Kulturgeschichte (Cultural History)

Grundkurs II covers American social, political, and cultural history from the 1870s to the present. The historical background knowledge provided by class serves as the foundation for the entire American Cultural History program. The lectures will expand, enlarge and comment on the information found in the textbook. For each session about one chapter of the textbook must be read and prepared. There will be a final examination. 

From the Broadway stage to the Capitol Insurrection, from Netflix to the tearing down of monuments, from gun-laws and militias to tourist kitsch and children’s toys: This class will take the example of the American Revolution to explore the many different ways in which history is part of the national discourse and U.S. culture in the present. We see the past venerated and celebrated, but also deeply politicized. 

Universities and colleges are among the oldest institutions in US-American society. They thus partake in the structural and systemic racism that is still a defining element of that society. Recently, there have been efforts to address the historical dimension of this issue in higher education,  as well as a strive towards devising strategies of reform and best practice for the present. We will take a look at both these aspects and their connections. This class is part of a BAA Verbundsseminar (together with the Universities of Erlangen and Passau). It will conclude in a joint student conference at Munich Amerikahaus   (July 23/24, 2021), with the opportunity for participants to present their work. 

This class looks at human-animal relations in American history. Animals have played important, yet often overlooked roles in the history of the United States. They were a crucial source of power and energy way into the twentieth century, they were humans’ companions, beloved pets, and, of course, an important food source. Animals inspired awe and fear, were disease agents and were (ab)used for representational and commercial purposes. Quite a few species have become extinct. We will discuss a wide array of case studies ranging from buffaloes on the Great Plains to salmon in the Pacific West, from the boll weevil’s disastrous work in the Southern cotton plantations  to Martha, the last passenger pigeon, from “celebrity animals” like Fala, FDR’s dog, to insects and microbes. The two guiding questions of this seminar are: how clearly defined are the boundaries between human and non-human animals, and do animals have agency.

In recent years, theories and methods have gained ground that look at the intersection of nature, culture and society from a by and large materialistic perspective – examples range from neurohistory to Big and Deep History, from the analysis of material flows and enviro-technical regimes to climate history. While there are significant differences between these approaches, their common denominator is the conviction that „matter matters“. In this course, we will discuss and test a variety of different theoretical and conceptual approaches by applying them to distinct case studies of the American past.

The history of the environmental movement in the United States is characterized by ambivalence. Americans were the first to create (now famous) national parks like Yellowstone and Yosemite, yet their functioning depended upon the exclusion of Native Americans. The conservationists of the late nineteenth century laid the groundwork for the modern environmental movement, but it was borne mostly out of economic necessities. In the 1960s, a more diverse movement began to form, but it was predominantly white.

This class will trace the history of the American environmental movement by focusing on key figures such as John Muir and Rachel Carson, by highlighting the impact of disasters such as the infamous “burning river” in Cleveland, the toxic waste crisis in Love Canal, and the Santa Barbara oil spill, and by looking at key moments in the history of this movement like the first Earth Day in April 1970 that brought approx. 20 million Americans to the streets.

Literature:

Ted Steinberg, Down to Earth: Nature's Role in American History. Oxford, New York, 2002; Finis Dunaway, Natural Visions: The Power of Images in American Environmental Reform. Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2005; Keith Makoto Woodhouse, The Ecocentrists: A History of Radical Environmentalism. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018; Paul S. Sutter, Driven Wild: How the Fight Against Automobiles Launched the Modern Wilderness Movement, University of Washington Press, 2002; Michael Lewis (ed.), American Wilderness: A New History. New York: Oxford University Press 2007.

Im Sommer 2019 drangen Nachrichten und Bilder über unbeschreibliche Zustände in US-amerikanischen Internierungslagern nahe der Grenze zu Mexiko auch in deutsche Medien. Dass die USA nicht nur nach 9/11, sondern schon im Ersten und Zweiten Weltkrieg „feindliche Ausländer“ und „suspekte Einheimische“ jahrelang in Lagern festhielt, unter welchen Bedingungen und mit welchen (juridischen) Begründungen dies geschah, soll anhand unterschiedlicher Primärquellen analysiert werden.

Donald Trump hat mit dem Mauerbau an der mexikanischen Grenze und strikten, exklusiven Migrationsvorschriften das Selbstverständnis der USA als Einwanderungs- und Asylland verändert. Die Lehrveranstaltung möchte anhand ausgewählter Beispiele und Gruppen (Iren, Italiener, Deutsche, Japaner, Chinesen, Mexikaner und Zentralamerikaner, Untertanen Österreich-Ungarns und Syrern, sowie jüdischer Flüchtlinge Immigrationspolitiken diskutieren, aber auch „abgesicherte“ Darstellungen zur Migration hinterfragen.