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Students become familiar with cultural differenciation in a gendertheoretical perspective. They apply specific questions of cultural analysis to examples and thereby reflect on social categories.

According to academia, postmodernism is an anti-heroic age, there is no need for heroes any more. Popular culture and everyday life are not interested in this diagnosis, however. Heroes are everywhere. What are their specifics, what makes a story a heroic quest? In the course we will look at structures of the heroic and their adaptions in historic and cultural contexts. An important aspect hereby is the construction of masculinity in different times and social milieus.

Lectures and student presentations.

Written exam (Hausübung) of 12-15 pages.

Ronald Asch et al.: Das Heroische in der neueren kulturhistorischen Forschung. Ein kritischer Bericht. Siehe http://www.hsozkult.de/literaturereview/id/forschungsberichte-2216.

Silke Meyer: Helden des Alltags. Von der Transformation des Besonderen. In: LWL Industriemuseum (Hg.): Die Helden-Maschine. Zur Aktualität und Tradition von Heldenbildern. Essen: Klartext, 2010, S. 28-40.

Fredrik Schoug: Fredrik Schoug: Transformation of heroism. In: Ethnologia Europaea vol. 27:2 (1997), S. 105-117.

Be careful: some texts might be in English.