Teaching
VL: Survey of Literature and Culture: New English Literatures
Postcolonial Studies is an interdisciplinary field of research that combines and connects research questions from history, sociology, anthropology and ethnology, among others. While ‘post-colonial’ (with a hyphen) denotes a period that chronologically begins ‘after’ colonialism and thus implies that history unfolds in clearly distinguishable phases from pre- to post-colonial, the term ‘postcolonial’ (without a hyphen), as also used by today’s Postcolonial Studies, sets a broader framework. Postcolonial Studies assumes the simultaneity of colonialism and postcolonialism; consequently, it focuses on the experiences of colonialism and its past and present effects. This is also the argument by Elizabeth Bronfen, Benjamin Marius and Therese Steffen: Postcolonialism is expanded into a comprehensive concept of culture as a “conflict […] between representations of the world, the subject, history, etc.” It is precisely this “conflict” that leads to a critique of models of contemporary thought, including, for example, models of identity, the nation or the concept of a global order. Binarisms, with which world orders are both described and constructed (such as self/other, identity/alterity, black/white, Occident/Orient, nature/culture, etc.) are criticized; in addition, new figures of thought are often developed, some of which are accompanied by their own terms – such as ‘hybridity’, ‘third space’ or ‘diaspora’. In this lecture, we will read key texts of Postcolonial Studies (Edward Said: Orientalism; Homi Bhabha: The Location of Culture; Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: Can the Subaltern Speak; Stuart Hall: Familiar Stranger) that have changed perspectives in Literary Studies; we will also look at selected texts from New English Literatures and theories of postcolonial writing. This lecture will continue the series of surveys in literary and cultural history. It is explicitly designed to prepare students for the state exam.
OS: Literatur- und Kulturtheorie
Das Oberseminar richtet sich an fortgeschrittene Studierende in der Examensphase, Doktoranden und Postdoktoranden aus dem Bereich Anglistische Kultur- und Literaturwissenschaft. Es bietet allen Teilnehmenden ein Forum für die Präsentation, Diskussion und Weiterentwicklung von Qualifikations- und Forschungsprojekten. Darüber hinaus dient es der kritischen Auseinandersetzung mit aktuellen Forschungsthemen und -texten, die in die gemeinsame Vorbereitung des “Researcher in Residence”-Formats einmünden.
HS: Salman Rushdie
“I was born in the city of Bombay… once upon a time.” Salman Rushdie begins his novel Midnight’s Children (1981) with a fairytale-like tone. The temporal indeterminacy of the first sentence is immediately juxtaposed with a concrete and historically significant date that marks a double event: At midnight on August 15, 1947, a child and a nation were born. The child, the first-person narrator Saleem Sinai, came into the world and the former British Crown Colony of India gained its independence. From this point on, the two events are intertwined in the narrative: From Sinai’s perspective, India’s past and present unfolds, combining biographical and historical developments that span a period from the late colonial era to the 1980s, touching on pivotal events such as the Amritsar Massacre, Gandhi’s non-violent resistance movement, and the excesses of the India-Pakistan conflict in the Kashmir Wars. The collective hopes and disappointments associated with the young nation’s independence find an echo in a family chronicle; the narrator’s imagination and memory, which are full of gaps but also a wealth of stories, successively create a revisionist (colonial) history of the Indian subcontinent. “India,” as Jawaharlal Nehru once wrote, “is a myth and an idea, a dream and a vision, and yet very real and present and pervasive.” This description of India can also be applied in many ways to Rushdie’s novel, in which myth and reality, dream and vision overlap in the narrative mode of magical realism. In other words, narrative techniques are used that we also find in the works of Gabriel García Márquez, Ben Okri and Günter Grass, among others. In this seminar, we will explore Rushdie’s nuanced, multifaceted text, which contains numerous references to Sanskrit epics, tales from the Thousand and One Nights, Jonathan Swift’s satires, Jane Austen’s “portraits of brilliant women,” Charles Dickens’ “great, rotting, Bombay-like city,” as well as the metaliterary forms of international postmodernism. Rushdie is still considered one of the main representatives of postcolonial literature today. His Booker Prize-winning novel Midnight’s Children offers numerous opportunities to deepen our knowledge of Postcolonial Studies and Anglo-Indian literature. We will also read short stories from East, West and a selection of essayistic texts (including Imaginary Homelands and Knife), in which Rushdie raises fundamental questions about postcolonial/global authorship.
– Summer 2024
RVL: Sozialfiguren der Arbeit: Beruf, Geschlecht, Diversität
OS: Literatur- und Kulturtheorie (Researcher in Residence)
HS: Introduction to Literary and Cultural Animal Studies
HS: Cultures of Work in Literature, Film, and Photography
– Winter 2023/2024
RVL: Sozialfiguren der Arbeit: Beruf, Geschlecht, Diversität
OS: Literatur- und Kulturtheorie (Researcher in Residence)
Gemeinsames Forschungsthema: Das unheimliche Venedig (Exkursion und Konferenz)
HS: Chinatowns and Little Indias
HS: Transatlantic Victorianism
– Summer 2023
VL: Survey of British Literature and Culture: Shakespeare and the Early Modern Period
HS: “Global Crusoe”: The Robinsonade Across Anglophone (Media) Cultures
ES: Neuere englischsprachige Literaturen
OS: Literatur- und Kulturtheorie (Researcher in Residence)
– Winter 2022/2023
VL: Survey of British Literature and Culture: The Romantic Period and the Victorian Age
HS: Portrait Cultures of the 19th Century
Julius-Maximilians-University Würzburg: English Literary and Cultural Studies
– Winter 2021/2022
VL: Survey Literary and Cultural Studies: Shakespeare and the Early Modern Period
HS: Fiction for Future! Climate Change Fiction and Social Engagement
S: Grundlagen der Postcolonial Studies
S: Intermediale Ästhetiken und Theorien
ÜB: Begleitveranstaltung zur Vorlesung: Shakespeare and the Early Modern Period
University of California, Berkeley: Institute of European Studies
– Fall 2021
UGS: Hong Kong’s Postcolonial Situation and Rethinking Nostalgia
GS: Re-Building the Past? Conserving Hong Kong’s Heritage Architecture
FU Berlin: Peter Szondi-Institute, General and Comparative Literature Studies
– Summer 2021
HS: Portrait Cultures: From Edgar Allan Poe to Martin Parr
HS: Salman Rushdie: Midnight’s Children
HS: Stephen Greenblatt: Shakespeare Lektüren, literatur- und kulturtheoretische Schriften
HS: Climate Change Fiction: Politische Ästhetik und Risikonarrative
Kolloquium: Wissenschaftliches Arbeiten
– Winter 2020/2021
HS: Arbeit und Müßiggang in den europäischen Romantiken
HS: Moby Dick: Lektüren, Adaptionen, text- und tiertheoretische Zugänge
HS: Kulturelle Identität und diasporische Erfahrung: ‘Chinatowns’ und ‘Little Indias’ transmedial
HS: Körpertexte/Körperbeschriftungen: Wundmale, Narben, Tätowierungen
Kolloquium: Wissenschaftliches Arbeiten
Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main: English and Comparative Literature Studies
– Summer 2020
HS: Transatlantic Victorianism
HS: Great Britain’s Diasporic Communities: Tales of ‘Chinatowns’ and ‘Little Indias’
HS: Ethics, Aesthetics, Politics: Narrative Models and Modes of Eco and Animal Documentaries
HS: Modern and Contemporary Robinsonades
HS: Early Modern Drama: Shakespeare and His Contemporaries (Jonson, Kyd, Marlowe)
– Winter 2019/2020
HS: For Janeites Only! Jane Austen’s Novels and Their Global Reception
HS: Cocoa, Ivory, Oil: Representations of Imperial Lifestyles and the Exploitation of Africa
HS: Introduction to Environmental Humanities and Sustainability Studies
VL: Visual Culture, im Rahmen der Mastereinführung
Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main: German and Comparative Literature Studies
– Summer 2019
HS: Körpertexte/Körperbeschriftungen: Wundmale, Narben Tätowierungen
HS: Literarischer Alpinismus
Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main: English and Comparative Literature Studies
– Winter 2018/2019
HS: Portrait Cultures: From Oscar Wilde to Martin Parr
HS: Shakespeare’s Comedies: Humour and the Social Order
HS: “Why Look at Animals?”: Introduction to Literary and Cultural Animal Studies
HS: Work in Twentieth Century Britain: Literature, Photography and Film
VL: Visual Culture, im Rahmen der Mastereinführung
Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main: German and Comparative Literature Studies
– Summer 2018
HS: Das Meer: Poetische Erkundungen eines Kultur- und Naturraums
– Winter 2017/2018
HS: Arbeit, Muße und Müßiggang in der Romantik
HS: Ästhetik und Poetik der Jagd: Zur Literatur- und Kulturgeschichte einer Mensch-Tier-Beziehung
HS: Novellen des poetischen Realismus
HS: Einführung in die Neuere deutsche Literaturwissenschaft
Julius-Maximilians-University Würzburg: German and Comparative Literature Studies
– Summer 2017
FS: Flucht und Migration in Text und Bild
ÜB: Examenskolloquium
– Winter 2016/2017
HS: Das Meer: Poetische Erkundungen eines Kultur- und Naturraums
ÜB: Examenskolloquium
– Summer 2016
VL: Arbeit und Müßiggang
FS: Das ‘Eigene’, das ‘Verwandte’, das ‘Andere’: Mensch-Tier-Verhältnisse in Literatur und Film
HS: Interkulturelle Aspekte der Gegenwartsliteratur
HS: Intermediale Ästhetiken und Theorien
– Winter 2015/2016
VL: Archetexte der Weltliteratur
HS: Die Jagd in Literatur, Film und Kunst
HS: Mythentransformationen
HS: Erzählungen und Novellen des 19. Jahrhunderts
University of Paderborn: English and Comparative Literature Studies
– Summer 2015
HS: Robinsonaden der Weltliteratur
– Winter 2013/2014
HS: Schrecken und Faszination: Schauerliteratur des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts
– Summer 2013
OS: Kanon und Wertung
– Winter 2012/2013
HS: Serielles Erzählen und Autoren-TV
HS: Einführung in das Studium der Komparatistik
– Summer 2012
HS: Postcolonial Studies: Paradigmen und Perspektiven
HS: Hörspiel und radio play
HS: Suburbia: Die Vorstadt in Text und Bild
HS: Charles Dickens und die Weltliteratur
OS: Literatur und politische Praxis
– Winter 2011/2012
HS: Robinsonaden
HS: Das ‘alte’ Kind: Peter Pan-Phänomene in der Moderne und Gegenwart
HS: Der Brontë-Mythos
OS: Theorien und Methoden des Vergleichs
HS: Einführung in die Komparatistik
– Summer 2011
HS: Shakespeare und die Künste
HS: Vom Drehbuch zum Film: Einführung in die Filmdramaturgie
– Winter 2010/2011
HS: Einführung in das Studium der Komparatistik (mit Exkursion zum Literaturmuseum der Moderne/Marbach)
HS: Die Lüge: Kunst und Kulturgeschichte kommunikativer Täuschung
– Summer 2010
OS und Ringvorlesung: Kulturphänomen Arbeit: Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven
– Winter 2009/2010
HS: The English Country House: Chronotopos, Architektur und Gartenkunst
HS: Einführung in das Studium der Komparatistik
– Summer 2009
HS: “I would prefer not to”: Verweigerungs- und Entpflichtungsthematiken in der europäischen und anglo-amerikanischen Literatur
– Winter 2008/2009
HS: Lyrische und erzählende Formen: Von Maria Edgeworth bis Virginia Woolf
HS: Einführung in das Studium der Komparatistik
– Summer 2008
HS: In an Octopus’s Garden: Literarische Unterwasserwelten, künstliche Ozeane und ‘die See im Glas’
HS: Bergson, Freud, Bachtin: Komiktheoretische Annäherungen an ausgewählte Theater- und Filmkomödien
– Winter 2007/2008
HS (Literaturpraxis): Literaturausstellung zum 100. Geburtstag von Daphne du Maurier: Museale Inszenierung und Formen visuell-szenographischer Vermittlung
HS: Vita activa: Arbeit, Literatur, Kultur II – Arbeitskulturen im Medienwandel des 20. Jahrhunderts
– Summer 2007
HS: Kulturindustrie: Zwischen Kritischer Theorie und Cultural Studies
HS: Vita activa: Arbeit, Literatur, Kultur I – Arbeit und kulturelle Sinnstiftung in der britischen und anglo-amerikanischen Erzählliteratur des 19. Jahrhunderts
– Winter 2006/2007
HS: Renaissance Self-fashioning: Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare
HS: ‘New’ Passages to India: Postkoloniale Identität und diasporische Erfahrung
– Summer 2006
HS: The Western Canon: Archetexte der Weltliteratur
HS: Don Juan und Blaubart: Serientäter aus Leidenschaft
– Winter 2005/2006
HS: Salons und Kaffeehäuser: Orte literarischer Geselligkeit und internationaler Begegnung
HS (Literaturpraxis): Grundlagen der Literatur-, Theater-, Film- und Fernsehkritik
– Summer 2005
HS: Weibliche Bildungsromane im britisch-deutschen Kulturvergleich
Georg-August-University Göttingen: English and Comparative Literature Studies
– Winter 2004/2005
British Popular Culture: 20th Century
ÜB: A Cultural History of English Literature I: The Early Modern Period
ÜB: New English Literatures
– Summer 2004
PS: Jane Austen and Her Time
– Winter 2003/2004
PS: “O Poesy! For thee I hold my pen”: Lyrik und Poetologie der englischen Romantik
– Summer 2003
PS: ‘Horror in the City’: Ein komparatistischer Blick auf ‘Urban Gothic’
– Winter 2002/2003
PS: Von der Bühne zur Leinwand: Shakespeare intermedial
– Summer 2002
PS: ‘Beginning Theory’: Einführung in ausgewählte Positionen moderner Literaturtheorie