552.310 (20S) Focus on Culture: In Pursuit of Happiness? Leisure & Pastime in 19th-Century America

Sommersemester 2020

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Erster Termin der LV
02.03.2020 14:00 - 16:00 N.0.27 On Campus
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Überblick

Lehrende/r
LV-Titel englisch Focus on Culture: In Pursuit of Happiness? Leisure & Pastime in 19th-Century America
LV-Art Seminar (prüfungsimmanente LV )
Semesterstunde/n 2.0
ECTS-Anrechnungspunkte 6.0
Anmeldungen 11 (25 max.)
Organisationseinheit
Unterrichtssprache Englisch
mögliche Sprache/n der Leistungserbringung Englisch
LV-Beginn 02.03.2020
eLearning zum Moodle-Kurs
Anmerkungen

Attendance of the first class meeting on March 2, 2020 is MANDATORY!

Zeit und Ort

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LV-Beschreibung

Intendierte Lernergebnisse

Students will gain an understanding of the diversity and complexities of nineteenth-century U.S. American (leisure) culture. They will further develop their skills in systematically analyzing literature and film, and advance their competence in interpreting texts within their specific socio-cultural and historical contexts.

Lehrmethodik inkl. Einsatz von eLearning-Tools

This course is designed to emphasize in-class student participation. Teaching methods include short input lectures, short oral presentations by students, in-class exploration of texts through close readings and group discussion.

Inhalt/e

For many nineteenth-century Americans, the various transformations, modernizations, and waves of industrialization that marked their time fundamentally changed their lives not only in terms of work, but also in terms of its counterpoint, leisure. A variety of leisure institutions we know today, such as museums, professional spectatorship sports, national and amusement parks, vacation resorts and spas have their roots in this period. In order to explore changing concepts and functions of leisure in the nineteenth-century U.S., this course turns to a wide range of sources from the antebellum period (poems, travelogues, short stories by Poe and Melville, excerpts from slave narratives and from Thoreau’s Walden (1854), and Alcott’s Little Women (1868)), as well as the latter decades of the nineteenth century (e.g. short fiction by Twain and Crane, Howells’s A Hazard of New Fortunes (1889), and Chopin’s The Awakening (1899)). Moreover, we will watch the recent film Little Women (2019), and address a variety of questions: Which leisure practices and discourses developed in the nineteenth-century U.S., and how did they interact with changing concepts of work, increasing urbanization, and the role of the public and private spheres? How was leisure organized, commercialized, connected to new forms of entertainment and amusement as well as capitalism and consumerism more generally? How were pastime activities enabled through technological advances and inventions? Considering such issues, our investigations will pay particular attention to how concepts of leisure interacted with categories of race, class, gender, and age. To look at how, where, when, and especially which Americans did not work (which does not imply idleness) offers a host of insights into the United States of the nineteenth century and beyond.

Literatur

Required texts

Alcott, Louisa M. Little Women. Any edition.
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. Any edition.
Howells, William Dean. A Hazard of New Fortunes. Any edition.

All other texts will be made available by the course instructor.

Prüfungsinformationen

Im Fall von online durchgeführten Prüfungen sind die Standards zu beachten, die die technischen Geräte der Studierenden erfüllen müssen, um an diesen Prüfungen teilnehmen zu können.

Beurteilungsschema

Note Benotungsschema

Position im Curriculum

  • Bachelorstudium Anglistik und Amerikanistik (SKZ: 612, Version: 15W.3)
    • Fach: Fachliches Vertiefungsstudium (Pflichtfach)
      • 7.3 (c) Focus on Culture ( 0.0h SE / 6.0 ECTS)
        • 552.310 Focus on Culture: In Pursuit of Happiness? Leisure & Pastime in 19th-Century America (2.0h SE / 6.0 ECTS)
          Absolvierung im 4., 5. Semester empfohlen
  • Bachelorstudium Anglistik und Amerikanistik (SKZ: 612, Version: 15W.3)
    • Fach: Freie Kombination (Wahlfach)
      • 10.1 Freie Kombination ( 0.0h SE / 12.0 ECTS)
        • 552.310 Focus on Culture: In Pursuit of Happiness? Leisure & Pastime in 19th-Century America (2.0h SE / 6.0 ECTS)
          Absolvierung im 5., 6. Semester empfohlen
  • Bachelorstudium Anglistik und Amerikanistik (SKZ: 612, Version: 10W.3)
    • Fach: Fachliches Vertiefungsstudium (Pflichtfach)
      • Focus on Culture ( 2.0h SE / 7.0 ECTS)
        • 552.310 Focus on Culture: In Pursuit of Happiness? Leisure & Pastime in 19th-Century America (2.0h SE / 7.0 ECTS)

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