32105

SoSe 23: E is for Empire –Scripts of Empire in U.S. Literature and Culture

Mahshid Mayar

Information for students

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

Comments

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. close

6 Class schedule

Regular appointments

Fri, 14:00 - 16:00 6 Class schedule

Fri, 2023-04-21 14:00 - 16:00

Lecturers:
Mahshid Mayar