Seminar in der Kategorie Offizielle Lehrveranstaltungen
Erster Termin
Mittwoch, 07.10.2015 10:00 - 12:00
Studiengänge (für)
ANG.03590.01 und ANG.05294.01: LAG, LAS; MA ab WS 2015/16
ANG.03956.02, ANG.03959.01 und ANG.03960.01: MA Angloamerikanische Sprache, Literatur und Kultur 120 LP;
ANG.03959.01 und ANG.03960.01: MA IKEAS 120 LP;
Mag, Dipl, LA alt (fak.);
ANG.03956.02 und ANG.03959.01 auch für MA IAS
In the much-admired study on modern culture, All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity (1982), Marshall Berman defines modernity as the experience of incessant metamorphosis: “To be modern,” he states, “is to experience personal and social life as a maelstrom, to find one’s world and oneself in perpetual disintegration and renewal, trouble and anguish, ambiguity and contradiction: to be part of a universe in which all that is solid melts into air” (345). Berman draws a dialectical relationship between the unfolding modernization (“progress”) of a primarily urban environment and the development of modernist art and thought. He claims that the greatest accomplishment of modernist artists was to make the vital interplay between opposing values such as permanence and perpetual change visible in their experimental work.
In this course, we will first familiarize ourselves with the terms “modern,” “modernism,” and “modernity” as well as with Berman’s theoretical model before we explore an astonishing variety of innovative and highly experimental art and reflect on the relationship between the modern era and the form of modern art. Why do modern artworks look like they do? Why does modern music sound as it does? Our journey into American modernism will cover different media (film, photography, music, and fiction) and genres (e.g., novel, poetry, jazz, and avant-garde music). It also includes a side trip to mass culture and the emergence of comic art. A special highlight will be the lecture on modern American photography (“The Beauty of Common Things: Imogen Cunningham’s Transnational Aesthetic”) by John Stauffer (Harvard).
Required texts:
- John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer
- Additional course material will be made available on Stud.IP.
