Over the last three decades,
the field has greatly expanded, becoming aggressively interdisciplinary in its methods
as well as outright global in its scope. This class will survey several of the current
scholarly debates that are central to the field: the relationship between sexuality and
racial formation; the identification and navigation of “queer spaces”; travel, migration,
and sexual identity; and citizenship, national belonging, and queerness. Readings
for the class will consist of recent short stories and scholarly articles.
LN: Übung: attendance, participation, written assignments
LN: Seminar: requirements for Übung and 10-page paper.