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This course will be concerned with theoretical positions concerning the field of American Studies as a trans-/national discipline and with concrete instances that suggest opening North American Studies up toward Inter-American Studies. Inter-American Studies focuses on interconnections between North, Central, and South American culture, literature, media, language, history, society, politics, and economics. Going beyond national points of reference, this approach examines the current intensification of transnational and global trends in the Americas as well as their historical developments. Intercultural issues - along with their regional, national and hemispheric contexts - are of particular interest in this context. Among other material we will consider speeches by Simón Bolívar, Theodore Roosevelt, Fidel Castro, and Evo Morales; essays by José Martí, Waldo Frank, and Gloria Anzaldúa; poetry by Rubén Darío, Elizabeth Bishop, and Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales, stories by Oscar Hijuelos, Edwidge Danticat, and Helena María Viramontes; (excerpts from) novels by Carlos Fuentes, Sandra Cisneros, Daniel Alarcón and John Updike; films by Woody Allen and Gregory Nava; music and art. This seminar will be interrelated with the bi-annual conference of the International Association of Inter-American Studies, to be held at our university November 11-13, 2010. All seminar participants will need to attend this conference. Students should purchase the following books: Carlos Fuentes, The Old Gringo. (Farrar Straus & Giroux). ISBN-10: 0374530521, ISBN-13: 978-0374530525. Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. ISBN-10: 1879960745, ISBN-13: 978-1879960749. A reader containing additional course texts will be available from the copy shop on Reckhammerweg 4 after the first class meeting. First seminar session: October 21, 2010. |
