2020 – 2021 English: Culture 2
Summary English: Culture 2
Introduction: The Significance of Outsidership
1 Oct: Introduction: Outsidership & Culture after Corona (BBCollaborator)
8 Oct: Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter (1850)
15 Oct: Charlotte Perkins Gilman: The Yellow Wallpaper (1892)
Kate Chopin: The Awakening (1899)
22 Oct: Arundhati Roy: The God of Small Things (1997)
29 Oct: Toni Morrison: Beloved (1987)
=> all (except for first one) written by women
about outsidered women
social roles they have to play: married white wife (of men); seem to have everything u need
but
still outsidered
Thinking the Pandemic
November = independent study month. Goal: design your own post-corona culture course.
How does this pandemic change our society/culture? How can art/culture reflect/respond to this
calamity? Is this the end of... what?
Read, surf, download, write, quote, THINK: “What Will Culture (also as an academic field of study) in
2025 look like?”
Literature? Art? Institutions (museums, universities, schools, courts, stadions,...)? Movies?
You design a mini-course (four lectures). Collect materials (Websites, articles, courses taught at other
institutions, talks, documentaries, ...) that you can use to build your prototypical course with.
Course requirements:
* Part One of the course: 2/4 weekly readings in full + notes + handouts + recordings (40%)
* Part Two: research and design your own post-corona-culture-course (40%)
* Part Three: “peer review”: comment upon blueprints by fellow students in yr group (20%)
1
,2020 – 2021 English: Culture 2
CONCEPTUAL GROUNDWORK
Outsider = not mainstream, thinking outside the box
Someone who has been excluded based on (individual for every society):
o Ideas
o Values
o Traditions
o Languages
o Sexual preference
o …
Distinction outsider – hermit
o Hermit: turns back on society (by choice)
Does not suffer from isolation; becomes himself by turning his back
o Outsider: excluded, shut out, ostracized
Defined by relation of negativity
Determined by negative relationship
Suffers from not belonging
WHY THE OUTSIDER IN NOVELS?
Relations of power
e.g. parents – child, teacher – student
o Not necessarily negative
o But can lead to isolation (insiders – outsiders)
By focusing on outsidership we learn something about power relations in society; who is
outsidered and why?
Makes literature great; way of presenting power
2
, 2020 – 2021 English: Culture 2
The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne (1850)
‘But the past was not dead.’
(“The Custom House”, Introductory to The Scarlet Letter)
Biographical/historical background Hawthorne
General
Born in Salem, Massachusetts
Part of group American renaissance (mid-19 th century)
o “rebirth”, but more of the birth of American literature
o Wrote texts, novels, short stories, poetry => first white American literature
Suffered financial difficulties throughout his life
More detailed
1825: graduated Bowdoin College (Maine)
Returned to Salem
Lived quietly for twelve years, reading and writing
Read about family’s involvement in Salem witch trials (May – October 1692)
o (young) girls with babysitters were told they were possessed by the devil => witches
o Mass hysteria
o Blame on Tituba (slave)
Told children voodoo tales => “drove children crazy”
o Special court set up for witchcraft: three judges
John Hathorne
19 girls hanged, 150 imprisoned
Many condemned witch trials
H. changed spelling of his name (to distance himself?)
1827: Fanshawe (anonymously, authorship revealed after his death)
1837: Twice-Told Tales
1841: Brook Farm > The Blithedale Romance (1852)
Groups of people unhappy with development of America
Brook Farm = Utopian city/experiment near Boston (east coast): alternative ideas
Some were inspired by European socialist ideas
Very short-lived
Book about socialist experiments in America
1842: marries Sophia Peabody (sister Elizabeth Peabody)
the Concord years: Transcendentalism. (R.W. Emerson, H.D. Thoreau, Margaret Fuller = feminist)
Northwest of Boston where philosophers hung out (also women)
1846-’49: surveyor at the Salem Custom House.
Money problems
Important points of entry for colonies
1849: † mother (he recovered ‘through writing The Scarlet Letter’)
Were very close; made clear from letters
Book immediately recognized as literary masterpiece
Never commercial success
3
Summary English: Culture 2
Introduction: The Significance of Outsidership
1 Oct: Introduction: Outsidership & Culture after Corona (BBCollaborator)
8 Oct: Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter (1850)
15 Oct: Charlotte Perkins Gilman: The Yellow Wallpaper (1892)
Kate Chopin: The Awakening (1899)
22 Oct: Arundhati Roy: The God of Small Things (1997)
29 Oct: Toni Morrison: Beloved (1987)
=> all (except for first one) written by women
about outsidered women
social roles they have to play: married white wife (of men); seem to have everything u need
but
still outsidered
Thinking the Pandemic
November = independent study month. Goal: design your own post-corona culture course.
How does this pandemic change our society/culture? How can art/culture reflect/respond to this
calamity? Is this the end of... what?
Read, surf, download, write, quote, THINK: “What Will Culture (also as an academic field of study) in
2025 look like?”
Literature? Art? Institutions (museums, universities, schools, courts, stadions,...)? Movies?
You design a mini-course (four lectures). Collect materials (Websites, articles, courses taught at other
institutions, talks, documentaries, ...) that you can use to build your prototypical course with.
Course requirements:
* Part One of the course: 2/4 weekly readings in full + notes + handouts + recordings (40%)
* Part Two: research and design your own post-corona-culture-course (40%)
* Part Three: “peer review”: comment upon blueprints by fellow students in yr group (20%)
1
,2020 – 2021 English: Culture 2
CONCEPTUAL GROUNDWORK
Outsider = not mainstream, thinking outside the box
Someone who has been excluded based on (individual for every society):
o Ideas
o Values
o Traditions
o Languages
o Sexual preference
o …
Distinction outsider – hermit
o Hermit: turns back on society (by choice)
Does not suffer from isolation; becomes himself by turning his back
o Outsider: excluded, shut out, ostracized
Defined by relation of negativity
Determined by negative relationship
Suffers from not belonging
WHY THE OUTSIDER IN NOVELS?
Relations of power
e.g. parents – child, teacher – student
o Not necessarily negative
o But can lead to isolation (insiders – outsiders)
By focusing on outsidership we learn something about power relations in society; who is
outsidered and why?
Makes literature great; way of presenting power
2
, 2020 – 2021 English: Culture 2
The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne (1850)
‘But the past was not dead.’
(“The Custom House”, Introductory to The Scarlet Letter)
Biographical/historical background Hawthorne
General
Born in Salem, Massachusetts
Part of group American renaissance (mid-19 th century)
o “rebirth”, but more of the birth of American literature
o Wrote texts, novels, short stories, poetry => first white American literature
Suffered financial difficulties throughout his life
More detailed
1825: graduated Bowdoin College (Maine)
Returned to Salem
Lived quietly for twelve years, reading and writing
Read about family’s involvement in Salem witch trials (May – October 1692)
o (young) girls with babysitters were told they were possessed by the devil => witches
o Mass hysteria
o Blame on Tituba (slave)
Told children voodoo tales => “drove children crazy”
o Special court set up for witchcraft: three judges
John Hathorne
19 girls hanged, 150 imprisoned
Many condemned witch trials
H. changed spelling of his name (to distance himself?)
1827: Fanshawe (anonymously, authorship revealed after his death)
1837: Twice-Told Tales
1841: Brook Farm > The Blithedale Romance (1852)
Groups of people unhappy with development of America
Brook Farm = Utopian city/experiment near Boston (east coast): alternative ideas
Some were inspired by European socialist ideas
Very short-lived
Book about socialist experiments in America
1842: marries Sophia Peabody (sister Elizabeth Peabody)
the Concord years: Transcendentalism. (R.W. Emerson, H.D. Thoreau, Margaret Fuller = feminist)
Northwest of Boston where philosophers hung out (also women)
1846-’49: surveyor at the Salem Custom House.
Money problems
Important points of entry for colonies
1849: † mother (he recovered ‘through writing The Scarlet Letter’)
Were very close; made clear from letters
Book immediately recognized as literary masterpiece
Never commercial success
3
