"Imagined Communities” - Local Color Writing in Post Civil War U.S.A. - Einzelansicht

Local Color Writing (1865-1895) is often associated with a distinct focus on regional dialects, customs, landscapes, and characters specific to a distinct region in the United States. In this seminar we will look at the emergence of local color writing in the United States after the end of the CIvil War (1861-65). By examining a large canvas of different examples of local color writings as well as theoretical texts students will discuss the influences of Romanticism and Realism, how these texts thematize tensions between urban ways and the “good old-fashioned” rural life, and how these texts have, according to Amy Kaplan and Richard Brodhead, contributed to a reunification of the United States after the Civil War.