Franchises Star Wars to Hunger Games

Serialization is a phenomenon that transcends the boundaries of genres and media and is an integral part of contemporary culture. Medieval manuscript culture was based on the art of copying, and in the 16th century paint workshops serialized painting. Print culture offered new technologies for reproducing iconotexts, while the Victorian era was the heyday of serialized narrative entertainment published in journals (Law 2000), and new means of mechanical reproduction arose in the 20th century (Benjamin 1936). Marcel Duchamp introduced the readymade to the art world, pop art was based on the serialization of mass marketing and contemporary artists continue to produce serialized works (Mark Quinn, Banksy). Comics and other forms of popular culture package narrative in serial form (Wolk 2007), while cinematic narratives are likewise serialized as remakes, spin-offs and adaptations. Serialization is constitutive of on-going televisual narratives as evidenced in the recurrent generic terms series, serials, miniseries, soap operas, sitcoms and so on (Ellis 1982, Allrath & Gymnich 2005). International markets depend on the serialization of various narrative genres, as well as that of music, furniture, fashion, and art, begging crucial questions on the industrial, aesthetic, cultural, political and theoretical contexts of serialization. The emergence of various forms of serialization has repercussions on a number of questions that have also haunted the study of narrative: What is the value of originality, what is the role of authorship, how do serial narratives position their audiences, do we read serial narratives differently across media and genres? This class will address these issues in a number of examples, ranging from Star Wars to The Hunger Games. -Introduction”. Gaby Allrath, Marion Gymnich, Narrative Strategies in TV Series. Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. You need to know this essay, which will be available in moodle. In order to check your knowledge of this text, we will write a quiz on this text in the second week of term. Seminar für Anglistik Credit points: 2/3 credit points (-Studienleistungen-): active participation, an expert group presentation and three-page essay. Deadline: end of February. 5/6 credit points (-Prüfungsleistungen-): active participation, an expert group presentation and an additional essay of 10 to 15 (5 credit points) or 15 to 20 pages (7 credit points, 3 credit point -Prüfungsleistung”). Deadline: end of March. Universität Siegen WiSe 2012/13 Univ.-Prof. Dr. Voigts Virchow Eckart