MEd. - Englisches Seminar - Ruhr-Universität Bochum

The requirements for a seminar are active participation and a term paper, those for
an Übung active participation and a written assignment.
Frederick Douglass. The Narrative of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, 1845
Margaret Walker. Jubilee, 1966
Ishmael Reed. Flight to Canada, 1976
Octavia E. Butler. Kindred, 1979
Toni Morrison. Beloved, 1987.
050 754 Dickel
Homelessness, 5 CP
2 st. di 10-12 GABF 04/613 Süd
This seminar deals with fictional and documentary representations of the
phenomenon of modern homelessness, which has emerged in the second half of the
twentieth century. We will analyze recent films, novels, and a graphic novel and
discuss whether these contemporary representations of homelessness affirm, defy,
or modify earlier strategies of romanticizing and objectifying the homeless. Debates
that were fueled by Karl Marx’s negative assessment of the lumpenproletariat will be
a second theoretical point of departure. Analyzing the documentary film Dark Days,
excerpts from Jennifer Toth’s controversial documentary book The Mole People, and
Colum McCann’s novel This Side of Brightness, we will first focus on narratives that
depict homeless persons who have lived in the Amtrak tunnels in New York City. We
will then consider the context of homelessness and mental illness and discuss
Andrew Vachs’s novel Haiku. Linda Hattendorf’s documentary film The Cats of
Miritikani portrays the homeless artist Jimmy Miritikani and simultaneously addresses
the internment of Japanese Americans during the Second World War and the
terrorist attacks of 9/11. In the film Sidewalk Stories, Charles Lane takes an
exceptional approach when he depicts the encounter of an African American
homeless man and a black child by quoting Charles Chaplin’s classic The Kid (1921).
Samuel R. Delany has written widely about homelessness in both his fiction and nonfiction.
We will finally consider his ideas about gentrification and interclass contact,
which he develops in his book Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, and relate
them to his and Mia Wolff’s graphic novel Bread and Wine. All films and additional
texts will be made available at the beginning of the semester.
The requirements for a seminar are active participation and a term paper, those for
an Übung active participation and a written assignment.
Samuel R. Delany. Bread and Wine: An Erotic Tale of New York, 1999.
Linda Hattendorf, dir. The Cats of Miritikani, 2006
Charles Lane, dir. Sidewalk Stories, 1990.
Colum McCann. This Side of Brightness, 1998.
Marc Singer, dir. Dark Days, 2000.
Andrew Vachss. Haiku, 2009.