Alternatively, this class can be thought of as "The Making of a Natio." In this making, we begin with John Smith's A Map of Virginia (1612), one of the earliest English accounts of North America: "Virginia is a Country in America... As for the West thereof, the limits are unknowne." Smith's observation captures both the uncertainty and the imaginative possibilities that surrounded the continent. Europeans brought with them inherited stories, religious traditions, and expectations that shaped how they imagined and described the New World. Early American literature thus explores not only the representation of the continent but also the competing narratives through which "America" was imagined, claimed, and contested.

Readings will introduce students to a range of genres, including exploration narratives, captivity narratives, poetry, spiritual autobiographies, essays, and autobiography. Through authors such as Anne Bradstreet, Mary Rowlandson, Olaudah Equiano, and Benjamin Franklin, the course explores the diverse experiences and competing perspectives that shaped early America. Students will consider, for example, how Equiano's life narrative exposes the human cost of the colonial enterprise, how Rowlandson's captivity narrative interprets suffering through a Puritan providential worldview, and how Franklin's Autobiography reimagines the relationship between individual agency, self-fashioning, and success. The final reading list will be announced shortly before the beginning of the semester.

In this course, students will have the chance to consolidate their knowledge from the foundational courses ”Introduction to Literary and Cultural Studies” I and II across a range of genres and media types.

Focusing on two plays that launched a thousand more, the archetypical tragedy of forbidden love Romeo & Juliet and the original romcom Much Ado About Nothing, we will focus on how these plays have been reinvented and reimagined across genres and media forms through the centuries.

We will start by analysing both plays to determine their main themes and key elements, before looking at a range of adaptations aimed at different audiences and across different genres and media forms to see how adaptation works and how the choices made affect the understanding and presentation of each play. We will discuss the narrative techniques of different media such as film, musical and graphic novels as well as written genres to see how these necessitate changes and adaptations to the source material and how this influences the story and our reception of it.

Students are expected to have read both plays before the start of the course in the recommended editions. All further materials will be provided.

An accompanying "movie night" series of some of the film adaptations is also currently planned.

Kurs im HIS-LSF