WiSe 22/23: S-Culture-Gender-Media: Victorian London: Culture, Gender and Media
Sabine Schülting
Kommentar
The nineteenth century, characterized by contemporaries as “the age of great cities”, was strongly shaped by an unprecedented pace of urbanisation. The Victorian city became the setting of considerable social and cultural upheavals concerning work, consumption, the family, private and public life. These changes were addressed with both anxiety and fascination, in literature, journalism and urban studies alike. The course will focus on the changing and conflicting representations of nineteenth-century London in a large variety of media – including novels, short stories and poems, as well as journalism and visual culture. Particular attention will be paid to the debates about urban poverty and crime, and we will discuss the role that the city played for the nation. Whereas urban slum areas were compared to the colonies and to “darkest Africa”, London was simultaneously constructed as the centre of the British Empire. Last but not least, we will consider how the city was gendered and how it impacted the relationships between the sexes, constructions of femininity, and discourses about sexuality. The course will combine a cultural historical perspective on the Victorian city and the literature about it with an introduction to theoretical approaches to studying the city.
Texts: Students should buy (preferably the Penguin editions of) Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend (1864/65) and H. G. Wells, Ann Veronica (1909). Shorter texts will be made available on Blackboard.
Assessment will be on the basis of regular attendance, active participation in classroom activities (e.g. presentations, response papers), and an essay of about 4,000 words (for the BA-Vertiefungsmodul with 10 LP), to be submitted after the end of the semester. Exchange students are of course welcome. You can gain up to 10 ECTS in this course.
Schließen16 Termine
Regelmäßige Termine der Lehrveranstaltung