Dr. Nicole K. Konopka

Courses

Seminars (Basic Module)

  • Introduction to English and American Literary Studies
  • Introduction to American and British Cultural Studies

Seminars (Advanced Module)

  • Promised Land America (including a day trip to see the exhibition "American Dreams. A New Life in the USA" in Stuttgart)
  • Journey of a Lifetime: Stories of German Migration in a Transatlantic Context (including a day trip to the Levi Strauss Museum in Buttenheim)
  • The Monstrous Other in American Literature and Culture
  • In the Spotlight: A Survey of US-American Literary History (e-learning class offered via Virtuelle Hochschule Bayern)
  • More than Meets the Eye: A Survey of POC Voices in U.S. American Literature and Culture
  • New Approaches to Old Favorites: Re-Reading North-American Children's and Young-Adult Book Classics (1860s-1960s)
  • From Neuschwanstein to Niagara Falls: Germans in Canadian Culture
  • From Benjamin Franklin to "The Girls Next Door": The Rags-to-Riches Narrative in American Culture
  • The Good, the Bad, and The Sublime: German and American Romanticism (including a session at the ETA Hoffmann Museum, Bamberg)
  • From Gossip Girl to Dust Bowl Okie: The Representation of Social Class in American Literature and Culture
  • Golden Door: Italian Perspectives on the USA and Vice Versa (including a field trip to Rome, Italy)
  • An Interdisciplinary Approach to Shakespeare: Language Pedagogy, Linguistics, Literary and Cultural Studies (mit Prof. Dr. Manfred Krug, Dr. Isolde Schmidt, Prof. Dr. Pascal Fischer, Dr. Beatrix Hesse) - focus: "Shakespeare in the American High School" (Culture and Media)
  • Contemporary Canadian Literature and Culture
  • "Jetzt ist die Zeit und Stunde da, wir reisen nach Amerika!" German Immigrants in US-American and Canadian Literature and Culture (including a field trip to Hamburg and Bremerhaven)
  • Beloved Beast: Talking (about) Animals in German and American Literature and Culture
  • Coming into Clover: Past and Present of Irish America (including a field trip to Dublin, Ireland)
  • Across the Sea: Transatlantic Relationships between Germany and the USA (including a student symposium in Prague, Czech Republic)
  • Germans in Canadian Literature and Culture (including a day trip to the castle Neuschwanstein)
  • Germans in the American Civil War (including a field trip to a Civil War reenactment in Walldürn, Germany)
  • Dudes, Machos, and Real Men: Masculinity in American Fiction
  • Left in Ruins: German and American Romanticism (including a day trip to the English landscape gardens at Wilhelmsbad/Hanau and the Städel Museum in Frankfurt/Main)
  • The Figure of the Outsider in German and American Literature and Culture (including a daytrip to see the play "Götz von Berlichingen" at the Burgfestspiele Jagsthausen)
  • The European Immigrant Autobiography: A Fragment of U.S. American History
  • Eating Cultures: Food in a Largely American Con-Text
  • A Different Point of View: Female Narratives in American Immigrant Literature

Reading Classes (all modules)

  • The Sea in North American and German Literature
  • The American West:ern: Exploring the Myth, the Place, the Genre
  • From Know-It-All to Clearly Clueless: Exploring the Narrator in US-American and Canadian Fiction
  • Social Writing, Socialist Writing, So-called Writing? American Literature 1860–1910
  • Reading the Frontier: Westward Expansion in American Literature and Culture
  • Disturbing Paradigms: Mental Illness in U.S. American Literature
  • Reading Age: Childhood and Youth in German and North-American Literature and Culture (including a daytrip to the 17th International Comic-Salon Erlangen)
  • Like Feathered Brushstrokes in the Sand: Reading Asian North American Fiction
  • Tough Ladies: Women in American Fiction
  • 13 Books That Shaped America
  • Reading the American City
  • Through the Eyes of the 'Monster': An-other History of America
  • Reading Texts of the Westward Expansion: How the West Was Won
  • Have a Little Faith: Religion in American Fiction
  • From Rags to Riches: The American Dream in U.S. American Fiction
  • Promised Land: Multicultural Perspectives on the United States of America

Practice Classes (Supplemental Module and Graduate Level) and Tutorials

  • How to Write a Term Paper (BA/LA/MA)
  • Key Texts in Literary Theory
  • Methods and Theories of Cultural Studies
  • State Exam Preparation "American Literature" (LA)
  • Betreuungsübung "American Studies" (BA)

Media Session

  • Strange Ones: Tales of Magic, Myth, and Mischief (postponed to the winter term 2024/25!)
  • From The Big Sleep to Little Women: Voices of American Cinema (in conjunction with the seminar "Masters of American Cinema: Decentering the Canon" by PD Dr. Georgiana Banita)
  • Vampire Movies (including a Twilight marathon)
  • Circus Movies
  • So Much More Than Red, White, and Blue: Movies with Colors in their Title
  • The American West
  • Body Switch (together with Lorena Bickert)
  • American Summer Camp Movies
  • The Wild West on the Big Screen
  • Looking Good! Beauty and American Cinema
  • Celluloid Quest: Heroes, Heroines, and the American Cinema
  • Shopping Films
  • Hotel Films
  • "And the Oscar® goes to…"
  • American Icons
  • Wild Ones/Mild Ones: Humans and Animals on Screen
  • Tales of the Strange and Wonderful: Femininity on Screen
  • The Empire Strikes Back: Imperialism on Screen
  • Famous Cinematic Quotations