Winter Term 2019/2020
Below you will find all classes taught by staff members associated with the Chair of English, Postcolonial and Media Studies during the summer term 2019. Additional courses will be added throughout the following weeks.
Prof. Dr. Mark U Stein
AOR Dr. habil. Markus Schmitz
Felipe Espinoza Garrido
Deborah Nyangulu
Julian Wacker
Prof. Dr. Mark U Stein
Daughters of Africa
098683 | Seminar | Wed. 10-12 | ES 130
Margaret Busby's landmark anthology Daughters of Africa from 1992 was followed by her New Daughters of Africa (2019). This seminar engages with this second anthology. What are the feminist, postcolonial, intersectional questions which these texts raise? What are the approaches, methods and contextualisations required to read these texts? And what is the significance of these two anthologies? The seminar engages with questions like these and requires students to read selections from NDoA and other, theoretical texts, too.
Literatures of the African Diasporas
098592 | Lecture | Tue. 12-14 | JO 1
This lecture engages with the the diaspora concept -- and with diaspora literature from the African diaspora.
Diaspora might evoke travel, migration, nomadism. But, crucially, it is ‘push factors’ that are central to its definition: they include forced migration, displacement, slavery, pogroms, genocide, famine, political persecution and war are reasons for the translocation of entire populations (Clifford, 1994; Gilroy, 1994). Add to this James Clifford's (1994) suggestion that ‘the term diaspora is a signifier, not simply of transnationality and movement, but of political struggles to define the local, as distinctive of community, in historical contexts of displacement’.
African Diaspora literatures reflect and promote connections between cultural origins and present locations; they mediate different social and cultural groups and relate to the formation of community; they reach back to distinct historical moments; they remember departures and arrivals – and what came before, after, and in between. They draw on collective memory, they add to it, and in the process revise, rewrite, and transmit memory; from one generation to the next; and from one location to another. This lecture course, then, explores African diaspora literatures from several contexts, including the UK, the Caribbean, Canada, and the US.
Writing Diaspora
098740 | Seminar | Thur. 10-12 | AE 209
This seminar pursues the question how writing and diaspora co-determine each other. Diaspora is associated with community, with movement, with displacement. But how does textuality come in? There are many diasporic texts which explore, remember, or re-imagine slavery, pogroms, genocide and war. So, what are the functions of such texts, whom are they written for, how do they, potentially, affect readers and communities? Which roles do memory and archive play for diasporic communities? Which properties allow diasporic writing to function in the ways it does? How can we even gauge such 'effects'? This seminar engages diaspora theory and diaspora literatures from several contexts.
A reading list will be uploaded for participants in the term break.
There will be a mandatory reading test on three set texts for all participants at the beginning of the semester.
Postgraduate Class - Research Module II (Literary Studies)
098741 | Colloquium | Thur. 14-16 | ES 2
Kolloquium "Postcolonial, Transnational and Transcultural Studies"
098759 | Oberseminar | t.b.a. | t.b.a.
Date and room for this seminar will be discussed and settled at a later point in time.
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AOR Dr. habil. Markus Schmitz
Cultural Studies
098718 | Seminar | Tue. 16-18 | AE 11
This Students-for-Students-class is dedicated to assists students in exploring various ways of doing Cultural Studies from a theoretically informed, interdisciplinary oriented, and transnational perspective. Focus will be set on British and American Cultural Studies. Class participants are expected to present works of art, cinema, music, and the so-called new media and to explain these cultural products in class. They will guide their fellow class-participants through the complex debates revolving around popular culture and subculture in relation to historical and contemporary issues such as (neo)colonialism, globalization, capitalism, migration or intersectionality. They might also ask how to interpretively grasp cultural practices from a comparative, transnational, or cross-cultural perspective or discuss how the understanding of culture and the ways we study culture have changed over time.
Introductory reading: Aleida Assmann. Introduction to Cultural Studies – Topics, Concepts, Issues (2012)
Zentralbibliothek / Lehrbuch-Magazin: ANG 5.1:Ass
Englisches Seminar, Book Studies / Bibliothek: BH 2:22 bis
First in-class meeting: 15 October
Postgraduate Class - Research Module I (Literary and Cultural Studies)
098737 | Colloquium | Thu. 10-12 | F 041
This is the first of a two-semester postgraduate class (Research Module I) for students of National & Transnational Studies. It is designed to assist students in defining individual fields of interest, topics, and approaches that are appropriate for independent study and that may lead to (or are relevant for) their final Master theses. The class is organized as a combination of presentations and in-class discussions and individual supervision outside the classroom. Focusing on the participants’ needs for their own projects within the MA curriculum it provides a collaborative forum for the critical reflection of first provisional research conceptions.
First in-class meeting: 17 October
Introduction to Literary and Cultural Studies I
098591 | Lecture | Wed. 18-20 | H 1
”Introduction to Literary and Cultural Studies” is a two-part course running over two semesters.
Part I (winter term) is a weekly lecture course all first-year students of English should attend. The essential introduction to literary and cultural theory provides in-depth coverage of the most common approaches to the study of literature and culture in English today. The lecture explains how the understanding of literature and culture and the ways we study literary and other cultural representations have changed over time. It not only gives a profound overview of seminal concepts and critical practices used in the field, but also shows how these discrete approaches respond to each other, how they are mutually exclusive, or how they can work together complementary. To illustrate these complex relations we will apply the themes and viewpoints of different theoretical trends, schools, and paradigms to the primary texts that students are required to read (see below).
Part II (summer term) will focus in more detail on the ways in which these broader theoretical, methodological, and historical considerations can be usefully applied to reading literature and other media. Using examples from a variety of primary texts, it introduces analytical tools and interpretive approaches such as genre theory, narratology, and film analysis.
All further details will be announced in the first meeting, which takes place on Oct 9th, at 6:15 pm in lecture hall H1 (Schlossplatz 46).
Required reading for all students
Primary Literature:
- Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (London: Penguin Random House, 2007). ISBN: 978-0141900445
- Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric. (London: Penguin, 2015). ISBN: 978-0141981772
Secondary Literature:
- Peter Barry, Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. Third Edition (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008). ISBN: 978-0719079276
Felipe Espinoza Garrido
Introduction to Literary and Cultural Studies I
098591 | Lecture | Wed. 18-20 | H 1
”Introduction to Literary and Cultural Studies” is a two-part course running over two semesters.
Part I (winter term) is a weekly lecture course all first-year students of English should attend. The essential introduction to literary and cultural theory provides in-depth coverage of the most common approaches to the study of literature and culture in English today. The lecture explains how the understanding of literature and culture and the ways we study literary and other cultural representations have changed over time. It not only gives a profound overview of seminal concepts and critical practices used in the field, but also shows how these discrete approaches respond to each other, how they are mutually exclusive, or how they can work together complementary. To illustrate these complex relations we will apply the themes and viewpoints of different theoretical trends, schools, and paradigms to the primary texts that students are required to read (see below).
Part II (summer term) will focus in more detail on the ways in which these broader theoretical, methodological, and historical considerations can be usefully applied to reading literature and other media. Using examples from a variety of primary texts, it introduces analytical tools and interpretive approaches such as genre theory, narratology, and film analysis.
All further details will be announced in the first meeting, which takes place on Oct 9th, at 6:15 pm in lecture hall H1 (Schlossplatz 46).
Required reading for all students
Primary Literature:
- Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (London: Penguin Random House, 2007). ISBN: 978-0141900445
- Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric. (London: Penguin, 2015). ISBN: 978-0141981772
Secondary Literature:
- Peter Barry, Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. Third Edition (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008). ISBN: 978-0719079276
Academic Skills: Gruppe VIII
098765 | Übung | Thu. 14-16 | ES 131
This course will introduce students to the reading, research and presentation skills required for their academic studies. For instance, we will discuss reading habits and how to cope with difficult texts. Students will also be introduced to different research strategies and learn how to use bibliographical databases, academic libraries, reference works, and various kinds of print and online sources. They will learn how to compile bibliographies and format them according to standard academic conventions. We will also discuss different ways of using sources in academic work (e.g. paraphrase, summary and verbatim citation), how to steer clear of plagiarism, and how to give efficient presentations.
All necessary course materials will be made available in an online folder on BSCW.
For details on the necessary assignments, please see the relevant module description in your degree regulations (Prüfungsordnung).
Deborah Nyangulu
Übung: Theory and Literature (Gruppe II)
098647 | Übung | Tue 12-14 | ES 130
Nation, Nationalism, Transnationalism: Historical and Theoretical Foundations
098732 | Seminar | Tue 10-12, Wed 10-12 | ES 227, AE 11
Julian Wacker
Folklore, Mythologies, and Contemporary Fictions from Nigeria (Übung Theory and Literature, Gruppe I)
098646 | Thu 14-16 | AE 11
As readers and scholars predominantly socialized in Western societies, we are often used to thinking and conceptualizing according to the epistemological frames of reference that have emerged in the aftermath of the Enlightenment. Since their rise to prominence in the late 1970s and 1980s (but even before that), postcolonial studies have continuously challenged these processes of meaning-making and chipped away at the hegemony of Western knowledge production.
In analyzing Nigerian (diasporic) texts that experiment with and interweave oral folklore, Yoruba and Igbo cosmologies, and narrative form, this course aims at excavating how these texts question dominant understandings of, among others, home and belonging, youth cultures, gender identities, and mental health. As the course prepares students to approach the set texts through a variety of – and often intersecting – theoretical lenses (e.g. postcolonial theory, feminism, deconstruction, structuralism) it works along the following guiding questions: What is the relationship between orality and literature, and how is oral folklore being (re)mediated in the twenty-first century? Which counterpoints do indigenous cosmologies and mythologies provide to predominant Western frameworks? How do these epistemologies frame and challenge our readings?
Students are asked to acquire and read the following texts:
Ellams, Inua. The Half-God of Rainfall. London: 4th Estate, 2019.
Emezi, Awaeke. Freshwater. London and Ney Work: Faber, 2018.
Popoola, Olumide. When We Speak of Nothing. Abuja and London: Cassava Republic, 2017.