BA Seminar: African American Literature and Culture 4219-ZS006
The seminar will focus primarily in African American literature and culture. Other topics will need to be cleared with me (please contact me before registering; my main field right now is queer studies—I can imagine organizing a group with an alternative queer focus).
Type of course
B.Sc. seminars
Course coordinators
Term 2023L: | Term 2024L: |
Learning outcomes
The student knows and understands:
- The place and significance of cultural and religious studies in the system of sciences, their subject-specific and methodological specificity, their relationship to other disciplines and fields, and their development directions.
- The terminology, methods, tools, and data acquisition techniques, selected traditions, research schools, and development directions appropriate for cultural and religious studies to research cultural and social phenomena in the United States.
- The main trends and works of American literature, the fundamental aspects of American culture that are an integral part of cultural studies of the USA, as well as the theoretical and methodological foundations of literary studies.
- The basic principles and concepts of intellectual property protection and copyright law, primarily concerning plagiarism and academic ethics.
The student is able to:
- Formulate and solve complex research problems, recognize, understand, interpret, and analyze the causes and course of cultural phenomena in the United States using sources and standard methods and research tools within the humanities.
- Interpret works of American literature in the context of the broader American culture.
- Communicate on American studies topics related to the United States using specialized terminology in English and advanced information and communication techniques.
- Participate, under the supervision of an academic advisor, in the preparation of research projects (individual and group) in the broadly defined field of cultural studies in the United States.
The student is ready to:
Use the acquired interdisciplinary knowledge in the field of American literature and culture to formulate their own opinions.
Formulate their own critical opinions on issues related to the culture and literature of African Americans in the USA.
Assessment criteria
To pass the student needs to submit the BA paper for review.
Bibliography
The provisional reading list:
WEB DuBois Reconstruction in America (rel capitalism and continued black death)
Franz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (eg.51-74, 107)
James Baldwin, “Stranger in the Village”
Audre Lorde, from Sister Outsider
Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark
Robyn Wiegman, from American Anatomies
Saidyia Hartman, from Lose Your Mother
Additional information
Additional information (registration calendar, class conductors, localization and schedules of classes), might be available in the USOSweb system: