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"E Pluribus Unum," the motto of the U.S.A., has probably never been a reality. The idea that there ever was a homogeneous ‘one' which emerged from the meeting of different cultural traditions is fictitious. Indeed, the North American reality in the twenty-first century suggests that we cannot really speak of an "unum", but that we are confronted with the simultaneity of diverse cultural traditions and practices and the constant meeting of different cultures in regional, national, as well as transnational contexts, which testifies to a mutual exchange, to dynamic interaction and to cultural hybridity. Against the backdrop of these observations, the course sets out to familiarize students with various forms and functions of hybrid cultural production in a number of distinct contact zones of the United States. The first part of the course will be particularly dedicated to the discussion of the concept of hybridity, which has assumed a central position in the field of literary and cultural studies, where it used for con-ceptualizing and analyzing cultural contact, transfer and exchange, especially in the field of postcolonial studies. Also mapping the theoretical ideas behind the newly emerging field of ‘mobility studies,' this part of the course will provide the students with a conceptual toolbox which helps them to analyze and describe different instances of cultural contact and exchange in literature, the media, and other cultural practices, a selection of which will be dealt with in the second part of the course. A reader with the relevant reading materials will be provided after the first class meeting in the copyshop at Reckhammerweg. |
