Winter term 2013/14
Below you will find all classes taught by staff members associated with the English, Postcolonial and Media Studies in winter term 2013/14.
Prof. Dr. Mark Stein
Dr. Silke Stroh
AOR Dr. habil. Markus Schmitz
Caroline Kögler
Jeyapriya Srieaswaranathan
Felipe Espinoza Garrido
Prof. Dr. Mark Stein
Introduction to Literary and Cultural Studies I
093933 | Grundkurs | 2 SWS | Fri 12-14 | AudiMax
This course addresses such questions as: What exactly do we mean when we speak of “literature” and “culture”? For instance, does all literature have to be written, or can it also include oral storytelling, performance poetry, and theatre productions? Does literature proper only include ‘serious’ and complex works of art to be enjoyed by an educated minority, or does it also include popular bestsellers written for a mass market and achieving mainly entertainment? Is the distinction between ‘high culture’ and ‘low culture’ useful? What are the purposes and problems of such distinctions? What is the role of literature and other cultural products in society? How have these concepts changed over time? Are they the same everywhere in the world? And how does representation in print literature differ from representation in other media, such as photography, film, or the internet?
How do we approach literature and culture as critics, how do we study them academically? How have literary and cultural studies developed over time? Which methods, theories, and approaches are currently important in this field?
We will also discuss the problems of canon formation, uses of literary history, the ways in which cultural representations (e.g. in literature, visual art, or the media) shape our perception of ‘reality’, and how culture reflects, cements, or subverts existing power structures in society. Approaches which explore these issues include new historicism, Marxism (concerning class), postcolonialism (concerning race and multiculturalism), feminism (concerning gender), and ecocriticism (concerning the relationship between human beings and the natural environment).
Reading:
Our main text book for this course is
Ingo Berensmeyer. Literary Theory: An Introduction to Approaches, Methods and Terms. Stuttgart: Klett, 2009.
You need your own copy of this book. Copies are stocked at the Rosta bookshop (Aegidiistr.12) or you could order at rosta-online.kommbuch.com.
All other course texts will be made available via the Learnweb course e-platform. Students will receive an invitation to this platform at the start of term.
First class session: 18 October
Nation, Nationalism, Transnationalism
095018 | Seminar | 4 SWS | Tue 12-14 | ES 333 | Thu 12-14 | ES 130
This course explores a wide variety of texts, issues and concepts which are central to the study of nationhood, nationalism and transnationalism. This is done from an interdisciplinary perspective, focusing especially on the fields of history, the social sciences, as well as literary and cultural theory. Topics include: pre-modern political and cultural (as well as national?) constructs of community; modernity and the nation state; the nation as ‘imagined community’; nation(alism) and colonialism/anti-colonialism/postcolonialism; nation and language; the role of minorities; regionalism; stateless nations; heterogeneity in terms of class and gender; as well as recent transnational developments in the fields of supra-national cooperation (for instance on EU or UN level), economic and cultural globalisation, migration and diasporas. We will explore these general topics by focusing on a number of national/regional case studies from different parts of the world, including the British Isles, America and Africa.
While the focus is on historical, political and theoretical issues, we will also do some case studies of short literary texts and other cultural products (e.g. songs or pictures) in order to see how these wider social phenomena are negotiated in cultural representations.
The Tuesday sessions will be taught jointly by Prof. Stein and Dr. Stroh; whereas the Thursday sessions will be taught by Prof. Stein.
Betreuungsseminar (BA, MA, MEd sowie Prüfungen, Modulabschlussprüfungen)
094409 | Betreuungsseminar | 1 SWS | Thu 14-16 | fortnightly | ES 333
095300 | Betreuungsseminar | 1 SWS | Thu 14-16 | fortnightly | ES 333
Diese Veranstaltung ist auf die Bedürfnisse von Studierenden zugeschnitten, die sich bei mir zum Examen anmelden möchten oder angemeldet haben, oder die bei mir eine Modulabschlussprüfung absolvieren. Die Veranstaltung befasst sich - in getrennten Sitzungen - mit allen Prüfungstypen; es geht es um Modulabschlussprüfungen (mündlich, schriftlich), Klausuren, mündliche Abschlussprüfungen (Staatsexamen/Magister), sowie um die Planung und Begleitung von schriftlichen Hausarbeiten bzw. B.A.- und M.A.-Arbeiten. Spezifische Probleme und Strategien der Prüfungsvorbereitung werden besprochen; Prüfungssimulationen können durchgeführt werden.
TeilnehmerInnen besuchen ausgewählte, für sie relevante, Sitzungen. Für Studierende, deren BA-, MA-, MAed-Arbeit durch mich betreut werden, findet 14-tägig ein Examenskolloquium (Do, 14-16h) statt. Hier werden Projekte vorgestellt und diskutiert. Details können dem Syllabus entnommen werden (s. Aushang).
Eine persönliche Anmeldung ist nicht erforderlich, sie erfolgt in der ersten Sitzung, aber die elektronische Anmeldung in HISLSF ist erforderlich, wenn ihr Studiengang ein Betreuungsseminar erfordert.
Postcolonial, Transnational and Transcultural Studies
095276 | Oberseminar | Tue 10-12 | fortnightly
This is a research colloquium on Postcolonial, Transnational and Transcultural Studies mainly for PhD-students and postdocs. If you are interested in participating, you could get in touch via email.
By invitation only.
Dr. Silke Stroh
Introduction to Literary and Cultural Studies I
093933 | Grundkurs | 2 SWS | Fri 12-14 | AudiMax
This course addresses such questions as: What exactly do we mean when we speak of “literature” and “culture”? For instance, does all literature have to be written, or can it also include oral storytelling, performance poetry, and theatre productions? Does literature proper only include ‘serious’ and complex works of art to be enjoyed by an educated minority, or does it also include popular bestsellers written for a mass market and achieving mainly entertainment? Is the distinction between ‘high culture’ and ‘low culture’ useful? What are the purposes and problems of such distinctions? What is the role of literature and other cultural products in society? How have these concepts changed over time? Are they the same everywhere in the world? And how does representation in print literature differ from representation in other media, such as photography, film, or the internet?
How do we approach literature and culture as critics, how do we study them academically? How have literary and cultural studies developed over time? Which methods, theories, and approaches are currently important in this field?
We will also discuss the problems of canon formation, uses of literary history, the ways in which cultural representations (e.g. in literature, visual art, or the media) shape our perception of ‘reality’, and how culture reflects, cements, or subverts existing power structures in society. Approaches which explore these issues include new historicism, Marxism (concerning class), postcolonialism (concerning race and multiculturalism), feminism (concerning gender), and ecocriticism (concerning the relationship between human beings and the natural environment).
Reading:
Our main text book for this course is
Ingo Berensmeyer. Literary Theory: An Introduction to Approaches, Methods and Terms. Stuttgart: Klett, 2009.
You need your own copy of this book. Copies are stocked at the Rosta bookshop (Aegidiistr.12) or you could order at rosta-online.kommbuch.com.
All other course texts will be made available via the Learnweb course e-platform. Students will receive an invitation to this platform at the start of term.
First class session: 18 October
Nation, Nationalism, Transnationalism
095018 | Seminar | 4 SWS | Tue 12-14 | ES 333 | Thu 12-14 | ES 130
This course explores a wide variety of texts, issues and concepts which are central to the study of nationhood, nationalism and transnationalism. This is done from an interdisciplinary perspective, focusing especially on the fields of history, the social sciences, as well as literary and cultural theory. Topics include: pre-modern political and cultural (as well as national?) constructs of community; modernity and the nation state; the nation as ‘imagined community’; nation(alism) and colonialism/anti-colonialism/postcolonialism; nation and language; the role of minorities; regionalism; stateless nations; heterogeneity in terms of class and gender; as well as recent transnational developments in the fields of supra-national cooperation (for instance on EU or UN level), economic and cultural globalisation, migration and diasporas. We will explore these general topics by focusing on a number of national/regional case studies from different parts of the world, including the British Isles, America and Africa.
While the focus is on historical, political and theoretical issues, we will also do some case studies of short literary texts and other cultural products (e.g. songs or pictures) in order to see how these wider social phenomena are negotiated in cultural representations.
The Tuesday sessions will be taught jointly by Prof. Stein and Dr. Stroh; whereas the Thursday sessions will be taught by Prof. Stein.
AOR Dr. habil. Markus Schmitz
Anglophone Arab Representations
094231 | Lecture | 2 SWS | Tue 16-18 | AudiMax
Although Anglophone Arab literature has been in existence at least since the early 20th century, it has only recently begun to be recognized as an academic research field in its own right. The last two decades have seen a dramatic increase in Anglophone works by Arab writers and artists, creating both new spaces for their diverse voices as well as new urgencies of expression and criticism.
Anglophone Arab representations have moved from early assimilationist (and often self-orientalizing) defensiveness to critical self-assertion and narrative counter-strategies of correlation. Speaking to their own realities and charting spaces for their own trues (and lies!) beyond the stereotypical representations of Orientalism and Occidentalism, contemporary writers and artists call for political liberation on the global level and for individual emancipation within specific local contexts. Their creative works blur both the reductionist cultural binary of the European-American West versus the Arab-Islamic East as well as this binary’s implicit claim of authentic places of origin and destinations of assimilation.
Focusing on the post 9/11 era, the lecture offers a wide-ranging overview of cultural articulations produced by Arab intellectuals across the world. Ranging from the writings of the first New York City based émigré school of Arab writing in English to recent audio-visual interventions by Arab transmigrants into the spheres of international concept and performance art, it explores the transformation of literary and artistic practice in relation to shifting local and global contexts. The lecture places these works within the larger nomenclature of postcolonialism.
Caroline Kögler
Communicating Texts and Theories (Group V)
094356 | Übung | 2 SWS | Mon 16-18 | ES 3
In dieser Übung werden die im Grundlagenmodul erworbenen Grundkenntnisse und Fähigkeiten in Spezialisierungsgebieten differenziert und gefestigt. Die detaillierten methodischen Kenntnisse werden zur Anwendung gebracht, indem sie auf historisch oder systematisch definierte Themen aus den Bereichen British, American und/oder Postcolonial Studies bezogen werden. Somit sollen die Studierenden lernen, eigene Forschungsfragen über britische, amerikanische und postkoloniale Literatur- und Kulturphänomene zu formulieren.
Die Übung Nr. 096070 hat den Schwerpunkt gender and queer theories in a (post)colonial framework.
Lektüre: H. Rider Haggard's "King Solomon's Mines" (Penguin 2011, available on Amazon.de) and Michelle Cliff's "Abeng" (Plume 1995, available on Amazon.de)
Studienleistung: regelmäßige Anwesenheit, individuelle Kurzpräsentation und Lektüre.
There will be a quiz in the first session to ensure that you have read the novels.
Local sites, global contexts – the transnational trajectories of love and sexuality
094394 | Seminar | 2 SWS | Mon 14-16 | ES 131
Love and sexuality are often considered to be private affairs, belonging within the spheres of the house or family. In very many contexts and locales, however, they have been embattled markers of group identity and group loyality. Where homosexualities are perceived to contradict normative gender behaviour, such perceptions are often embedded in broader identity narratives of religion, culture, and/or nationalism, regulating group belonging and the access to certain rights. In postcolonial contexts today, homosexualities are often constructed as ‘colonial’ or ‘Western’ imports that are essentially ‘foreign’ to e.g. ‘Jamaican,’ ‘African,’ or ‘Indian’ culture, something to which both domestic and non-domestic gay rights activists increasingly raise objections. This seminar engages with examples of literary works which negotiate love and sexuality in these locales and which have uniquely given a voice to queer amorous practices, challenging heteronormative narratives of culture, religion, and/or national identity at the same time. We will investigate the (trans-)national reception of these texts and how they fit in with broader conceptions of a globalising ‘gay culture.’ This is not least to caution against premature perceptions of Western constructs of sexuality as normative, and to point out some of the problems involved with constructing the notion of a transnational ‘queer folk.’
To attend the seminar, please read the following books, all available on Amazon.de. There will be a quiz in the first session, to ensure you have read the novels:
Michelle Cliff’s Abeng ( 1995)
Shani Mootoo’s Cereus Blooms at Night (1996)
Jude Dibia’s Walking with Shadows (2005)
R. Raj Rao’s Hostel Room 131 (2010)
Jeyapriya Srieaswaranathan
Communicating Texts and Theories (Groups I + III)
094318 | Übung | 2 SWS | Fri 8-10 | ES 3
094337 | Übung | 2 SWS | Fri 14-16 | ES 3
In dieser Übung werden die im Grundlagenmodul erworbenen Grundkenntnisse und Fähigkeiten in Spezialisierungsgebieten differenziert und gefestigt. Die detaillierten methodischen Kenntnisse werden zur Anwendung gebracht, indem sie auf historisch oder systematisch definierte Themen aus den Bereichen British, American und/oder Postcolonial Studies bezogen werden. Somit sollen die Studierenden lernen, eigene Forschungsfragen über britische, amerikanische und postkoloniale Literatur- und Kulturphänomene zu formulieren.
Diese Übung hat den Schwerpunkt Postcolonial Studies.
Literatur: Rushdie, Salman. Midnight’s Children. London: Vintage 2008.
Studienleistung: regelmäßige Anwesenheit, individuelle Kurspräsentation und Lektüre.
Theories of the other: Deficient, misguided, possibly dangerous!
094380 | Seminar | 2 SWS | Fri 12-14 | ES 3
Concepts of the other include “the unconscious and madness, […] the Oriental, […] the homosexual, and the feminine” (Morton 2005, 37). Placing the very same outside the civilized and humane, these discursive constructions determine knowledge and the normal. Engaging with cultural productions ranging from literary texts to popular culture, this seminar aims to discuss both theories and (textual) constructions of the other as well as strategic othering practices that at times serve subversion.
Hotspots in Literary/Cultural Studies and Linguistics
095003 | Lecture | 2 SWS | Mi 18-20 | ES 131
Further information
Felipe Espinoza Garrido
Übung "Academic Skills I" Group VI
093990 | Übung | 2 SWS |Fri 10-12 | ES 131