MLU
Seminar: Aufbaumodul: Kulturwissenschaft I - Anti-Intellectualism in the USA - Details
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General information

Course name Seminar: Aufbaumodul: Kulturwissenschaft I - Anti-Intellectualism in the USA
Course number ANG.05272.04
Semester SS 2022
Current number of participants 22
maximum number of participants 30
Home institute Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik
Courses type Seminar in category Offizielle Lehrveranstaltungen
First date Wednesday, 13.04.2022 14:15 - 15:45, Room: Seminarraum 2 [AKStr.35] (Angl.)
Performance record Prüfungsleistung: written exam / term paper
Studienleistung: required reading; presentation(s)
SWS 2

Module assignments

Comment/Description

This course looks at the phenomenon of anti-intellectualism in US society by combining historical analysis with contemporary observation. We are going to explore the nature of what is being called post-truth era or post-fact world and its connection to anti-intellectual tendencies in the past and present. Relying on Hofstadter’s seminal monograph Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1963), we understand anti-intellectualism as a complex of related propositions, an attitude and a force that fluctuates over time but has at its core a “resentment and suspicion of the life of the mind and of those who are considered to represent it,” (7) in short, as a generalized distrust towards experts and intellectuals. Taking as a starting point the close relation between contemporary political populism and anti-intellectual rhetoric, we are going to study the various roots and trends of anti-intellectual thought from the early Republic until today. Some of the issues, persons, and events covered are the following: (anti-)intellectualism and the founding fathers, US constitutional democracy and education, religion and anti-rationalism, (Jacksonian) presidency and common-sense rhetoric, anti-intellectualism and the law, culture wars, anti-intellectualism and media, populist politics and corporate anti-intellectualism. Attention will also be paid to groups who have historically been excluded from concepts of intellectualism and higher education such as POC and women and their strategies of inscribing themselves into anti-intellectual or intellectual traditions. All in all, students will get a grasp of anti-intellectualism as a cultural force that has been serving different purposes at different historical moments and that needs to be understood as reaction to socio-political developments. We are going to work with theoretical texts as well as with a variety of primary sources, ranging from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century diaries, letters, and lectures to contemporary political talks and social media content. In the end, students will have to design their own research projects that add an additional angle to anti-intellectualism scholarship.

Core texts:
Hofstadter, Richard. Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. Alfred A. Knopf, 1963.
Jacoby, Susan. The Age of American Unreason in a Culture of Lies. Second Vintage Books edition, Vintage Books, 2018. Library Catalog - kxp.k10plus.de, http://www.gbv.de/dms/bowker/toc/9780525436522.pdf.
Thompson, Robert Joseph. Anti-Intellectualism to Anti-Rationalism to Post-Truth Era: The Challenges for Higher Education. Rowman & Littlefield, 2021.

Admission settings

The course is part of admission "Beschränkte Teilnehmendenanzahl: Aufbaumodul: Kulturwissenschaft I:".
The following rules apply for the admission:
  • This setting is active from 18.03.2022 00:00 to 30.04.2022 00:00.
    Enrolment is allowed for up to 1 courses of the admission set.
  • The enrolment is possible from 18.03.2022, 00:00 to 30.04.2022, 23:59.
  • A defined number of seats will be assigned to these courses.
    The seats will be assigned in order of enrolment.
Assignment of courses: