| Lerninhalte |
This class is primarily intended for students of the master module “Entanglements of Ecologies and Cultures.” In it we will analyze the complex relationship between biologist cultural ideologies emerging in the 19th century (social evolutionism; “survival of the fittest”) and the massive increase of asymmetrical property structures around the same time (gilded age, robber barons). These developments will be studied in conjunction with the concurrent but seemingly unrelated emergence of reform initiatives toward more egalitarian and more ecological societies. With a special focus on American history and literature, we will take a look at the beginnings of Naturalism (the literary version of social Darwinism), the poetic and narrative representation of this ideology, and its survival into our own times. Next to this historically “successful” social theory, we will explore various alternatives to it – egalitarian political theories, intentional communities, literary utopias, civil and environmental rights activism. We will analyze this complex dialectic – inflected as it is by the colonial dynamics of racial capitalism – in an attempt to understand its relevance for our present moment. There will be quite a knot to disentangle!
Texts to be purchased will include:
- Pauline Hopkins, Of One Blood (1902/03)
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland (1915)
Other texts will be announced in later summer. |
