S (Cult): Collaboration in US Culture

The seminar is prompted by the ongoing privileging of expressive individualism that is expressed not least through notions of singular authorship in US American cultural history. Against the backdrop of the emergence of singular authorship around 1800, due in part to the passing of copyright laws, the course aims to review and assess co-written texts and artifacts that were created in the United States from the late eighteenth century to the present. We will examine various types of collaborative authorship and co-making, their historical formations, and their medial manifestations in written texts, the performance arts, film, the internet, etc. with an eye on their manifest and latent functions. Models of cultural collaboration challenge normative dimension of singular authorship and its link to individualism so prominent in the U.S. Seminar participants will thus explore and contribute to debates on the nexus of cultural production and discursive authorization.

The seminar begins in the first week of the semester.