Marburg, Germany - Course Descriptions - Everything in its Place: Concept of Space in America

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"I take SPACE to be the central fact to man born in America," Charles Olson energetically proclaims at the beginning of Call Me Ishmael spelling space “large because it comes large here. Large and without mercy.” In this class, we will take a closer look at how different idea(l)s and notions of space, place, and environment have formed what Benesch and Schmidt call an “arena” where America’s search for identity has been staged. Spanning from geographical (Turner) over technological (Marx) to socio-economic (Thoreau, Emerson) spaces, we will investigate the “large” impact of “SPACE” on the American character by reading, amongst others, the following texts:

• Henry David Thoreau, Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854),
• Stephen Crane, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893),
• Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth (1905),
• T. C. Boyle, The Tortilla Curtain (1995),
• Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild (1996)

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