Kursinformation

This lecture course explores the importance of mobility in American history. According to the “new mobilities paradigm” (John Urry/Mimi Sheller), mobility is understood broadly to encompass not only the transportation of goods and people but also the experience of movement, its various entanglements with categories such as class, gender, race, disability, ethnicity, age, etc., and the history of marginalized forms of mobility like walking or cycling. We will trace the experience of ardent pedestrians like Henry David Thoreau and John Muir, analyze the impact of transport revolutions (steamboat, railroad), follow the rise to dominance of automobility in the 20^th century and its corresponding car culture, look at infrastructural devices as the Erie Canal and the national highway system, analyze "non-places" such as airports, highlight the importance of collisions (both in a literal and in a metaphorical sense), and focus on the impact of the current pandemic on various forms of movements.