LFU:online

Institut für Amerikastudien Institut für Amerikastudien

Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Mario Klarer, M.A. Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Mario Klarer, M.A., +43 512 507 41604

610006

America as Utopia: Contemporary Management Theories and the Economies of Culture

SE 2

wöch.

keine Angabe

Englisch

This course focuses on the impact of utopian thinking on representations of the Americas starting in the 15th century. It argues that the lack of knowledge about the newly discovered "terra incognita" was compensated for by recourses to literary utopias and perpetuated in the genre of utopian literature in the centuries to follow. We will approach these utopian discourses by using late 20th-century cultural theories in management and business administration. These theories by E.T. Hall, Geert Hofstede, and Fons Trompenaars help us to isolate approximately one dozen dimensions which constitute the most important manifestations of cultural difference. Applying these late 20th-century dimensions to older texts we will be able to gauge the degree to which these dimensions are exploited in the utopian projections of the new world in the earlier periods and thereby come up with a typology of cultural visionary thinking in general.

Course requirements include: active class participation, a presentation, and a 20-page research paper. Students are encouraged to contact Mario Klarer for presentation topics prior to the seminar.

written and oral

Christopher Columbus: _First Letter_; Amerigo Vespucci: _Mundus Novus_ ; Thomas More:_Utopia_; Francis Bacon: _Nova Atlantis_; Tommaso Campanella: _City of the Sun_; Hans Staden: _Wahrhaftige Historia und beschreibung eyner Landtschafft der wilden nacketen grimmigen Menschfresser-Leuthen in der Newenwelt America gelegen_; Michel de Montaigne: "On Cannibals"; Herman Melville: _Typee_; Edward Bellamy: _Looking Backward_; Charlotte Perkins Gilman: _Herland_; Ursula Le Guin: _The Left Hand of Darkness_.

Students must have completed their "1. Studienabschnitt"
Beginn: 8.10.2007