Thinking about identity in a US context invariably evokes mythical conceptions of rugged individualism and the American Dream, which champion the single individual in a quest against others. Simultaneously, though, the United States has also been imagined as a particular community, on smaller and larger scales, especially in the context of (im)migration narratives and in stories of racial or class conflict. In this seminar, we want to trace these competing imaginaries—between the individual and the communal self—as they are represented, narrated, visualized, or otherwise envisioned in literature and popular culture. We will proceed from the idea that identity is not something singular or static but rather something best understood as flexible and dynamic, in the plural—as multiple identities or selves.
The notion of the family, which Sigmund Freud called the “germ cell of civilization,” will play a particularly important role for our inquiries, as it constitutes a prominent space intermingling individuals and a collective. In the course of the seminar, we will address questions such as: Where do notions of identity and community clash in US fiction, where do they harmonize? How have ideas of family and community changed historically, as evidenced in different writings or films? Do particular media, genres, or forms of fiction lend themselves differently to thinking about identity? How do ‘race,’ class, gender, and other categories of difference intersect in these constructions? What cultural and political work do representations of the family do on a national level (e.g., in terms of ‘family values’ or the staging of the presidential first family)? Texts and concepts we will look at may include sentimental(ist) fiction, the novels of authors like Celeste Ng and Brit Bennett, TV sitcoms that feature more traditional or newer (e.g. queered) understandings of family, and films that exemplify a particular period’s thinking about family and community (like 50s melodrama, 80s/90s films about masculinity in crisis, or contemporary takes like Everything Everywhere All At Once).
- Trainer/in: Stefan Schubert