Ü/PS (Cult): Traveling Across North America: Road Narratives from the Continent

WiSe 26/27 Übung/Proseminar (Ü/PS)

​Dozent: Can Aydın, M.A. 

Monday (3) 11:10 – 12:40   

Classroom: Wiener Str. 48, room: 103 (W48/103)

Office Hours: via email

The promise of the “open road” remains a profound image in the American psyche. Traveling is a form of mobility. Whether social, geographic, or cultural, the concept of mobility is regarded as a defining trait of the nation’s fabric that has promoted the American continent and, after 1776, the US as a land of opportunity. In this regard, mobility is deeply connected to the national myths of the American Dream and the Self-Made man. However, this inclusive opportunity is much more complicated than it seems to be on the surface. Access to mobility remains highly uneven depending on identity categories such as ethnicity, gender, sexuality, nationality, and class. In this seminar, we will examine road narratives that address physical mobility; these narratives also reveal the social tensions, structural inequalities, and cultural politics of the nation. Together, we will analyze excerpts from diverse material in form, scope, and genre, such as Colonial-American travel narratives from the seventeenth century, slave narratives from the nineteenth century (Harriet Jacobs, Frederick Douglass), Jack Kerouac’s autofictional novel On the Road  (1957), the 2009 film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel The Road (2006), and more.