32204

SoSe 23: Flyover Fiction - Poverty, Whiteness, Rurality

Karin Höpker

Kommentar

Historically, figures of the rural have been central to narratives of American national identity and yet, what is conceived of as the American “heartland” often seems to be a blind spot in the collective imagination. Contemporary cultural productions and political discourse have newly focused on the rural. Focusing specifically on issues of class, whiteness, and poverty in the Midwest, Appalachia, and the Ozarks (rather than the Deep South or the West and Southwest), our readings of “flyover fiction” address topics of economic strife, systemic and structural neglect, transgenerational trauma and violence, ecological crisis and the opioid epidemic. Texts like Donald Ray Pollock’s Knockemstiff, J.D. Vance’s controversial Hillbilly Elegy, Debra Granik’s adaptation of Winter’s Bone, or Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead will help us explore how and to what extent these texts generate visibility and a differentiated image of rurality as lived experience. We will discuss how texts negotiate the varied perspectives of their audiences, how they engage with the fraught intertext of popular culture (such as the exploitative use of the “hillbilly” in both comedy and horror), and to what extent they manage to avoid the othering of an ethnographic gaze that has so often been cast at the rural. Schließen

13 Termine

Regelmäßige Termine der Lehrveranstaltung

Do, 10:00 - 12:00 13 Termine

Do, 20.04.2023 10:00 - 12:00

Dozenten:
Prof. Dr. Karin Höpker