Please note: This seminar does NOT deal with Children's Literature; and it is aimed at students of Fachwissenschaft as well as students of Lehramt.
We all know what a child is, right? We’ve all been children ourselves after all. But to what extent is our adult memory of what it means to be a child, to have been a child, shaped by normative cultural conceptions of what it should mean to be a child?
In this seminar, you will be introduced to the basics of sociological childhood studies, which works on the premise that there is no natural way of being a child, but that the manifold meanings attached to the word ‘child’ are the product of social construction. These meanings are highly diverse when we look at different historical and/or cultural contexts, and they go hand in hand with specific ideological interests (of adults). For example, childhood can be framed as
None of these conceptions is ‘natural’, all of them are culturally mediated, all of them serve rhetorical purposes, and all of them can be questioned critically.
We will use this critical theoretical lens to study a selection of contemporary British novels with regard to how they conceptualise and represent children, what narrative strategies, tropes, and stereotypes they use in their constructions of childhoods, and how these constructions are embedded in the specific context of British culture and history. You will practice techniques of literary scholarship like close reading, thematic and narratological analysis, argumentative interpretation, and engaging with secondary sources both in a classroom setting with open discussion and in regular individual writing tasks (usually assigned as homework) throughout the semester.
In the last quarter of the seminar, you will do your own research on a British cultural phenomenon of your choice that relates to issues of childhood representation, be it from the area of literature, film, drama, games, advertisement, journalism, politics, etc.
Please buy the following novels (if you buy an eBook, make sure you have the means to bring it to class):
Students from the BA Anglistik are required to have completed the courses of both modules BM1 and BM2 before taking this seminar (not necessarily the module exams).
Frequency | Weekday | Time | Format / Place | Period | |
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weekly | Mo | 10-12 | Q0-101 | 09.10.2017-02.02.2018
not on: 12/25/17 / 1/1/18 |
Module | Course | Requirements | |
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23-ANG-AngPM2 Profilmodul 2: British Studies | 2.3 British Literature and Media | Study requirement
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- | Graded examination | Student information | |
23-ANG-AngPM2.1 Profilmodul 2.1: British Studies | 2.1.3 British Literature and Media | Study requirement
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Student information |
- | Graded examination | Student information | |
23-ANG-AngPM2.1_a Profilmodul 2.1: British Studies | 2.1.3 Literature and Culture | Study requirement
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Student information |
- | Graded examination | Student information | |
23-ANG-AngPM2_a Profilmodul 2: British Studies | 2.3 Literature and Culture | Study requirement
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Student information |
- | Graded examination | Student information | |
23-LIT-LitP8 Englischsprachige Literaturen | Englischsprachige Literaturen in exemplarischen Lektüren 1 | Study requirement
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Student information |
Englischsprachige Literaturen in exemplarischen Lektüren 2 | Study requirement
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Englischsprachige Literaturen: Traditionen, Gattungen, Motive | Study requirement
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Seminar mit Lektüreschwerpunkt | Study requirement
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- | Graded examination | Student information |
The binding module descriptions contain further information, including specifications on the "types of assignments" students need to complete. In cases where a module description mentions more than one kind of assignment, the respective member of the teaching staff will decide which task(s) they assign the students.