“The relationship between American poetry and American politics is confused and confusing,” writes David Orr in “The Politics of Poetry”
(2008). Indeed. Not only is there uncertainty about how and to what extent poetry and politics relate; also, there is a deep-seated ambiguity about what ‘politics’ means in such a context. This lecture course proceeds from an understanding of ‘politics’ as exceeding the framework of political institutions, parties, and programs to include practices and positions that critically or affirmatively negotiate how society is structured, how it functions, who can participate and in what way, and how a future can be imagined. This includes poetic reactions to current events; anti-Vietnam War poetry is just one example of poetic directedness towards the present. But it also includes poetry as a forum of critical reflections of racial and gendered hierarchies, social justice issues, or environmental questions; last but not least, it includes questions of form: how, by what means can poetry function as political in this broad sense? How does ‘politics and poetry’ relate to ‘the politics of poetry’?
This lecture course provides a general overview of the topic by offering ‘spotlights’ of American poetry as political, including issues such as poetry and war; poetry and environmental disaster; poetry and social justice; language as political; poetry, aesthetics, and the political etc. While this class focuses on modern poetry since the early 20th century, it builds on the assumption that earlier periods are crucial to understand contemporary American poetry in terms of the political; it will thus also selectively take into account Puritan poetry, revolutionary poetry, early African and Native American poetry, early feminist and abolitionist poetry, and the poetry of Walt Whitman.
For each session, there will be poems and contextual reading uploaded on Digicampus. Students are expected to have read these texts in preparation for the session.
Anmelderegeln
Diese Veranstaltung gehört zum Anmeldeset "Zeitgesteuerte Anmeldung: The Politics of American Poetry".
Folgende Regeln gelten für die Anmeldung:
Die Anmeldung ist möglich von 12.03.2019, 09:00 bis 05.04.2019, 18:00.
