Intendierte Lernergebnisse
Students will gain a basic familiarity with ideas and the impact of American Transcendentalism. They will be able to think critically about major representatives of the movement and their ideas. Students will improve their research, analytical, and writing skills, and advance their competence in interpreting texts within their specific socio-cultural and historical contexts from a perspective that problematizes race, class, and gender.
Lehrmethodik
This course is designed to emphasize in-class student participation. Teaching methods include short input lectures, short oral presentations on selected topics by students, in-class discussion of assigned primary and theoretical texts through close readings, and group discussion.
Inhalt/e
This course explores origins, key aspects, and the legacy of the literary and philosophical movement of Transcendentalism and its profound influence on American cultural history. We will focus on selected texts by the three leading figures of American transcendentalism – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and Henry David Thoreau – but also contextualize their writings more broadly with texts by Amos Bronson Alcott, Theodore Parker, and Frederick Douglass, and the poetry of Walt Whitman. We will analyse the (Romantic) literary forms and techniques of our writers, with an eye to simultaneously exploring their ideas for political reform, e.g. regarding religion, education, abolitionism, and women’s rights. Another important focus will lie on nature and the environmental ideas promoted by Transcendentalist writers, and on the way in which their work, their brand of individualism, and vision of society, influenced subsequent movements, such as the Beat Poets or American pragmatism.
Literatur
Required texts (please purchase!)Henry David Thoreau, Walden, Civil Disobedience and Other Writings. Edited by William Rossi (Norton Critical Editions)