SoSe 23: Nordamerikastudien

• (P) Wissenschaftliches Arbeiten

  0175dC1.1
  • 32104 Colloquium
    BA-Colloquium Culture/Literature (Martin Lüthe)
    Zeit: Mi 12:00-14:00 (Erster Termin: 19.04.2023)
    Ort: 201 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)
    

    Kommentar

    This course will provide guidance to students who are preparing for or are in the process of writing their bachelor’s thesis. The colloquium will be divided into two sections. Section 1 will center on questions such as finding a topic, literature research, methodologies and theories, and academic writing. Section 2 of the course will take the form of a symposium where students give presentations on their proposed topics and the progress of their research so far.

  • 32502 Colloquium
    B.A. Colloquium Politics/Sociology/Economy/History (Lora Anne Viola)
    Zeit: Mo 10:00-12:00 (Erster Termin: 17.04.2023)
    Ort: 203 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)
    

    Kommentar

    The BA colloquium reviews the basics of research design and academic writing, and it provides a setting to present and gain feedback on research in progress. During the colloquium all students will present and workshop drafts of their thesis or thesis expose. The colloquium is aimed at students who have a thesis topic and are ready to begin or are in the process of designing their research.

• Vertiefungsmodul A Literatur – Literarische Epochen

  0175dB3.1
  • 32206 Seminar
    The Long Sixties (Tobias Alexander Annamalay Jochum)
    Zeit: Mi 16:00-18:00 (Erster Termin: 19.04.2023)
    Ort: 2 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 5)
    

    Kommentar

    This seminar provides an overview of literary texts that came to define the 1960s (considered here from the mid-1950s to end of the Vietnam War in 1973). A highly mythologized period in American history, the Sixties loom large in the cultural imagination as a battleground over the soul of the country, fought out on multiple political and cultural fronts. Taking as a point of departure dissenting voices breaking free of the conformist pressures of the Eisenhower era, we will then trace political movements around racial and gender equality, sexual liberation and opposition to the war in Indochina via their literary contributors and commentators. Two major geographical anchors will be the Lower East Side in New York City and the Bay Area in California, historical sites where countercultural forces coalesced into conspicuous "scenes" that set the tone for the nation as a whole. The seminar conceives two broader trajectories: One grounded in the collective struggles of the time (around the expansion of rights within a larger renegotiation of the nation as a whole); the other marking a turn away from a "terrestrial" realpolitik and towards new frontiers and alternative futurities. Outwards into the cosmos, now opening to human exploration at the dawn of the space age; and inwards through the popularization of non-Western spiritual practices and the psychedelic experience. (Unsurprisingly, some of the most poignant reflections of these themes can be found in science fiction writing at the time.) Course readings will be drawn from a wide range of genres, including poetry and popular music, creative nonfiction and genre fiction. Authors include Allen Ginsberg, Sylvia Plath, James Baldwin, Philip K. Dick, Ursula LeGuin, Samuel R. Delaney, Kurt Vonnegut, Joan Didion, Richard Brautigan, and N. Scott Momaday. We will also discuss influential works of theory by Betty Friedan, LeRoi Jones, and Herbert Marcuse. Note: The syllabus remains deliberately open for student input and suggestions. Therefore, if you are interested in taking this seminar, please do not miss the first session.

• Vertiefungsmodul B Literatur – Literarische Gattungen

  0175dB3.2
  • 32202 Vertiefungsseminar
    Hardboiled Nation: Fiction for Hard Times (James Dorson)
    Zeit: Mi 10:00-12:00 (Erster Termin: 19.04.2023)
    Ort: 201 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)
    

    Kommentar

    Plunging us into the shady world of hard-boiled crime fiction, this class explores the stylistic and thematic elements that define one of the most popular genres in the US, including its cynical protagonists, violent settings, and suspenseful plots. Through close readings of four classical hard-boiled novels—Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest (1929), Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep (1939), Dorothy B. Hughes’s In a Lonely Place (1947), and Chester Himes’s The Real Cool Killers (1959)—we will analyze how the genre negotiates questions of social justice and morality in a world defined by the “hard” bourgeois values of competition and commerce. Inquiring into the genre’s alternating perpetration and interrogation of stereotypes like the tough guy and femme fatale, the class asks how the gender panic—a perceived threat to white masculinity—in these novels resonates with contemporary debates, as well as how the genre changes as female and non-white authors appropriate its tropes and stylistic conventions

  • 32204 Vertiefungsseminar
    Flyover Fiction - Poverty, Whiteness, Rurality (Karin Höpker)
    Zeit: Do 10:00-12:00 (Erster Termin: 20.04.2023)
    Ort: 201 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)
    

    Kommentar

    Historically, figures of the rural have been central to narratives of American national identity and yet, what is conceived of as the American “heartland” often seems to be a blind spot in the collective imagination. Contemporary cultural productions and political discourse have newly focused on the rural. Focusing specifically on issues of class, whiteness, and poverty in the Midwest, Appalachia, and the Ozarks (rather than the Deep South or the West and Southwest), our readings of “flyover fiction” address topics of economic strife, systemic and structural neglect, transgenerational trauma and violence, ecological crisis and the opioid epidemic. Texts like Donald Ray Pollock’s Knockemstiff, J.D. Vance’s controversial Hillbilly Elegy, Debra Granik’s adaptation of Winter’s Bone, or Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead will help us explore how and to what extent these texts generate visibility and a differentiated image of rurality as lived experience. We will discuss how texts negotiate the varied perspectives of their audiences, how they engage with the fraught intertext of popular culture (such as the exploitative use of the “hillbilly” in both comedy and horror), and to what extent they manage to avoid the othering of an ethnographic gaze that has so often been cast at the rural.

  • 32201 Vertiefungsseminar
    Writing History (Birte Wege)
    Zeit: Di 14:00-16:00 (Erster Termin: 18.04.2023)
    Ort: 201 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)
    

    Kommentar

    In this seminar, we will examine a wide range of literary works that are engaged with recreating historical events and settings, broadly interrogating how we understand the concepts of ‘truth’ and ‘historical accuracy,’ and the role literature can play in shaping perceptions of the past. The course begins with the works of James Fenimore Cooper & early attempts to reach back through America’s short history to shape national identity. The main focus will be on literary works from the twentieth and twenty-first century, however. We will consider the category of historiographic metafiction via such postmodern classics as E.L. Doctorow’s ‘Ragtime,’ and Thomas King’s ‘Green Grass, Running Water’, but also examine other forms engaging with the past, such as graphic narrative memoirs, New Journalist writings, and experimental theatre-poetry hybrids.

  • 32203 Vertiefungsseminar
    Confession in American Literature After WW2 (Sonja Pyykkö)
    Zeit: Do 08:00-10:00 (Erster Termin: 20.04.2023)
    Ort: 201 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)
    

    Kommentar

    Today we live in a confessional culture in which intimate self-disclosure has become the norm, scholars from Michel Foucault to Peter Brooks have been arguing with increasing urgency since the 1970s. The purpose of this seminar is to develop a critical understanding of confession in American literature from 1945 to the present by reading poems, memoirs, short stories, novels, and (lyric) essays by well-known authors, including James Baldwin, Robert Lowell, Vladimir Nabokov, Maggie Nelson, Sylvia Plath, Claudia Rankine, and Richard Wright. Recognizing that the notion of confession is itself highly equivocal and prone to misunderstandings, the seminar includes a lecture that will expand on a lay understanding of the term and provide students with a toolkit for identifying confessions and for analyzing the most important confessional discourses that they will encounter in the readings. While the focus of the seminar itself is on developing students’ ability to identify, analyze, and discuss confessions in works of literature, the texts included in the syllabus also provide a lens through which to examine the culture of confession that begins to take shape in the US during the second half of the twentieth century: Through the readings, which address topics such as racial discrimination, addiction, mental health, and homosexual and queer desire, students will witness how the boundaries of the public and the private are repeatedly redrawn when “taboo" subjects that can initially be only voiced as confessions enter the public sphere, where they eventually become drivers of societal and political change. On the other hand, by engaging with how literary authors respond to the ever expanding "obligation to confess” (Foucault) particularly as we begin nearing the millennium, we will also register the need for more critical approaches to confession. The syllabus is intentionally structured in a way that expands the canonic understanding of confessional literature by featuring groundbreaking confessional and post-confessional texts by Black and queer authors.

  • 32206 Seminar
    The Long Sixties (Tobias Alexander Annamalay Jochum)
    Zeit: Mi 16:00-18:00 (Erster Termin: 19.04.2023)
    Ort: 2 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 5)
    

    Kommentar

    This seminar provides an overview of literary texts that came to define the 1960s (considered here from the mid-1950s to end of the Vietnam War in 1973). A highly mythologized period in American history, the Sixties loom large in the cultural imagination as a battleground over the soul of the country, fought out on multiple political and cultural fronts. Taking as a point of departure dissenting voices breaking free of the conformist pressures of the Eisenhower era, we will then trace political movements around racial and gender equality, sexual liberation and opposition to the war in Indochina via their literary contributors and commentators. Two major geographical anchors will be the Lower East Side in New York City and the Bay Area in California, historical sites where countercultural forces coalesced into conspicuous "scenes" that set the tone for the nation as a whole. The seminar conceives two broader trajectories: One grounded in the collective struggles of the time (around the expansion of rights within a larger renegotiation of the nation as a whole); the other marking a turn away from a "terrestrial" realpolitik and towards new frontiers and alternative futurities. Outwards into the cosmos, now opening to human exploration at the dawn of the space age; and inwards through the popularization of non-Western spiritual practices and the psychedelic experience. (Unsurprisingly, some of the most poignant reflections of these themes can be found in science fiction writing at the time.) Course readings will be drawn from a wide range of genres, including poetry and popular music, creative nonfiction and genre fiction. Authors include Allen Ginsberg, Sylvia Plath, James Baldwin, Philip K. Dick, Ursula LeGuin, Samuel R. Delaney, Kurt Vonnegut, Joan Didion, Richard Brautigan, and N. Scott Momaday. We will also discuss influential works of theory by Betty Friedan, LeRoi Jones, and Herbert Marcuse. Note: The syllabus remains deliberately open for student input and suggestions. Therefore, if you are interested in taking this seminar, please do not miss the first session.

• Vertiefungsmodul A Politik – Policies und Politics

  0175dB4.1
  • 32501 Vertiefungsseminar
    Political Communication in the US: An Introduction (Curd Benjamin Knüpfer)
    Zeit: Mi 10:00-12:00 (Erster Termin: 19.04.2023)
    Ort: 340 Hörsaal (Lansstr. 7 / 9)
    

    Kommentar

    This BA-level seminar will provide students with an introduction to the concept of “political communication” – both as a practice as well as a sub-discipline of political science. Through readings and class sessions, students will develop an understanding of various forms of communication between political elites, news media, and the public. In doing so, the course seeks to outline the distinctions as well as the interaction between political rhetoric, mediated discourse, and public deliberation. The core readings will be primarily focused on US politics and the American media system. Special emphasis will be given to the ongoing transformation of a digital media environment along with the challenges this might pose for democratic governance. By presenting class readings and actively engaging in discussions, students are meant to develop their own communication skills. To obtain participation credit, course participants will be expected to take an active part in class via regular attendance and closely familiarizing themselves with all of the required reading material. This familiarity will be demonstrated by filling out an online questionnaire before each of our sessions. To obtain full credit, students must additionally present one core reading and complete a take-home exam in written-out essay form at the end of the semester. PLEASE NOTE: This class will take place in person. There is a limit of 35 students for this class, some of which are allocated specifically to students from the IfPuK. If you sign up but end up not taking the class, please remember to un-enroll from via the campus management system, so that others might have a chance to take your place. (If you signed up but didn’t get a spot, then maybe see if something clears up by the second week?) I look forward to meeting all of you!

• Vertiefungsmodul B Politik – Staat und Zivilgesellschaft

  0175dB4.2
  • 15242 Hauptseminar
    The US and the UN (Lora Anne Viola)
    Zeit: Di 10-12 (Erster Termin: 18.04.2023)
    Ort: 319 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)
    
  • 32501 Vertiefungsseminar
    Political Communication in the US: An Introduction (Curd Benjamin Knüpfer)
    Zeit: Mi 10:00-12:00 (Erster Termin: 19.04.2023)
    Ort: 340 Hörsaal (Lansstr. 7 / 9)
    

    Kommentar

    This BA-level seminar will provide students with an introduction to the concept of “political communication” – both as a practice as well as a sub-discipline of political science. Through readings and class sessions, students will develop an understanding of various forms of communication between political elites, news media, and the public. In doing so, the course seeks to outline the distinctions as well as the interaction between political rhetoric, mediated discourse, and public deliberation. The core readings will be primarily focused on US politics and the American media system. Special emphasis will be given to the ongoing transformation of a digital media environment along with the challenges this might pose for democratic governance. By presenting class readings and actively engaging in discussions, students are meant to develop their own communication skills. To obtain participation credit, course participants will be expected to take an active part in class via regular attendance and closely familiarizing themselves with all of the required reading material. This familiarity will be demonstrated by filling out an online questionnaire before each of our sessions. To obtain full credit, students must additionally present one core reading and complete a take-home exam in written-out essay form at the end of the semester. PLEASE NOTE: This class will take place in person. There is a limit of 35 students for this class, some of which are allocated specifically to students from the IfPuK. If you sign up but end up not taking the class, please remember to un-enroll from via the campus management system, so that others might have a chance to take your place. (If you signed up but didn’t get a spot, then maybe see if something clears up by the second week?) I look forward to meeting all of you!

  • 32503 Praxisseminar
    Project class - The Black Canadian Community (David Bosold)
    Zeit: Mi 08:00-10:00 (Erster Termin: 19.04.2023)
    Ort: 340 Hörsaal (Lansstr. 7 / 9)
    

    Kommentar

    As announced in the earlier version of the course description this course is a „hands-on“ seminar. While primarily targeted at students of the social science track in the combi bachelor North American Studies this class can also be attended by students of the Mono bachelor as part of module Politics B. For the class, we will collaborate with the Canadian embassy in order to prepare the social media activities for the Black History Month 2024. The course’s topic is hence on the Black Canadian Community. While the first four sessions are held in class format, the remaining weeks of the class will be project-specific and can therefore be scheduled flexibly (i.e. students do not have to meet in the early morning).

  • 32506 Vertiefungsseminar
    Radicalization of the Republican Party (Thomas Greven)
    Zeit: Di 18:00-20:00 (Erster Termin: 18.04.2023)
    Ort: 201 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)
    

    Kommentar

    American society currently suffers from intense societal, cultural, and political polarization. Some observers even talk about tribalization. This polarization is rooted in historical cleavages but has recently been instrumentalized by an increasingly radical Republican party (Grand Old Party, GOP), in its quest to maintain political power despite a shrinking base of mostly white, Christian, and rural Americans. The seminar will address the structural position that the GOP has occupied in US politics and discuss its role in the current crisis of American democracy.

• Vertiefungsmodul B Soziologie – Soziale Prozesse

  0175dB5.2
  • 32602 Vertiefungsseminar
    Introduction to Social Sciences Methods: Statistics, text mining and WebScraping in R (Clara Heinrich)
    Zeit: Di 12:00-14:00 (Erster Termin: 18.04.2023)
    Ort: 113 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)
    

    Kommentar

    This course gives a basic introduction to R and Rstudio. We will begin with learning basic data wrangling, manipulation and management. The course then moves on to introduce students to basic statistical concepts, both descriptive and inferential, and their operationalization in the R environment. The second half of the course will focus on how to work with "text as data", how to apply various text mining techniques and how to gather large amounts of data through web scraping techniques. The course will generally make use of and acquaint students with a broad range of social science data sources.

  • 32603 Vertiefungsseminar
    Variations of Inequalities in North America (Ria Wilken)
    Zeit: Mi 16:00-18:00 (Erster Termin: 19.04.2023)
    Ort: 201 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)
    

    Kommentar

    This course attempts to provide an overview of various types of inequalities in North America such as income, wealth, gender, and ethnic inequalities. We will engage with determinants and consequences, measurements and biases, as well as the latest trends and historical developments of inequalities. Moreover, we will compare inequality levels in North America to those in other countries and discuss explanations for potential differences.

  • 32601 Vertiefungsseminar
    The American Model of Capitalism: Perspectives from Comparative Political Economy (Jonas von Ciriacy-Wantrup)
    Zeit: Mi 12:00-14:00 (Erster Termin: 19.04.2023)
    Ort: 203 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)
    

    Kommentar

    The course consists of three main parts. In the first part we will discuss the basic logic behind the comparative analysis of capitalism and trace the ideational roots of contemporary approaches in comparative political economy. The second and third part of the seminar are dedicated to the dominant theories for the comparative analysis of capitalism in the last 20 years: ‘Varieties of Capitalism’ (VoC) and the ‘Growth models’ approach. In the second block, we will focus on arguments and methodological considerations of the Varieties of Capitalism literature and conduct a comparative analysis of the core issue areas in the political economy of contemporary capitalism: how capital, labor and product markets are structured. We will build on these themes to discuss the structure of and dynamics of the American model of capitalism. Building upon this, we consider the various critiques of Varieties of Capitalism theory and distinguish VoC from the other main theories of comparative capitalism to transition into the third part on the more recent ‘Growth model’ approach. As in the VoC-block, we will discuss the theoretical underpinning and ideational roots of the theory to then analyze the American model of capitalism through this different lens. After discussing critiques of the growth model theory, we close the course with a wholly application of the competing theories of comparative capitalism to the American model of capitalism to highlight the merits and shortcomings of the two frameworks. Students that want to take this course should be willing to do the weekly readings and have a basic understanding of concepts and theories in political science, sociology, and economics.

• Vertiefungsmodul A Kultur – Ideengeschichte und Kulturgeschichte einzelner Medien

  0175dB2.1
  • 32101 Vertiefungsseminar
    Art and Environment: Perspectives on Land, Landscape, and Ecology in the US (Julia Rosenbaum)
    Zeit: Mi 14:00-16:00 (Erster Termin: 19.04.2023)
    Ort: 319 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)
    

    Kommentar

    This course explores the relationship between the natural world and United States culture, considering specifically the visual expression of that relationship: How have Americans imagined “nature” and represented it? How have concepts of land and landscape shaped perceptions about social order, identity, and sustainability? The course provides both a historical framework for thinking about these questions as well as a contemporary perspective, particularly in the context of a potential new era known as the “Anthropocene.” Please register at: culture@jfki.fu-berlin.de with your name, matriculation number, study program, home university (if applicable), zedat email address or email address of home university, and type of exchange program (if applicable). Deadline for registration is April 17, 2023. Please register on Campus Management as well and as soon as possible.

  • 32105 Vertiefungsseminar
    E is for Empire –Scripts of Empire in U.S. Literature and Culture (Mahshid Mayar)
    Zeit: Fr 10:00-16:00 (Erster Termin: 21.04.2023)
    Ort: 201 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)
    

    Hinweise für Studierende

    Notice: All sessions are on six dates, see listing.

    Kommentar

    E is for Empire embraces a broad literary-cultural-historical frame in order to study U.S. imperialism over the course of its history, starting, roughly, with the American Revolution in 1776 and ending with twenty-first-century confusions and debates over what it has metamorphosed into and whether or not we can call it an empire. What is left in the end is, rather confusingly, a nation, a republic, and an ever-expanding empire – all at once. Therefore, what E is for Empire explores is a conglomerate entity shaped by centuries of forceful policymaking, aggressive expansionism, and active rejection of the language of “empire” in favor of a language of “democracy.” ----- The seminar’s founding premise is that building and sustaining (but also resisting or critiquing) such an empire involve rhetoric, law and policy, imagination, and action. Which further means that the U.S. empire has not been an accident, nor has it been born out of an imposition by circumstances or foreign powers that carved it into being. Rather, it has been a project that has taken many forms and has drawn upon many resources to build and boost it. And as all projects, it has a language of its own, with which it has left behind what can be identified as “scripts” of empire. ----- Focusing inter-sectional, critical attention on these evolving, at-times conflicting scripts of empire, the seminar aims to explore a number of verbs – such as “to dream,” “to document,” “to legitimize,” “to teach,” “to militarize,” “to resist,” “to lyricize,” and so on – with which these scripts have been written, revised, and performed. As the course focuses on multiple scripts of empire, the discussions go beyond the examination of historical, political, or legal texts in vacuum. Rather, E is for Empire proposes that to read and make sense of the language and the scripts of empire require us to pay equal attention to the fictions of violence, adventure, and power as is paid to the politics of advertisement, legitimation, and education.

• Vertiefungsmodul B Kultur – Theorien amerikanischer Kultur und Geschichte ethnischer, regionaler und geschlechtsspezifischer Kulturen

  0175dB2.2
  • 32102 Vertiefungsseminar
    "It’s Bigger than…”: Hip Hop History and Hip Hop Studies (Martin Lüthe)
    Zeit: Di 12:00-14:00 (Erster Termin: 18.04.2023)
    Ort: 319 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)
    

    Kommentar

    The object of this seminar is to introduce students to two interrelated objects of study: hip hop culture on the one hand and the transnational scholarship on hip hop culture on the other. By explicating the “meta-perspective” on the study of hip hop within academic circles, we might be able to better access the crucial question of the kinds of cultural work hip hop has (and still does?) perform in North American culture and beyond the United States. If we can agree that it makes sense to study, for example, the complex politics of hip hop, are the politics of hip hop studies similarly complex or more straight-forward? Put simply: let us try to accomplish more than to revisit and reiterate the undoubtedly rich and complex entangled histories of MCing, DJaying, graffiti, and breakdancing from the late 1970s on! ----- For full credit, you need to hand in five different responses to the readings for five different sessions; preferably at the beginning of the respective session! At the end of the semester, you will have to write a research paper or in-class exam. Please come and talk to me about either option, before you start researching for a specific topic. The deadline for the research paper would be October 1, 2023. ----- If all you need is participation, I would like you to briefly present in-class on a topic of you choosing and submit the five responses (as outlined above).

  • 32105 Vertiefungsseminar
    E is for Empire –Scripts of Empire in U.S. Literature and Culture (Mahshid Mayar)
    Zeit: Fr 10:00-16:00 (Erster Termin: 21.04.2023)
    Ort: 201 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)
    

    Hinweise für Studierende

    Notice: All sessions are on six dates, see listing.

    Kommentar

    E is for Empire embraces a broad literary-cultural-historical frame in order to study U.S. imperialism over the course of its history, starting, roughly, with the American Revolution in 1776 and ending with twenty-first-century confusions and debates over what it has metamorphosed into and whether or not we can call it an empire. What is left in the end is, rather confusingly, a nation, a republic, and an ever-expanding empire – all at once. Therefore, what E is for Empire explores is a conglomerate entity shaped by centuries of forceful policymaking, aggressive expansionism, and active rejection of the language of “empire” in favor of a language of “democracy.” ----- The seminar’s founding premise is that building and sustaining (but also resisting or critiquing) such an empire involve rhetoric, law and policy, imagination, and action. Which further means that the U.S. empire has not been an accident, nor has it been born out of an imposition by circumstances or foreign powers that carved it into being. Rather, it has been a project that has taken many forms and has drawn upon many resources to build and boost it. And as all projects, it has a language of its own, with which it has left behind what can be identified as “scripts” of empire. ----- Focusing inter-sectional, critical attention on these evolving, at-times conflicting scripts of empire, the seminar aims to explore a number of verbs – such as “to dream,” “to document,” “to legitimize,” “to teach,” “to militarize,” “to resist,” “to lyricize,” and so on – with which these scripts have been written, revised, and performed. As the course focuses on multiple scripts of empire, the discussions go beyond the examination of historical, political, or legal texts in vacuum. Rather, E is for Empire proposes that to read and make sense of the language and the scripts of empire require us to pay equal attention to the fictions of violence, adventure, and power as is paid to the politics of advertisement, legitimation, and education.

  • 32101 Vertiefungsseminar
    Art and Environment: Perspectives on Land, Landscape, and Ecology in the US (Julia Rosenbaum)
    Zeit: Mi 14:00-16:00 (Erster Termin: 19.04.2023)
    Ort: 319 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)
    

    Kommentar

    This course explores the relationship between the natural world and United States culture, considering specifically the visual expression of that relationship: How have Americans imagined “nature” and represented it? How have concepts of land and landscape shaped perceptions about social order, identity, and sustainability? The course provides both a historical framework for thinking about these questions as well as a contemporary perspective, particularly in the context of a potential new era known as the “Anthropocene.” Please register at: culture@jfki.fu-berlin.de with your name, matriculation number, study program, home university (if applicable), zedat email address or email address of home university, and type of exchange program (if applicable). Deadline for registration is April 17, 2023. Please register on Campus Management as well and as soon as possible.

  • 32103 Vertiefungsseminar
    American Road Cultures After 1945 (Maxime McKenna)
    Zeit: Do 14:00-16:00 (Erster Termin: 20.04.2023)
    Ort: 201 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)
    

    Kommentar

    The space of the road has loomed large in the American cultural imaginary since at least the period of westward expansion, when covered wagons rolling along dirt turnpikes symbolized white Americans’ supposed Manifest Destiny. After the Second World War, the United States underwent a period of automobilization that forever remade the American road, making it synonymous with traffic, smog, suburban development, and franchise businesses. In this class, we will examine the uneasy ways that the myth of the open road has persisted from the second half of the twentieth century to today. We will study foundational American road narratives as well as texts, films, visual media, and even popular songs that rewrite or otherwise contest the cultural significance of cars, driving, and highways. Sessions will address such topics as: the "existential road movie"; gender dynamics and automobility; race and the road in rock 'n' roll music; and the postapocalyptic road novel. Along the way, we will engage with relevant and interrelated methods in the study of American culture, such as theories of space, mobility studies, infrastructuralism, and ecocritique.

• Vertiefungsmodul B Wirtschaft – Wirtschaftsgeschichte und Finanzmärkte

  0175dB6.2
  • 32702 Vertiefungsseminar
    Introduction to American Economic History II (Christopher Prömel)
    Zeit: Do 16:00-18:00 (Erster Termin: 20.04.2023)
    Ort: 319 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)
    

    Kommentar

    This course will give students an overview of major economic concepts shaping the history of the American economy. The semester consists of weekly lectures and tutorials, in which students will learn about important topics related to the development of the American economy. Among others, topics include growth, trade, industrialization, and institutions. Furthermore, lectures will cover important events in American history, like the Industrial Revolution, the Great Depression, and the New Deal, from an economic perspective. The course will be taught in English and is open to Bachelor students in economics and North American studies. There are no formal requirements, however basic microeconomic and econometric knowledge is expected. It is recommended that students are at least in their fourth semester. Due to different examination regulations, course workload will differ. Coursework for all includes reading scientific papers, working on short assignments, and participating in class. Moreover, there will be an exam at the end of the semester. North American students will additionally have to give a presentation. A detailed schedule and the required reading will be provided via Blackboard. For North American Studies students: The course consists of two units per week which both have to be taken this semester (the whole module B will have to be completed in this summer semester). Please register for Introduction to American Economic History I, once you have been accepted you will be added to the second part of the module (Introduction to American Economic History II) by the lecturer.

  • 32701 Seminar
    Introduction to American Economic History I (Christopher Prömel)
    Zeit: Mo 12:00-14:00 (Erster Termin: 17.04.2023)
    Ort: 319 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)
    

    Kommentar

    This course will give students an overview of major economic concepts shaping the history of the American economy. The semester consists of weekly lectures and tutorials, in which students will learn about important topics related to the development of the American economy. Among others, topics include growth, trade, industrialization, and institutions. Furthermore, lectures will cover important events in American history, like the Industrial Revolution, the Great Depression, and the New Deal, from an economic perspective. The course will be taught in English and is open to Bachelor students in economics and North American studies. There are no formal requirements, however basic microeconomic and econometric knowledge is expected. It is recommended that students are at least in their fourth semester. Due to different examination regulations, course workload will differ. Coursework for all includes reading scientific papers, working on short assignments, and participating in class. Moreover, there will be an exam at the end of the semester. North American students will additionally have to give a presentation. A detailed schedule and the required reading will be provided via Blackboard. For North American Studies students: The course consists of two units per week which both have to be taken this semester (the whole module B will have to be completed in this summer semester). Please register for Introduction to American Economic History I, once you have been accepted you will be added to the second part of the module (Introduction to American Economic History II) by the lecturer.

• Vertiefungsmodul B Geschichte – Historiographie der Nordamerikanischen Geschichte

  0175dB1.2
  • 32406 Praxisseminar
    The Cold War and the US Presence in Berlin: Student Projects in Public History (Maximilian Klose, Sönke Kunkel)
    Zeit: Do 16:00-18:00 (Erster Termin: 20.04.2023)
    Ort: 203 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)
    

    Kommentar

    This course introduces students to the study and practice of public history. Together we will survey, explore, and analyze local Berlin memory sites that speak to the history of the U.S. presence in Cold War Berlin. Students will also develop hands-on projects that reflect on or develop models of how the history of the U.S. presence could be presented to a broader public in various media formats.

  • 32402 Vertiefungsseminar
    Cuba: An Island worth an Empire (Tobias Klee)
    Zeit: Mo 12:00-14:00 (Erster Termin: 17.04.2023)
    Ort: 201 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)
    

    Kommentar

    Cuba, the "Pearl of the Antilles" had long been the heartpiece of imperial aspirations. One of the last Spanish colonies after the revolutions in South and Central America, it played a defining role in Spanish imperial identity. Meanwhile in the US, intellectuals had argued all throughout the 19th century that the island was a natural extension to the Nation, and should be conquered as a logical conclusion to the Monroe Doctrine. When after the war of 1898 the island came into American hands, Spain fell into a deep crisis of identity. The United States though took its first steps into the arena of colonial world politics, in turn becoming an empire. All the while, the Cuban’s desire for independence became a mere footnote in the aftermath. The colonial and imperial struggles had another dimension to them: Gender. A common propaganda theme in the US depicted the Spaniards as raping Cuba. While Theodore Roosevelt and his "Rough Riders" came to define the ideal American masculinity after the war, Spaniards questioned if they were still manly enough to belong to the club of civilised European nations. This seminar will follow three objectives: First, understanding the importance of Cuba to Spain and the United States before the war of 1898, as well as the events leading up to the war. Second, comparing the ascencion of the American Empire with the decline of the Spanish Empire. Third, introducing the analytical category of gender as a tool to understanding geopolitical conflicts in the age of colonialism.

  • 32403 Vertiefungsseminar
    Images of the Marshall Plan and US Influence in Western Europe After World War II (Marlene Ritter)
    Zeit: Mo 10:00-12:00 (Erster Termin: 17.04.2023)
    Ort: 319 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)
    

    Kommentar

    The so-called “Marshall Plan” was only a four-year-programme, and yet, it looms large in public memory, especially in Western Europe. This is not a coincidence: The influence that the US government had on the reconstruction of Western Europe after World War II came not only in the form of financial investments or material aid. The European Recovery Program (ERP) has also been considered ‘the largest single propaganda operation… ever seen in peacetime’ (Ellwood 2010, 113). This BA seminar is centered around questions like: What is the image that the US wanted to project during the Marshall Plan years, and why? What did these images ? of the US, of Europe, and of the other – look like and how were they perceived? The seminar will be divided into two parts. Part I provides a historical and conceptual frame: It examines the motives behind Marshall Plan ‘aid' and traces the image of the US as ‘a benevolent nation’ (McCrisken and Pepper 2005, 89). Further, it introduces students to historical debates and perceptions of Americanization, and contrasts different conceptualisations of influence, ranging from cultural imperialism to ‘cultural transfer’ (Gienow-Hecht (2000), ‘Westernization’ (Nehring 2004), or ‘soft power’ (Nye 2004). Part II of the seminar will be dedicated to the actual (graphic) images that the US produced during the Marshall Plan years, especially propaganda films. Building on concepts and methods developed in the field of Visual Culture, students will learn to “read” images as primary sources and interpret them within the historical frame of the early Cold War.

• Module ohne Lehrangebot in diesem Semester

  3 Module
  • Vertiefungsmodul A Soziologie – Soziale Strukturen 0175dB5.1
  • Vertiefungsmodul A Wirtschaft – Wachstum, Verteilung und Konjunktur in Nordamerika 0175dB6.1
  • Vertiefungsmodul A: Geschichte – Geschichte Nordamerikas bis 1865 0175dB1.1