Course descriptions Spring 2015 Prof. Thomas Austenfeld

Lecture: American Drama

The Spring, 2015 lecture class "American Drama" serves a number of functions. As part of the Introductory Module for students of English, it meets the requirements of a literary survey class in American literature, albeit with a specific focus on various forms of drama. As part of the Comparative Literature program at the University of Fribourg, it serves as part of the "Literary Relations" cycle of lectures.

The lecture will assess both the contributions of 20th-century American drama to world literature as well as its indebtedness to European forms of drama. We will study plays by Thornton Wilder, Eugene O'Neill, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Rita Dove, and Toni Morrison, among others. In the second half of the semester, we will study the transformation of a suburban novel to film (Richard Yates's 1961 novel Revolutionary Road and Sam Mendes's 2008 film by the same name). Along the way, we will take a look at Broadway musicals (Show Boat and South Pacific) and at contemporary TV drama; two dramatic genres in which American contributions have perhaps been most notable.

The reading list will expand; for the moment, it includes

Thornton Wilder, Our Town Eugene O'Neill, The Emperor Jones Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman Rita Dove, The Darker Face of the Earth Toni Morrison, Desdemona Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road Libretto excerpts from Show Boat and South Pacific will be provided.

Proseminar: introduction to Literary Studies

This class is mandatory for all BA-LET students who have taken the Lecture: introduction to Literary Studies in the fall of 2014 and still need to take the associated proseminar. Building on last fall's lecture, we will deepen our discussions of literary genres from drama and poetry to fiction, explore questions of prosody and narratology, and explain the requirements for academic research, writing, and documentation in our discipline.

Reading materials are identical to those required in the fall, 2014 lecture. Compare the syllabus at http://homeweb.unifr.ch/austenfe/pub/Students/F2014L_IntroLit_Syll.htm

MA Seminar: Expatriate Autobiographies

This class will explore the literary manifestations of Americans in Paris during the 1920s. The fiction of the time, with which many of you are already familiar, will serve merely as background. The autobiographical writings of expatriates—whether written at the moment, after the moment, with considerable hindsight or with strong editorial and historical intentions—will serve as our central objects of study. The autobiographical genre—an intervention into personal and literary history—is beset with particular aesthetic challenges and ethical conundrums.

Please note: two noted European scholars of expatriate literature, Prof. Hans Bak from Radboud University (Nijmegen) and Prof. Anne Reynes-Delobel from Aix-Provence University, will be in Fribourg as part of this seminar on April 17 and 18, 2015. Please arrange your spring calendars in such a way that you can attend one Friday afternoon meeting on April 17 and one Saturday morning meeting on April 18. These meetings will not overlap with any other classes offered in the English domain. Over the course of the spring semester, the class will meet for a total of 28 hours, as does every other class.

Texts will include:

Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast Robert McAlmon and Kay Boyle, Being Geniuses Together Malcolm Cowley, Exile's Return In addition, we will sample: Langston Hughes, The Big Sea Claude McKay, A Long Way from Home John Glassco, Memoirs of Montparnasse