Annotation
THIS CODE WAS CREATED SPECIFICALLY FOR ERASMUS STUDENTS. If you are a foreign student and you need a grade for this course, you should sign up for this code.
OBJECTIVES 1. To acquaint students with modern views of culture, multiculturalism, ethnicity, nation, and cultural region applied to English-speaking countries, especially Britain and the U.S. 2. To promote the understanding of the diversity of English-speaking countries, historical developments and contemporary dynamics of their cultures 3. To outline relationships between literature and communication technologies (writing, printing press).
Individual Topics
- Introductory: Concepts and Forms of Culture, Understanding Culture in Britain and in the U.S.
- Nation / State
- Culture and Communication
- Cultural Diversity of the English-Speaking Countries: England vs. Britain
- Cultural Diversity of the English-Speaking Countries: Celtic Cultures
- Cultural Diversity of the English-Speaking Countries: Commonwealth Countries
- Cultural Diversity of the English Speaking Countries: Cultural Regions in the U.S.
- Multiculturalism and Ethnicity: "New Britain" problems of national and cultural identity
- Multiculturalism and Ethnicity in the U.S.
- Culture and Politics in the UK
- Culture and Politics in the US
MATERIALS
Mandatory:
Study materials (PowerPoint presentations of lectures) are available on Moodle to the students who have signed up for the course. Moodle link: https://dl1.cuni.cz/course/view.php?id=1117
Recommended reading:
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1991)
Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy and Other Writings, ed. Raymond Geuss, Quentin Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993)
Sacvan Bercovitch, The Rites of Assent: Transformation of the Symbolic Construction of America (New York: Routledge, 1993)
Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994)
Joe Cleary and Claire Connolly, The Cambridge Companion to Modern Irish Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)
Charles Crow (ed.), A Companion to the Regional Literatures of America (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003)
Maryanne Datesman, Joann Crandall, and Edward N. Kearny. American Ways: An Introduction to American Culture, 4th edition (New York: Pearson Education, 2014).
Mike Davis, Dead Cities and Other Tales (New York: The New Press 2002)
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature (1975), trans. Dana Polan (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986)
Alison Donnell, Sarah Lawson Welsh (eds.), Reader in Caribbean Literature (London: Routledge, 1996)
Henry Louis Gates, The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African American Literary Criticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989)
Arnold Groh, Theories of Culture (London: Routledge, 2020)
Stuart Hall, Paul du Gay (eds.), Questions of Cultural Identity (London: Sage, 1997)
Gary J. Hausladen (ed.), Western Places, American Myths: How We Think about the West (Reno and Las Vegas: University of Nevada Press, 2003)
Eric Hobsbawm, Terence Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition (1978) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)
John Koch (ed.), Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopaedia (Santa Barbara: ABC CLIO, 2006)
Marc Landy. American Government: Enduring Principles and Critical Choices. 4th ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).
Joep Leerssen, Encyclopaedia of Romantic Nationalism in Europe (University of Amsterdam, 2018), https://ernie.uva.nl/viewer.p/21
P.J. Marshall (ed.), British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)
Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962)
Eugene Moehring, Urbanism and Empire in the Far West (Reno and Las Vegas: University of Nevada Press, 2004)
Francis Mulhern, Culture/Metaculture (London: Routledge, 2000)
Liza Nicholas, Elaine M. Bapis, Thomas J. Harvey (eds.), Imagining the Big Open: Nature, Identity and Play in the New West (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 2003)
John Oakland, British Civilization (London: Routledge, 1998)
Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London: Methuen, 1982)
Kwesi Owusu (ed.), Black British Culture and Society (London: Routledge, 2000)
Martin Procházka (ed.), After History (Praha: Litteraria Pragensia, 2006)
Edward Said, Orientalism (London and New York: Routledge, 1978)
Anthony D. Smith, The Nation in History: Historiographical Debates about Ethnicity and Nationalism (Hanover: University Press of New England, 2000)
Richard Sennett, Flesh and Stone: the Body and the City in the Western Civilization (New York and London: W.W. Norton and Co., 1994)
Werner Sollors, Beyond Ethnicity: Consent and Descent in American Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986)
Graeme Turner, British Cultural Studies (London: Routledge,1996)
Colin Woodard: American Nations. A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures (Penguin Books, 2011)
ASSESSMENT
Credits will be given based on a final test—multiple-choice (pass limit 60%; three dates: January/February, May/June, two resits). Students register for the test in SIS when the dates are announced.
