Hauptseminar Pilgrims through Time Space and Books

This seminar for students of BA, MA and Lehramt is about time travel stories in different media. This is a seminar with a special twist, since we will collaborate with the English department of the University of Klagenfurt, Austria. My colleague Jörg Helbig will teach a corresponding seminar there and we will exchange students and staff, i.e. the Kassel students will stay in Klagenfurt for a few days. You will kindly be accomodated by Klagenfurt students. The couchsurfing will be repeated in the first week of February 2015, when the Klagenfurt students will make their return visit to Kassel. It will then be your task to accommodate our guests. In the meantime students will keep in touch via Facebook or Skype or.... All further details during the first meeting. Travel narratives abound in literature, fulfilling at different times different functions – be it a guide to unexplored countries, be it a reflection of/on the readers' reality, be it a playful questioning of the natural boundaries of time and space. In this seminar, we will take a closer look at the depiction of strange traveling processes, of meeting and dealing with 'the other' – and with the (necessary?) re-formation of the self after having been confronted with a potentially de-centering experience. We will deal with a broad variety of sources - a play, a TV series, two novels, and a very short story .... H.G. Wells, The Time Machine (1895) Isaac Asimov, -The Immortal Bard- (1954) (http://www.mayofamily.com/RLM/txt_Asimov_TheImmortalBard.html) Ann-Marie MacDonald, Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) (1988) Quantum Leap (dir. Donald P. Bellisario 1993), 1st season Michael Crichton, Timeline (1999) Voraussetzungen All texts and films will be available in the university library on the special reserve shelf. You can only participate if you've finished reading the texts by Wells and Asimov. Should there be too many students, there will be a test to check on this. It is also mandatory that you turn up for the first meeting, no exceptions. Leistungsnachweis Regular and active participation during all meetings, oral report (depending on the number of participants), research paper. Additionally, a certain time and space travel-flexibility (helpful when attending a seminar that is taught by two professors in two different countries in two different time slots .-) Possession of a spare couch is not mandatory but helpful, too. FB 02 Institut für Anglistik / Amerikanistik All texts and films will be available in the university library on the special reserve shelf. You can only participate if you've finished reading the texts by Wells and Asimov. Should there be too many students, there will be a test to check on this. It is also mandatory that you turn up for the first meeting, no exceptions. Regular and active participation during all meetings, oral report (depending on the number of participants), research paper. Additionally, a certain time and space travel-flexibility (helpful when attending a seminar that is taught by two professors in two different countries in two different time slots .-) Possession of a spare couch is not mandatory but helpful, too. Uni Kassel WiSe 2014/15 Amerikanistik Prof. Dr. Bach Susanne