123210 VO Literatures in English (2021W)

Lecture title:
JOURNEYS IN NORTH AMERICAN PROSE AND POETRY, 1492-2022

This lecture course proceeds from the double entendre in its title: on the one hand, it will take you on a trip through 5+ centuries of North American literatures, with stops in each century and across the continent, from the Caribbean to Canada; on the other, it examines North American literatures through its many tropes of mobility, from colonial "discovery" across the Atlantic and ever further west to Afrodiasporic archipelagoes; from (gendered) explorations into the darker sides of North American selves (Nathaniel Hawthorne, Emily Dickinson, Herman Melville) and of immobilization of women, nonwhite peoples (e.g. border literatures by LatinX and indigenous writers), and the working class (Steinbeck; Tillie Olsen). Looking at various forms of North American prose and poetry through the lens of im/mobilities will hopefully make us pay attention to roads less travelled and the diversity of North American writing.

The lecture will mostly be held in a dialogic format: after an introductory input phase, I will talk with a specialist in most sessions, exploring the texts through a number of questions rather than prefigured explanations only. After each (recorded) lecture, students will be able to comment and ask questions in specified Moodle fora which I will take up in the next lecture.

Synchronous weekly contact is possible in an online office hour (BBB sessions set up via Moodle) every Friday (1-2 pm) and the weekly tutorial with our tutor Adam Baltner, BA.