Lecturer: Sara Zavaree

Course Nr.: 15304.0171

Date/Time: Block Seminar;
                   08 April , tbc (introductory session)
                   07 June, 16.00 - 19.00
                   08 June, 10.00 - 17.30
                   09 June, 10.00 - 17.30
                   15 July, tbc (exam)

Location: 

When Edward Said published his book "Orientalism" in 1979, the reactions were fierce. In his work, Said describes Western scholarship about the Eastern World as inherently imperial, analysing stereotypes of the so-called Orient in Western literature. In this seminar we will have a look at Said's initial argument, his critics, and how his concept holds up today. We will put a special focus on British adventure literature of the 19th century. 

Lecturer: Matthias Kliemann

Course Nr.: 15304.0174

Date/Time: Wed, 14:00 - 15:30

Location: S34

The period from around 1750 to 1850, referred to by historian Reinhart Koselleck as the „Sattelzeit“ (saddle period), not only characterises the transition from the early modern period to the modern age, but also carries this out linguistically with reference to a motif that owes as much to the increased mobility at the end of the 18th century in european societies as it does to movement and the spaces in which it takes place.

Based on a social as well as cultural-historical differentiation from other forms of pedestrian movement (walking, strolling), we will examine works of literature by Eichendorff („Memories of a Good-for-Nothing“), Müller („The Winter’s Journey“) and Heine („Deutschland. A Winter’s Tale“), before turning to a more contemporary take on the motif with Hape Kerkeling’s travelogue „I’m off then“.

In doing so, we will systematically move not only between literary-historical epochs and texts, but also between different forms of realisation of the motif (literature, music, film), so that we might come to a better understanding of one of the most elusive and at the same time characteristic literary figures of german literature: To the wanderer.

All necessary texts (both primary as well as secondary) will be provided via digital distribution (ILIAS).

All core courses listed under Basic Module 1 may be chosen as an elective course as well (granted that three BM1 courses have been selected as BM1 core courses).

The offers of the Department for German as a Foreign Language may be counted towards the Elective Module, if the requirements for the Basic Module 2 have been fulfilled already. 

Semester German course (9CP)

Complementary German courses (3CP, depending upon availability)

Lecturer: Sarah Dominique Busch

Course Nr: 14569.3302

Time/Date: Di,16:00- 16:45

Location:  103, S65

Credit Points: 3

In this course, we will first retrace the steps of Wollstonecraft’s protofeminism, and discuss the constraints of womanhood in the Victorian Age and how literary characters like Jane Eyre resisted them. Then, Virginia Woolf’s modernist style and ides about the fluidity of gender roles will carry us all the way into the 20th century where the literary feminist movement of the 80s represented by writers such as Carol Churchill, Carol Ann Duffy and Patience Agbabi demands equal rights, sexual freedom and much more. On our journey, we will question the use of “woman” as a category, ask what it means to be a “female” literary voice that unsettles the male canon and discuss the intersections of gender with other categories of belonging like nationality, ethnicity or queerness.

Reading List:
Agbabi, Patience. R.A.W., 1995.
Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre, 1847.
Churchill, Caryl. Top Girls, 1982.
Duffy, Carol Anne. Standing Female Nude, 1985.
Wollstonecraft, Mary. Vindication of the Rights of Women, 1792.
Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own, 1929.
Woolf, Virginia. Monday or Tuesday, 1921.

additionally: secondary reading (excerpts will be provided)

Students taking this course should have a high level of English and be willing to engage mindfully in debates about sensitive topics like homophobia, transphobia and sexual violence.

Attendance is mandatory - students may be absent a maximum of 3 times.

Lecturer: Friederike Zahn

Course Nr: 14569.2305

Time/Date: Mi, 16:00 - 17:30

Location: 315, S223

Credit Points: 3

What is culture? What does it mean for each of us and how is it defined across different disciplines? What implications (political, societal, linguistic) do these different definitions hold? What exactly does the plural of culture denote? These are some of the questions we will address in this seminar. Looking at case studies, we will discuss how different agents conceptualise and implement multiculturalism and why it is relevant for everyone to engage with it.

Lecturer: Dr. Burak Sezer

Course Nr: 14569.3306

Time/Date: Fr, 12.00 - 13.30 

Location:  103, S89

Credit Points: 3

This seminar is fully dedicated to the Great American Novel: Herman Melville's /Moby-Dick/, published in 1851. One of the most influential and notoriously erudite novels of all time, /Moby-Dick/ unabatedly attracts scholarly attention and popular interest to this day. Drawing on auxiliary readings and essays, we will engage in a history of literary reception of /Moby-Dick/ and familiarize ourselves with important concepts of literary theory (symbolism, allegory, metaphor, ecology) that will help us make sense of the enigmatic white whale. We will also investigate the literary period in which /Moby-Dick/ was written, by which we can more readily appreciate Melville's allegiance with "Dark Romanticism" and his critique of "Transcendentalism." In closing, we will take a look at the various echoes of the novel in recent literature, as well as watch the 1956 classic film version.

Lecturer: Dr. Manuela Vida-Mannl

Course Nr: 14569.2101

Time/Date: Mon, 12.00 - 13.30 

Location:  105, Hörsaal D

Credit Points: 3

In this course, you will learn about different stages of the English language, understand the reasons for and mechanisms of language change, and gain an insight into the external history of the English language. The lecture will be a combination of presenting and dicussing reading literature and assignments and analyzing texts in Old English, Middle English, Early Modern English, and Late Modern English. Active participation is expected.

Main course reading:
Kohnen, Thomas. (2014). Introduction to the History of English. Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang.
 

Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Christiane Bongartz

Course Nr: 14569.2101

Time/Date: Thur, 12.00 - 13.30 

Location:  105, Hörsaal C

Credit Points: 3

tbc

Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Antor Heinz

Course Nr: 14569.3101

Time/Date: Thur,14:00- 15:30

Location:  100, Hörsaal XII

Credit Points: 3

This series of lectures will continue the survey of major trends in the development of the English novel since the beginning of the twentieth century. No previous knowledge is required, though. Being the second in a series of three, this set of lectures will go beyond the classical modernists and provide interpretations of the most influential English novels in between the works of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf on the one hand and the fictions of the so-called postmodernists on the other. Among the books discussed, there will be novels by Evelyn Waugh, Aldous Huxley, Graham Greene, George Orwell, and the Angry Young Men (e.g. John Wain, Kingsley Amis, and Alan Sillitoe), to name but a few. If you want to do some preparatory reading, I recommend the relevant chapters in Malcolm Bradburys The Modern British Novel (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2nd ed., 2001).

There will be an online test at the end of the semester.

Lecturer: Jun.-Prof. Dr. Paul Silva

Course Nr: 14213.0212

Time/Date: Di,12:00- 13:30

Location:  106, S23

Credit Points: 3

In the first part of this course our main interest will be in philosophical questions about the nature of time, the identity of persons across time, and the conditions for free will. In the second part of this course our main interest will be in questions about the nature of human knowledge: what is knowledge, what are our sources of knowledge, and how–if at all–we can show that we have knowledge and deal with the problem of skepticism. Throughout the course there will be various introductory lectures on inductive and deductive logic.

Lecturer: Jun.-Prof. Dr. Paul Silva

Course Nr: 14213.0232

Time/Date: Tue,12:00- 13:30

Location:  103, S69

Credit Points: 3

This course will explore topics in recent epistemology. There will be an emphasis on understanding the nature of our doxastic states (opinion, thinking, belief, conviction, and certainty) and their relation to various epistemic states (awareness, ignorance, certainty, knowledge) and various epistemic statuses (rationality, justification, excusability).

Lecturer: Anna Gosebrink

Course Nr: 14569.2401

Time/Date: Wed, 10.00 - 11.30 

Location:  103, S76

Credit Points: 3

This course will examine the relation between language practice and cultural diversity and how this connection affects everyday communication. The course will thus focus on the differences between intercultural and cross-cultural approaches within linguistics. In the course of the semester, we will concentrate on different theories and frameworks within the field of pragmatics such as role of context in language use and discourse analysis. We will also discuss concrete cross-linguistic and cross-cultural case studies and examples of communication and potential miscommunication.

Students will be able to...
- give a definition of cross-cultural communication.
- differentiate between cross-cultural and intercultural approaches.
- describe important theoretical frames within the field of pragmatics.
- describe and analyse language data using precise linguistic terminology
- establish a link between language practice and cultural diversity.

Students will also be able to…
- develop academic reading skills.
- deepen their communicative competence.
- train their researching skills.
- improve competences in academic presentation and visualisation.

Lecturer: Dr. Victoria Herche

Course Nr: 14569.3304

Time/Date: Tue,14:00- 15:30

Location:  911, S222

Credit Points: 3

Extractive industries are the businesses that take raw materials, including oil, coal, gold, iron, copper and other minerals, from the earth. The industrial processes for extracting minerals include drilling and pumping, quarrying, fracking, and mining. These industries have been among the defining actors in shaping entire nations and continents both economically and socially. Mining has further led to the expansion of colonial settlement and has contributed to perpetuating racialized tensions through the continuation of violent practices such as dispossession, corruption, disenfranchisement, the demolition of sacred sites, and the destruction of the landscape and nature worldwide. By referring to examples from literature, cinema and visual arts from the 19th to 21st century, applying theories of post-colonialism, ecocriticism and energy studies, this course will discuss cultural engagements with the effects of the extractive industries and how literature imagines a (postextractive) future of energy.
It will be discussed in what ways these narratives from various genres, set in Britain, USA, Australia, African nations, or on distant planets, respond to the environmental and land rights issues intrinsic to these particular locations, and in how far they carry the potential to foreground issues of societal change and environmental destruction.

Lecturer: Martina Filosa

Course Nr: 14235.5999

Time/Date: tbc

Location:  tbc

Credit Points: 3

In this seminar we will address various topics related to Digital Classics, ranging from data modeling to photographic reproduction techniques for ancient artifacts, from the treatment of geographic data in the digital era to the ethical responsibilities of digitally publishing texts and images. This seminar is conducted in collaboration with colleagues from Sunoikisis Digital Classics. SunoikisisDC is an international consortium of Digital Classics programs originally developed by the Alexander von Humboldt Chair of Digital Humanities at the University of Leipzig in collaboration with the Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies and the Institute of Classical Studies, London. Students of both the humanities and computer science are welcome to join the courses and work together by contributing to digital classics projects in a collaborative environment.
The seminars last an hour and a half, take place exclusively online, and can be followed on the SunoikisisDC YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/@sunoikisisdc2110. For further information about the program, visit http://sunoikisisdc.github.io.
To receive active participation credit (Aktive Teilnahme), it is necessary to attend the classes, either during the live broadcast or recorded, and submit the assigned exercises. If you need to take the module exam (Modulprüfung) in this course, please contact the instructor.

Lecturer: Dr. Thomas Jacques Blanchard

Course Nr: 14213.0117

Time/Date: Thu,14:00- 15:30

Location:  106, S12

Credit Points: 3

This course is an introduction to central issues in the philosophy of technology. How do science and technology relate to each other? Is technology just applied science? Are the realms of the technical and natural fundamentally different? Can we control the development of technology, and to what extent is it fair to say that technology controls us? What can historical sciences such as evolutionary biology and archeology tell us about the place of techniques in human evolution, and what does this tell us about the technical in general? Depending on time and interest, we may also address issues relating to specific and especially disrupting technologies such as AI, genetic engineering, Texts will include readings from ancient, modern and contemporary analytic philosophy of technology, as well as from various empirical sciences.

Lecturer: Dr. Thomas Jacques Blanchard

Course Nr: 14213.0217

Time/Date: Wed,14:00- 15:30

Location:  103, S82

Credit Points: 3

tbc

Lecturer: Dr. Monica van der Haagen-Wulff

Course Nr: 14384.0009

Time/Date: Block Seminar

Location:  216, S143

Credit Points: 3

In the compact-seminar “Global Cities – Exploring Theory through Practice” students will be examining the rapid and massive transformations that major cities have undergone (and are continuing to undergo) in the advent of globalization. In the past the exchange of capital, goods and labour took place primarily within ‘inter-state-systems’. In the last decades this has radically changed due to deregulation, privatization and a growing participation in global markets. With the rapid development of new digital developments, the establishment of world-wide networks with centralized steering/management functions this process has undergone a vast acceleration. The changes caused by these rapid changes in global and major cities continues to leave traces and impacts on all forms of life in the cities. This global/large city context and its internal manifestations are the subject of examination in this seminar that will be explored both theoretically and practically.

The Covid-19 pandemic has caused a major interruption to the speed and acceleration of the global processes. The impact and changes in societal perception caused by these global events will be part of the subject under investigation of the seminar.

This seminar, as the title suggests, is built on the intersection of theory and aesthetic practice. Here students will be encouraged to re-think and re-feel the theory learned in class through a creative engagement with three different urban spaces in Cologne, imaginatively inhabiting three different embodiments, their own, one privileged and one deprivileged. Students will be applying actor training methodologies to internalise their various subjectivities and will be asked to document their insights from their creative engagements with the urban spaces in reflective journals throughout the process. The aim of the seminar is to experiment with the perception of theory in time and place. Theorists informing the Seminar are Saskia Sassen, Richard Sennett, Zygmunt Bauman, Stuart Hall and Jane Jacobs, among others.

Dr. Michael Lazar from Haifa University (Tel Aviv), a geo-scientist and artist who has done much work in scientifically measuring and creatively exploring city spaces, will be joining us as a team-teacher digitally throughout the 4 days.

Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Susanne Gruß

Course Nr: 14569.3102

Time/Date: Mon,14:00- 15:30

Location:  100, Hörsaal VII

Credit Points: 3

This lecture introduces students to five of Shakespeare’s tragedies and their cultural afterlives. We will approach Titus Andronicus, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth through key concepts of genre theory, also exploring to what extent Shakespeare continuously tests the bounds of tragic form and character. In addition to engaging with these plays’ histories of critical reception and performance, we will consider how more recent stage productions – e.g. via cross-gender or so-called ‘gender- and colour-blind’ casting practices – shed new light on tragic concerns such as female agency, gender and sexual identities, racialised power structures, loss, and suffering. Our discussion will further draw on a number of film adaptations, including (but not limited to) Jane Smiley’s novel A Thousand Acres (1997), Vishal Bhardwaj’s Hindi film Omkara (2006), William Oldroyd’s Lady Macbeth (2016), and Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story (2021).

Literature: Recommended editions for all plays are those from the Arden Shakespeare Series, because they have extensive explanatory notes and introductions which will help you unlock the text. You may, of course, use other editions. Further reading material will be made available online.

Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Stefan Neubert

Course Nr: 14387.0017

Time/Date: Tue, 16.00 - 17.30 

Location:  216, S136

Credit Points: 3

The seminar will address internationally influential, important, and innovative debates in education and the social sciences. It will provide an introduction and discussion of John Dewey's paramount approach to "Democracy and Education" and Zygmunt Bauman's widely received theory of "Liquid Modernity".