Winter Semester 2024/25

Here are the classes taught by staff members of the Chair of English, Postcolonial and Media Studies during the winter semester 2024/25.

Prof. Dr. Mark U. Stein
AR Felipe Espinoza Garrido
Can Çakır
Dorit Neumann

Prof. Dr. Mark U. Stein

Brave New Words
098764 | Seminar | Tue 10-12

This seminar engages with a selection of essays which gauge the power of the written word at the present moment. Kei Miller, Romesh Guenesekera, Blake Morrison, Olumide Popoola, and Tabish Khair are literary authors; in their essays selected for this class they reflect on the craft of writing; on the impact of literature; on its function as a "storehouse", its power to question and resist, and on its capacity to dream and soothe. In addition to the essays selected, we will also discuss excerpts from the literary texts of our subject authors.

Seminar participants will need a copy of this anthology:
Brave New Words: The Power of Writing Now. Ed. Susheila Nasta. Oxford: Myriad, 2019.

Speculative Fiction
098842 | Seminar | Wed 10-12

In this seminar, we will read and discuss long as well as short speculative fiction while also engaging with theorisations of the genre.
”Speculative fiction” has three different meanings, Marek Oziewicz has suggested: "a subgenre of science fiction that deals with human rather than technological problems, a genre distinct from and opposite to science fiction in its exclusive focus on possible futures, and a super category for all genres that deliberately depart from imitating 'consensus reality' of everyday experience." Speculative fiction encompasses highly diverse forms of non-mimetic narrative which reflects on its cultural role, "especially as opposed to the work performed by mimetic, or realist narratives." Oziewicz considers speculative fiction a tool to "dismantle the traditional Western cultural bias in favor of literature imitating reality." In different ways, "speculative fiction represents a global reaction of human creative imagination struggling to envision a possible future at the time of a major transition from local to global humanity."
Before the semester begins in October 2024, a list of novels to be read will be made available. The short stories which we will discuss will be made available in the course of the winter semester.

Migration Literature
098847 | Seminar | Thu 14-16

Every year, three to four million people move to a new country. From war refugees to corporate expats, migrants constantly reshape their places of departure and arrival. Migration is a central category of human existence which continues to shape those who have migrated as well as those who have not. This seminar focuses on literary representations of migration as well as on discussing the political and cultural functions these texts fulfill.
Students should obtain a copy of this collection:
The Penguin Book of Migration Literature: Departures, Arrivals, Generations, Returns. Ed. Dohra Ahmed. New York: Penguin, 2019.

Postgraduate Class I (Literary Studies)
098861 | Colloquium | Tue 12-14 (s.t.)

PTTS Colloquium
098877 | Colloquium | Thu 10-12

AR Felipe Espinoza Garrido

Nation, Nationalism, Transnationalism: Historical and Theoretical Foundations
098856 | Seminar | Tue 10-12 & Thu 14-16

This MA level seminar offers a transdisciplinary take on the study of nationhood, nationalism, and transnationalism and engages with various conceptualizations of these notions in both the humanities and the social sciences. Using Benedict Anderson’s influential idea of Imagined Communities as one of its departure points, the course takes seriously the idea of the social constructedness of the nation and tries to situate nations in their historical and geopolitical contexts. It questions how the nation came to be considered as culturally given and why it is regarded as the most potent unit of political organization and expressing sovereignty. In keeping in tune with this interrogation of how the idea of the nation and nationalism came to be, the seminar also engages with countervailing trends (such as transnationalism, globalization, and cosmopolitanism) which undercut the resilience of nationalism. The course also explores how related notions of gender, race, class, citizenship, imperialism, decolonization, and migration feature in the (de)construction and reproduction of nations. The main course aims include:

Placing contemporary theoretical debates into a wider historical context and considering earlier theorizations and discussions on the ‘origins’ of nations
Providing an overview of key theoretical approaches to nationalism and considering some of the main criticisms levelled against them in a comparative perspective
Considering how alternative forms of knowledge including ideas of decolonization challenge dominant Euro-American conceptualizations of nationhood and nationalism
Examining the ways in which cultural products such as novels, art, music, media, film, language, etc participate in both entrenching and undermining the idea of the nation, as well as transcending it. Students are particularly encouraged to engage with diverse forms of cultural artifacts such as fashion, gaming, sport, celebrity, media, TV to understand ideas of nation, nationalism and transnationalism.

Course readings will be made available in a course folder on Learnweb. A separate introductory reading list for independent study will also be made available. This is a reading-intensive course and students are encouraged to complete all their readings in readiness for class discussions. To pass this course, students will be expected to complete and pass a final exam.

Can Çakır

Alternate History Novels
098762 | Seminar | Wed 12-14

Dorit Neumann

Oceanic Imaginaries: Thinking and Reading with Water
098763 | Seminar | Mon 10-12

How can oceanic concepts change, question, and enrich the ways we read and think? What happens when we read a text’s surface or its depth? In this seminar, we will engage with formal representations, metaphorics, and materialities of water by drawing on different concepts from oceanic and Atlantic studies. We will explore how oceanic imageries and theories allow us to reimagine kinship and belonging, temporality, memory, identity, or (national) space by destabilizing ”landlocked” perspectives.

As bodies of water that connect as ecosystems and waterways, and/or that separate as impassable barriers or abysses, oceans also play an important role in the production and exchange of knowledge and cultures as well as in their loss. Histories of colonialism, imperialism, slavery and fugitivity are shaped by the oceans as are current issues of migration. Similarly, both the ecological crisis and issues of capitalist commodification manifest themselves in watery ways: uncontrollable aquatic forces like droughts, flooding, or hurricanes contrast with human attempts to control the accessibility of (drinking) water.

Over the course of this seminar, we will discuss a range of contexts and texts shaped by water, thereby learning to pay attention to material, metaphorical, and formal dimensions of oceanic thought. At the end of the semester, students will be able to explain and differentiate key concepts of oceanic literary studies in their own words. You will be able to identify formal aspects of oceanic literary works and argue for why a text can be described as ”oceanic.”

This course begins in the second week of term, on October 14.

Among other texts that will be provided in excerpts, we will read Rivers Solomon's novella The Deep (2019). Students are asked to purchase a copy in advance. Please consider supporting a local, independent bookstore.