This lecture of part of the modules "Literature and Culture I" (BA American Studies) and "American Literatures, American Societies" (Teacher Training English).
It will provide a survey of (US-)American literary history from its colonial beginnings to the
present. It will discuss important themes, modes, and genres that characterize American literature
throughout its history, its cultural contexts, and the literary periods into which these developments
have been organized. In the course of this survey, we will explore the – partly very different, partly
continuous – ways in which texts across these periods define ‘Americanness,’ in which they approach
human nature and social differences, and the ideas about the role and operations of literature that
they reflect.
- Trainer/in: Katja Kanzler