Seminar: Family in American Drama

The family is, perhaps, the oldest institution in the world and the fundamental unit of any society. ‘Family’, as a concept of co-dependent individuals, is also depicted in many of the most well-known American theatre shows and has many prominent forerunners in Greek or Shakespearean drama. Tolstoy was quite right when he wrote that "all happy families resemble one another; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

Indeed, families can be the source of both connection and isolation, of love and support for some or of conflict and disunity for others. Needless to say, they are also the central locus of the primary moments in the lives of many humans: birth, initiation, marriage, home-building, child-rearing, and ultimately death.

In this course, we will look at changes and conflicts in the family in American society during the mid-20^th century and try to analyse and interpret how this is portrayed in four of the following five texts.

Please note that the texts must be read alongside watching the respective film adaptation before the semester begins. The film adaptations are provided via Moodle for you.

Dramas (in chronological order; don't buy yet, I will post exact editions to buy so that we're all, literally, on the same page)

• Our Town (1938) by Thornton Wilder
• A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) by Tennessee Williams
• Death of a Salesman (1949) by Arthur Miller
• Long Day’s Journey into Night (1956) by Eugene O’Neill
• Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1962) by Edward Albee

Film adaptations

• Our Town (1940) with William Holden and Martha Scott, directed by Sam Wood (more)
• A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) with Vivien Leigh and Marlon Brando, directed by Elia Kazan (more)
• Death of a Salesman (1985) with Kate Reid, John Malkovich, Dustin Hoffman and others, directed by Volker Schlöndorff (more)
• Long Day’s Journey into Night (1962) with Katherine Hepburn and others, directed by Didney Lumet (more)
• Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966) with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, directed by Mike Nichols (more)

Other material

• Secondary literature will be provided during the semester

NB!

• Historic film versions or filmed theatre performances of most plays will be made available to watch during the semester.
• Editions of the texts that students should get and read before the semester begins will be added here by March 2023.
• Most of the authors that we discuss in this course are also on the departmental Reading List of Anglophone Literature

Das Modul "Introduction to the USA" (SPO 2020) sollte bereits bestanden sein.