| Kommentar | City mysteries were serialized sensational narratives about urban vice and crime that enjoyed immense popularity in the decades before the American Civil War. During the Antebellum Era (1840s – 1860), novels such as George Lippard’s The Quaker City; or, The Monks of Monk Hall: A Romance of Philadelphia Life, Mystery, and Crime (1844-45), Ned Buntline’s The Mysteries and Miseries of New York (1847-48), and George Thompson’s City Crimes, or, Life in New York and Boston (1849) were bestsellers in a rapidly expanding print market. These novels offered exciting reading entertainment for a mass audience, using graphic depictions of sex and violence in order to promote various political agendas aimed at saving the American Republic from moral decay and social destruction. In this course, we will study the novels by Lippard, Buntline, and Thompson as foundational texts for modern popular culture and as texts that performed important functions in American politics before the outbreak of the Civil War. Please note that this will be a reading-intensive course. |
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| Literatur | George Lippard, Quaker City; or, The Monks of Monk Hall. George Thompson, City Crimes; or, Life in New York and Boston Ned Buntline, The Mysteries and Miseries of New York: A Story of Real Life NB: You must purchase or copy/scan (the book will be on reserve in the Semesterapparat for this course) George Lippard’s Quaker City; or, The Monks of Monk Hall, edited by David S. Reynolds (University of Massachusetts Press, 1995; ISBN-10: 0870239716 / ISBN-13: 978-0870239717). All other reading material will be available on the moodle site for this course. |
| Bemerkung | To attend this course, you must register online. You must be present in the first session in order to secure a place in the course. |
- Dozent/in: Daniel Stein