Fachbereich 7

Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft


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Vorheriges Semester

Political Activism, Literary Self-Presentation, and the Long Civil Rights Movement in the USA


DozentIn: Priv. Doz. Dr. Michaela Keck

Veranstaltungstyp: Seminar

Ort: 41/B10: Mo. 14:00 - 16:00 (6x), 41/101: Montag, 11.11.2019, Montag, 25.11.2019, Montag, 09.12.2019, Montag, 06.01.2020, Montag, 20.01.2020, Montag, 03.02.2020 16:00 - 18:00

Zeiten: Mo. 14:00 - 16:00 (zweiwöchentlich, ab 11.11.2019), Ort: 41/B10, Termine am Montag, 11.11.2019, Montag, 25.11.2019, Montag, 09.12.2019, Montag, 06.01.2020, Montag, 20.01.2020, Montag, 03.02.2020 16:00 - 18:00, Ort: 41/101

Beschreibung: NB: Please note that, except for the introductory and final meeting (28 October and 10th February), this course will meet in block sessions every other week. Participants are required to make sure that their regular attendance does not clash with that of another course. Double sessions from 14.00-16.00 and 16.00-18.00 will take place on 11 November, 25 November, 9 December, 6th January, 20th January, and 3rd February.

This course explores the long civil rights movement in the USA. The dominant (white) popular narrative of the civil rights movement in the USA continues to focus on the period from 1954 to the mid-1960s, with the iconic hero figure of Martin Luther King, Jr., at its center. Since the 2000s, scholars have questioned this narrow focus and periodization and expanded the scope of the movement well into the 1930s and 1970s, while many of the autobiographies written by black activists themselves invoke an even longer lineage of black activism combined with literary (self-)representation, counter-history, and trauma dating back to the nineteenth-century antislavery movement. We will study three autobiographies by African-American activists and intellectual leaders, whose writings link their activism for radical socio-political change in America with black (self-)presentation. Guiding questions for this course will relate to – but are not limited to – matters of identity politics, the countering of the dominant history and narrative(s) of the American civil rights struggle, periodization, black women and leadership in the movement, or the performance of race.
Please purchase and prepare the following reading materials (no specific editions are required):
W.E.B. Du Bois, Dusk of Dawn (1940); Alex Haley with Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965); and Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi (1968). Other reading materials will be available on Stud.IP.


zur Veranstaltung in Stud.IP