Summer Semester 2025

In the 2025 summer semester, the Department of American Studies offers a wide range of courses. Also, a number of courses offered by other departments are open to American Studies students. For comprehensive information on all study courses, please see the course catalogue on alma.

Information on dates and deadlines can be found here.

Basic Module Courses

S: Introduction to Literary Studies	Dr. Carsten Schinko
S: Introduction to Literary Studies	Marina Pingler
S: Introduction to Cultural Studies (nur IAS)	Prof. Dr. Michael Butter

These courses are accompanied by a tutorial.

Advanced Module Courses

S: The Literature of Mobility (Post-Civil War)	Prof. Dr. Astrid Franke
S: The Cultural Cold War (Post-Civil War)	Dr. Thomas Gijswijt
S: Guns in America: Culture, Politics, Violence (Pre- and Post-Civil War)	Dr. Thomas Gijswijt
S: Beyond the Mask: African-American Theater (Post-Civil War)	Dr. Isabell Klaiber
S: 19th-Century Politics in and through Literary Writing (Pre- and Post-Civil War)	Dr. Isabell Klaiber
S: The Literatures of Abolitionism (Pre- and Post-Civil War)	Dr. Johanna Roering
S: Remembering the American Civil War (Pre- and Post-Civil War)	Dr. Johanna Roering
S: Modernist Poetry (Post-Civil War)	Dr. Carsten Schinko

Lectures

L: American Politics and Poetry	Prof. Dr. Astrid Franke
L: Issues in American Literary & Cultural History I: From Colonialism to the Revolution	Prof. Dr. Michael Butter

Focus Module Courses

S: Beyond Algorithms: (Re)Imagining AI in American Literature and Culture

Marina Pingler

Focus and Master Module Courses

S: Literature of the Early Republic	Prof. Dr. Michael Butter
S: Sex, Sandals, and Society: Rome in Hollywood (+ film screening)	Prof. Dr. Michael Butter
S: Sports and Race	Prof. Dr. Astrid Franke
S: Segregating Music in America: From 'Race' Records to Techno	Dr. Risto Lenz
S: Representing War in American Literature	Dr. Johanna Roering
S: The White Savior in American Film and Literature	Dr. Johanna Roering
S: Sports Film (+ film screening)	Dr. Carsten Schinko
S: Democracy of Laughter: From the Tall Tale to Meme Culture	Dr. Carsten Schinko
S: America Around 1900: Ellis Island, the Bowery and Beyond	Prof. Dr. Tonn-Meller
S: Graphic Medicine: The Intersection of Health and Comics Across the Atlantic	Dr. Davina Höll

Elective Curriculum

S: U.S. Foreign Policy I	Dr. Thomas Gijswijt
S: U.S. Foreign Policy III: The United States and Russia since the End of the Cold War	Dr. Thomas Gijswijt

External Offer for Elective Curriculum

S: A Social History of AI	Prof. Ph.D. Luke Fernandez PD Dr. phil. Daniel Menning
S: Gendering Death: Gender, Death, and Power	Reyhan Özsahin
S: Knowledge in Africa - Perspectives from East and West	Jun.-Prof. Dr. phil. Nadja Klopprogge Jun.-Prof. Dr. phil. Emily Graf
S: Religion and media	Jun.-Prof. Dr. Carola Lorea
S: Sonic Ethnography	Jun.-Prof. Dr. Carola Lorea
S: Precarity: Animals and Death in Modern Visual Culture	Dr. Corey Ratch
S: Sociology of Policing and Human Rights	Dr. Deep Chand