The study of kinship within and outside the heteropatriarchal, nuclear family can be a productive lens for a better understanding of key concerns in American studies, including concerns in feminist theory and queer theory, critical race theory, transnational studies, and ideology critique. This course will focus on a range of topics, beginning with the ideological construction of the family in the early US republic; the depiction of family ties in realist fiction; the problematization of mother-daughter relationships in second-wave feminist literature; the queering of kinship models in postmodern fiction, and representation of the transnational families as site of global interrelationships. Critical attention to narrative form will bring together theory and text: Who is speaking? How are intergenerational narratives linked? How do texts present ”alternative” kinship practices and why? Students will learn to develop paper projects bringing together theoretical and historical concepts and ideas of kinship, based on literary texts.
- Lehrende/r: Silvia Schultermandl
- Lehrende/r: Chris Wahlig