University of Bamberg
open search form
You are here

Humanities Faculty

American Literature and Culture

  1.  
  2. Faculties
  3. Humanities
  4. Institutes
  5. Institute for English and American Studies
  6. American Literature and Culture
  7. Team
  8. Dr. Nicole K. Konopka
  9. Teaching

Dr. Nicole K. Konopka

Current Courses (Summer 2021)

  • Seminar (Basic Module): Introduction to English and American Literary Studies
  • Practice Class (Basic Module): How to Write a Term Paper (Literary and Cultural Studies)
  • Seminar (Advanced Module): In the Spotlight - A Survey of US-American Literary History (e-learning class - registration via VHB!)
  • Seminar (Advanced Module): New Approaches to Old Favorites - Re-Reading North-American Children's and Young-Adult Book Classics (1860s-1960s)
  • Practice Class (Graduate Level): Preparatory Course for Bavarian State Exam (Focus: American Literature)
  • Practice Class (Graduate Level): Betreuungsübung "American Studies" (BA)

Previous Courses

Seminars (Basic Module)

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

Seminars (Advanced Module)

  • From Neuschwanstein to Niagara Falls: Germans in Canadian Culture
  • The Monstrous Other in American Literature and Culture
  • In the Spotlight: A Survey of US-American Literary History (e-learning Kurs über die VHB)
  • 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)
  • More Than Meets the Eye: A Survey of African-American Voices
  • 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)

  • 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
  • Exam Preparation "American Literature" (LA)
  • Betreuungsübung "American Studies" (BA)

Media Session

  • 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