On the coast of Calabria, Omar runs a small bar named after its famous counterpart in Morocco: Tangerinn. It is a place of remembrance and refuge for people who have come to Europe by sea. After Omar’s death, his younger daughter Mina returns home from London and is confronted with her family history, which she has long tried to escape. Will she finally find an answer to the question of who she is and what she truly wants?

In her debut novel Tangerinn, Emanuela Anechoum explores not only a complicated father-daughter relationship but also themes of origin, migration, and the search for identity across Italy, England, and Morocco. What role do languages and multilingualism play in Mina’s search for a sense of belonging? What interesting shifts in meaning arise from the translation of the Italian original into German? And what does the mandarin on the book cover have to do with all of this?

We are very pleased to welcome Emanuela Anechoum as part of our lecture series Literary Multilingualism: European Identity Formation in a Global Context for a reading from her novel Tangerinn, which was first published in German in February. The subsequent discussion will be moderated by Stefania Acciaioli, Eva-Tabea Meineke and Selina Seibel and translated into German.

You can find more information about the novel here.

The political border is a mechanism that influences human freedom of movement. At the same time, it means much more in terms of its consequences and genesis: on the one hand, the reality of the political borders of the globalized world and against the backdrop of an increasing planetary awareness may give rise to an almost urgent obligation to regulate human coexistence better than before in accordance with the dictates of morality and law. On the other hand, it is possible to ask in multiple ways what borders and their medial negotiations, in addition to their geographical and institutional reality, express culturally and artistically and to what extent transdisciplinary fictionalizations contribute to their aesthetics and pragmatics. So how do different fictions shape our image of and approach to political borders?

The workshop opened up - beyond the historical, political and economic perspectives that are certainly just as relevant - above all (1) literary, (2) legal and (3) philosophical perspectives on borders and their fictionalization. In addition to the joint text work, there were three lectures on the relationship between borders and fictions. The aim was not to have a comprehensive discussion. Rather, the discourses on the need to regulate the reality of borders on the one hand and their cultural-aesthetic dimensions on the other, which experience has shown to be more than far apart, were brought together to a certain extent.

With contributions by: Dana Bönisch (literary studies), Til Eyinck (philosophy), Max Maydell (law)

Organized by: Til Eyinck, Matthea Huerta Blanquez, Hanna Zehschnetzler

You can find the program here.

From December 4 to 6 2024, the binational 7th International Conference of the Word and Music Association Forum on Discipline and Freedom in Music and Literature took place at the University of Cologne. It was organized by Jan Czarnecki (Slavic Studies, Cologne) and Ivana Trajanoska (English Language and Literature, Skopje) and comprised seven conference blocks and six concerts. 
Details can be found under the following link: https://slavistik.phil-fak.uni-koeln.de/wmaf2024.

“Sono io e i miei piedi. Si, i miei piedi…” (It’s me and my feet. Yes, my feet…, 34, translation of my own), Igiaba Scego writes in La mia casa è dove sono (My home is where I am, 2010), about how she feels like a crossroads, defining herself with her feet. To think and write with one’s feet, is the central image of this lecture, in which Saskia Kroonenberg will investigate the relation between written language, bodies, and the world they live on. How does the act of walking relate to literature in times of globalization? What does the literary theme of walking teach us about Welt(-literatur)? Can Weltliteratur perhaps be best understood in terms of walking, writing and earth? In order to answer these questions, she turns to several examples of what might be called Italian postcolonial literature, in which the theme of walking and physical movement is discussed. Moving beyond static notions of language and being, she explores the healing powers of speaking while walking, asking how words can take on new meanings depending on where they are spoken, and by which body. 

Language: English

On Friday, 23.6.2023, at 2 p.m., we had an interdisciplinary discussion on the topic of "Serendipity in Criminalistics and Literature/Literary Studies" with Dr. Hedda Holzhauer, who works as a case analyst at the State Office of Criminal Investigation in Rheinland-Pfalz. Ms Holzhauer has written a dissertation on "Criminalistic Serendipity", which is available online: 

https://ediss.sub.uni-hamburg.de/bitstream/ediss/6960/1/Dissertation.pdf.

Against this background, we talked about exciting connections between her subject, her work and our scientific practices. 

Language: German

On Tuesday, 12 December 2023, from 17:45 to 19:15, we offered an open consultation hour on the topic of "Doctoral studies in Comparative Literature". If you are interested in doing a doctorate or have any questions, please feel free to email or talk to us at anytime.

Although numerous works in literary and cultural studies aim at the interactions between translatio and comparatio, there is a lack of a concrete, paradigmatic investigation of their manifestations. The workshop "Translating/Comparing: Conceptions of Comparative Practices" on 8 and 9 December at the University of Cologne represented the first part of a double conference on precisely those interactions, which initially concentrates on conceptions of translation: Beyond abstract terminological work, we took a look at procedures of visualising and verbalising in the context of translation. 

This includes, on the one hand, the examination of literary representations, which can be seen as a formulation of the images mentioned, and, on the other hand, the examination of "extra-literary", i.e. cultural-historical, philosophical or (visual) media material. Insofar as mental images of translation may also appear as narrative operators in the theorisations of the history of science and technology, historiography, anthropology as well as visual and media art, the comparison of literary and non-literary 'visualisations' should make translation recognisable as a transdisciplinary and transdiscursively effective process.

A second workshop is planned for May 2024 in Thessaloniki, which will conversely look at images and scenes of comparison linked to translation processes. More information and the exact conference programme will follow.

Speakers: 

• Maria Oikonomou
• Esther Kilchmann
• Alexandra Rassidiakis
• Ulrich Meurer
• Melanie Strasser
• Caroline Mannweiler
• Georgios Sagriotis
• Caroline Sauter
• Andreas Keller

You can find the programme here. 

Language: German

Organised by Jun.-Prof. Dr. Judtih Rauscher (American Literature and Culture) and Jun.-Prof. Dr. Joachim Harst, Prof. Travis Harris (Norfolk State University) gave a Guest Lecture entitled "Stranger In My Own Country: Hip Hop, Disenfranchised Identities, and Performances of Resistance" on Thursday, 30 November 2023, at 6 p.m. in the Philosophikum, Room S93. 

Abstract:

This talk will draw out the parallels between minority groups in the US and Germany with a particular focus on those who are Hip Hop. Bringing together performance studies with Hip Hop studies, I will analyze the ways in which disenfranchised peoples perform Hip Hop identities. This particular Hip Hop identity performed is informed by the idea of Hip Hop being a collective consciousness that comes out of a sacrifice. This Hip Hop identity is not one that the Hip Hoppa puts on and takes off, they are Hip Hop all the time. Therefore, this notion of "performance" is not a stage performance, rather, it is how minorities live in the private and public spheres that enables them to resist oppressive forces.

Language: English

This year's annual conference of the Research Training Group "anschließen - ausschließen" was dedicated to the topic "Sense/Sensing. Knowledge practices in transformation". It took place on Thursday, 30 November, and Friday, 1 December, in the Alter Senatssaal in the main building of the University of Cologne. 

You can find the conference programme here.

Language: German

The workshop focused on the topic of translation, which is central to the research training group "anschließen-ausschließen", from a postcolonial and practice-oriented perspective. While translation is commonly understood as a process of bridging or connecting - e.g. a text to a foreign-language cultural space - the opposing thesis has also been put forward that such images of bridge-building first and foremost reinforce the notion of initially separate languages and thus reinforce processes of exclusion (Sakai 2012). Similar lines of conflict can be identified in relation to the fundamental question of the (in)translatability of literature (Apter 2006, Cassin 2004) or in relation to the negotiation of world literature (Damrosch 2003, Apter 2013, Walkowitz 2015). These translation-theoretical considerations take on renewed relevance when thought through against the backdrop of postcolonial power relations and experiences of migration.

The workshop focused on three texts by Jacques Derrida, Hélène Cixous and Barbara Cassin, which discuss problems of translation theory but also play conceptually between languages themselves. The invited speakers have translated these texts into German and have therefore dealt intensively not only with their argumentation but also with their linguistic constitution. They guided the text discussions, but also reported on their experiences in translation and brought these into the joint reflection.

The workshop took place on 16 and 17 November 2023 at Classen-Kappelmann-Str. 24, 50931 Cologne. It was primarily aimed at doctoral students and associated Master's students of the Kolleg, but was also open to advanced Master's students in comparative literature.

Texts:

• Jacques Derrida, Was ist eine ›relevante Übersetzung‹, in: Esther von der Osten / Caroline Sauter (Hg.), Was ist eine ›relevante‹ Übersetzung? Arbeiten mit Derrida, transcript 2022.
• Hélène Cixous, Algériance. Dekonstruktion des Kolonialen, übersetzt von Esther von der Osten, Passagen-Verlag 2023.
• Barbara Cassin, ›entre‹, in: Dies., Die Unübersetzbaren. Drei Essays, hrsg. von Judith Kasper, übersetzt und supplementiert von Ingo Ebener, Spencer Hawkins, Judith Kasper, Larissa Krampert, Theresa Mayer, Christoph Roeber, Jonathan Schmidt-Dominé, Jana Wilhelm, turia + kant 2023.

Translators/Speakers:

• Dr. Caroline Sauter, AVL, University of Frankfurt
• Dr. Esther von der Osten, AVL, FU Berlin
• Larissa Krampert, AVL, University of Frankfurt

You can find the programme here. 

Language: German

Along side Hannes Bajohr, the media artist Gregor Weichbrodt is co-founder of the digital text collective "0x0a". On June 23 he was guest in Prof. Joachim Harst's lecture "Knowledge and Property in the Age of Digitalisation" and talked with us about computer-generated literature, semantic web, the post-digital and more.

The focus was on Weichbrodt's book "I Don't Know" (2015), which is available on his website (gregorweichbrodt.de) and is described as follows: "An algorithm combs through the universe of online encyclopedia Wikipedia and collects its entries. A text is generated in which a narrator denies knowing anything about any of these entries."

At our two meetings this semester, four students presented their Master's projects: 

• Leonie Herberth
• Anna-Lena Guttmann
• Maren Rieger
• Sven Spaltner

The XIXth conference of the German Society for General and Comparative Literature took place from 30 May to 2 June on the Neues Palais campus of the University of Potsdam under the title "Zwischen-Spiele" ("Interludes"): 

The interlude is well known as part of aesthetic works. It connects what is formally separate across preserved boundaries and, although often aesthetically underestimated, is indispensable with regard to the structure of the whole. In doing so, the arts draw on a fascinating property of play. Play connects heterogeneous things, things that are alien to one another - without reason, indeed even more, precisely through the absence of any reason.

The conference explored this play of a productive, creative in-between and the questions, whether in this way, the paradigm of comparison, which gives our subject its name and yet is not unproblematic, can be juxtaposed with a somewhat shifted paradigm of entering into contact: A coming into contact that does not come about through an abstract criterion of similarity or comparison, but occurs as an observable play of resonances, of repulsions and attractions that open up a productive in-between, a space of play involving us as recipients.

Our department was represented with a panel on the topic "Schriftspiele zwischen analoger und digitaler Textualität"/"Writing games between analogue and digital textuality" under the direction of Jun.-Prof. Dr. Joachim Harst and with further contributions by Lukas Hermann, Jun.-Prof. Dr. Julia Nantke (Hamburg) and Dr. Martin Bartelmus (Düsseldorf).

The conference programme and further information can be found here: Zwischen-Spiele (zwischenspiele.de)

Language: German

Among other notable awards, the American poet and essayist Rita Dove received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1987, and served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1993 to 1995, andas Poet Laureate of Virginia from 2004 to 2006. Since 1989, she has been teaching at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where she held the chair of Commonwealth Professor of English from 1993 to 2020; as of 2020 she holds the chair of Henry Hoyns Professor of Creative Writing.

On 23 May 2023 at 6 p.m., Rita Dove presented "A Lifetime of Song" at the University of Cologne, Hörsaalgebäude, Hörsaal C, Albertus-Magnus Platz 1, organised by Prof. Anke Ortlepp, Vice-Dean of International Affairs of the University of Cologne, Viktoria Harbecke, AmerikaHaus NRW e.V. and Jun.-Prof. Judith Rauscher, University of Cologne.

When Ginzburg (1995) stated that the humanities, like crime literature, are founded on the circumstantial evidence paradigm, he had in mind Sherlock Holmes, a detective who personally visited the scene of the crime. Against the background of current developments in research and investigation, however, this must be revised and updated: Computer-assisted search and investigation methods can now supplement or even replace an inspection of the crime scene, an evaluation of positive traces. A shift is therefore emerging in the popular portrayal of modern investigation, replacing the individual investigator with a team of forensic scientists solving cases through digital data processing.

While such investigative practices are associated with positivist claims of knowledge in popular representations, from a scientific perspective it is also necessary to examine their constructivist dimension: Reconstructions, visualisations and simulations produce evidence and, in extreme cases, can produce the traces to be evaluated in the first place. Thus, today's investigative practices bear witness to and engage in a progressive virtualisation of investigative knowledge.

The conference at the University of Münster aimed to examine this virtualisation in the late 20th century. It took place on 4 and 5 May 2023 in the reading room of the library of the Institute of German Studies (Schlossplatz 34, 48143 Münster). 

You can find the program here.

Language: German

Investigative art deals critically with the world by making social and political structures visible through in-depth research and imaging processes. It wants to uncover structures of power, explain governmental and economic interests and reveal veiled facts. 

Prof. Franziska Nori, director of the Frankfurter Kunstverein, talked to us about this on 4 May at 6:30 pm at the Picasso Art Museum in Münster.

With examples from current international art and with a focus on the exhibition "Three Doors", which the Frankfurter Kunstverein realised with the research agency Forensic Architecture / Forensis e.V., the relatives of the victims of the racist attack in Hanau and the relatives of Oury Jalloh in May 2022, the spectrum of artistic investigative work and its radius of action on society were aimed to be shown. 

Language: German

Talk with Marcella Melien from litprom e. V. Frankfurt about career prospects in the field of literature education and cultural management in the context of the lecture “Professional Fields of Ethnology & Islamic Studies: Insights into Professional Practice”; in cooperation with Ethnology and the Oriental Seminar/Languages and Cultures of the Islamic World. All interested students are welcome!

A workshop on current research projects of the Cologne Mythological Network will take place on January 20, 2022 from 5:45 p.m. to 7:15 p.m. The program will be announced soon. All interested students are invited. After registration via komparatistik@uni-koeln.de the zoom link will be sent to you. 

On December 16, Greta Hawes (Harvard CHS) will give a guest lecture on "Ancient Greek Myth Without Myth-Tellers". The lecture will take place as a virtual event via Zoom. If you are interested, send an email to komparatistik@uni-koeln.de to receive the link. All interested students are very welcome!

On November 18, from 5.15 p.m. to 7.45 p.m., García Ramón (UCSC Milan) will hold a guest lecture with the title "On God Names in Ancient Greece and Italy: Linguistics, Philology, Comparative Reconstruction". All interested students are welcome. The guest lecture will be held online. You can register by sending an e-mail to  and you will receive the zoom link. 

The talk will focus on a choice of divine names and epithets used to invoke gods in inscriptions or literary texts, which reveal precious information about the characteristics of the different divine beings and mythological characters and their representations by Greeks and Romans. Cultic and literary epithets of gods reflect different aspects of their divine personality and can show astonishing characteristics, which are highly instructive about their powers. The talk will make the case for the importance of a threefold approach involving Linguistics, Philology, and Comparative Reconstruction for the interpretation of divine onomastics.

Prof. José Luis García Ramón currently teaches at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Milan), and was previously Professor of Historical Comparative Linguistics at the University of Cologne (until 2015) and Professor of Greek Philology at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (until 1995). Among his favorite research topics are Indo-European Reconstruction, Morphosyntax, Etymology, Onomastics, and Poetics, with special focus on Greek, Latin and Italic, Indo-Iranian, and Anatolian.

Reading Detectives – Linguistic and Literary Aspects

Linguistic and Literary Aspects

On the one hand, detective stories implicitly invite readers to slip into the role of detectives. In particular, they have to gather information step by step, and to gradually find out who is who, although they are often hampered by misleading, false or just missing clues. Linguistic analyses of detective stories and their reading implications consider, for example, the multiple references to the people involved (anaphoric expressions), especially in the short crime stories by Christie, Conan Doyle, and Chesterton. Far from being mechanical and boring, these references provide interesting information not only about the development of the plot, but also about the different perspectives being adopted, and the identity of characters.

On the other hand, detectives themselves can be taken as readers whose work consists in decoding more or less effortful signs. One could ask detectives what is possible to learn from them about the process of reading. In this respect, the role of rhetorical questions for solving cases and the construction of evidence chains could be investigated (see e.g. Carlo Ginzburg’s thesis according to which metonymies and metaphors are to be understood as the basic operations of detective reading). Furthermore, postmodern detective stories from Borges to Auster often inquire about epistemological, theoretical and metaphysical consequences of detective reading.

The colloquium aims at an interdisciplinary epistemological, cognitive, and metatextual dialogue on these themes.

Programm:

Lecture Series as part of the Morphomata Lectures Cologne

As part of the MLC, the Morphomata Center for Advanced Studies and the Juniorprofessur for Comparative Literature invites listeners to a dialogue between scholars of literary and other human studies concerning „praxeology and comparative studies“. The Lectures take into account different praxeological approaches from a comparative perspective while simultaneously asking to what extend comparing itself can be understood as a practice.

From a praxeological perspective, what approaches are suitable to map creative processes? In what way are the creativity of the individual and social structures engaging with each other? How are artistic practices related to other forms of production and action? How is the often times subordinate  operation of comparing related to productivity and creativity? Which creative practices can be perceived as historically or structurally fundamental to Comparative Literature?

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Colloquium im WS 19/20

Ancient Myths in Modern Art:

Comparative Perspectives on Micro and Macro Structures

Thursdays, 5:45–7:15 p.m.
Classen-Kappelmann-Str. 24, Raum 3.03

Anna Bonifazi/Joachim Harst

Ancient myths are omnipresent in 20th and 21st century literature and art. In this colloquium scholars from comparative literature and linguistics as well as from related disciplines will present their research on the subject. Both myths in ancient cultures and the history of their reception in the arts will be addressed. In addition to the detailed analysis of individual myths (e.g. the hero's return home), the comparative examination of mythical figures and their reception (e.g. Orpheus) as well as the macrostructural view of Indo-European mythology will be discussed. Students can take this opportunity to present and discuss their own research projects within the (broad) framework of myth reception.

Schedule

24.10.
Introduction/preparatory text reading/discussion

31.10. - Anna Bonifazi 
The Myth of Orpheus in Claudio Monteverdi's opera Orfeo

07.11. - Joachim Harst 
Odysseus' Heimkehr und das Ende der Odyssee in Homer, Dante und Borges 

14.11. - Elio Antonucci 
Expressive Symbolism in Ernst Cassirer's Conception of Myth 

28.11. - Antonella Lipscomb
The Myth of Orpheus and the Phoenix in Jean Cocteau's Cinematography

05.12. - Riccardo Ginevra 
Comparative Perspectives on Ancient Indo-European Myths and Modern Folktales 

12.12. - Penelope Kolovou
Mapping Otherworlds from Homer's nekuia to Leopardi's Visions of Infinite Love and S. Armitage's Capitalistic Poundland

19.12. - Giulia Sperduti 
Classical Myths in Modern Afro-American Literatur 

09.01. - Gabriele Schimmenti
Antigone after Antigone? A Guide to Collide Better 

16.01. - Maja Tschumi 
Der Hexer (2016)

23.01. - Daniel Kölligan
Io, Mary, and the Ear: Myths of Conception in Greek and Biblical Tradition

World-famous, yet unread?

Biblical Hebrew Poetry: Between Art and Truth

Cologne | January 21, 2021, 7:30 p.m. | Literaturhaus Köln
Link to the event | Free admission

With Ulf Stolterfoht
Moderator: Gundula Schiffer

The Bible is the most translated book in the world. Yet many people are unfamiliar with its great texts; reading this tradition-laden scripture often seems arduous and inaccessible. But what if we were to view the Bible more from a literary perspective and less as a historical or theological document? Gundula Schiffer and Ulf Stolterfoht explore this question using biblical poetry as an example.

Ulf Stolterfoht, born in 1963, lives in Berlin. As a poet and translator, he is a member of the Lyrikknappschaft Schöneberg, the improv collective DAS WEIBCHEN, and the Berlin and Darmstadt Academies. From 2015 to 2020, he ran the poetry publishing house Brueterich Press. His most recent publications include Methodenmann vs. Grubenzwang und mündelsichre Rübsal (UV, Winter 2019) and fachsprachen XLVI‒LIV (kookbooks, 2020).

Gundula Schiffer, born in 1980, lives in Cologne. She is a poet and translator; she earned her doctorate on the poetry of the Psalms, writes poetry in German and Hebrew, and translates her own work into German. Her most recent publication is the anthology *Was es bedeuten soll. New Hebrew Poetry in Germany (parasitenpresse 2019, ed. and trans. with Adrian Kasnitz). She is currently working on her second poetry collection, Hioba Hymore.

An event organized by Weltlesebühne e.V. in cooperation with the Junior Professorship in Comparative Literature at the University of Cologne and the Literaturhaus Köln.

Guest Lecture

02.12.2020 | 18:00 Uhr via Zoom 

 Erika Weiberg (Duke University) 

The Writing on the Mind:

Deianeira’s Trauma in Sophocles’ Women of Trachis

Almost every Greek tragedy features a wound. Oedipus’ gouged-out eyes are among the most memorable, but there are many other varieties: combat wounds, animal bites, and even emotional wounds. This last type of trauma dominates the events of Sophocles’ Women of Trachis, which dramatizes the connection between Deianeira’s emotional pain and the physical pain of her husband, Heracles. Over the course of the play, Deianeira narrates the chronic pain and anxiety she feels during Heracles’ cyclical absences, as well as a past incident of sexual violence that continues to affect her even many years later. Drawing on modern trauma research, this talk argues that Sophocles’ Women of Trachis depicts the struggle of putting words to these types of emotional wounds.

Workshop – Discovery and Knowledge of the World

Comparative Literature as an academic discipline is notoriously underdetermined. Disagreement concerning its object of study as well as its method accompanies Comparative Literature since its institutionalisation as an academic field of study in the 19th century. Explaining the origin of comparative studies with an ‚episteme of comparison‘ (Eggers 2016) means to vote for a structural approach and the historical understanding of comparison as an objectifying and systematizing method. Today, however, comparison as a method is criticised – especially from a postcolonial standpoint (cf. Felski/Friedmann 2013). Furthermore, Comparative Literature today can hardly be brought in line with the positivistic approaches of the Comparative Literary History, out of which it developed. In order to not abandon the notion of comparison, Comparative Literature has to be conceived in a new way. The workshop thus asks for comparative practices, which were already implemented before respectively during the establishment of a ‚comparative‘ episteme, and focuses especially on voyages of world discovery in the 18th and 19th century.

November 23, 2020

6:00 p.m. | Walter Erhart
The History of World Travel and the Burden of Comparison: Practices of Globalization in the 19th Century.

November 24, 2020

9:15 a.m. | Welcome and Introduction

9:30 a.m. | Angus Nicholls
The Comparative Method in Oxford Around 1870: Max Müller, Edward Augustus Freeman, Edward Burnett Tylor

10:30 a.m. | Dorit Müller
Comparative Practice on Expeditionary Journeys (Late 18th Century): Georg Wilhelm Steller and Adelbert Chamisso

11:30 a.m. | Monika Sproll
Seeing What Reveals Itself: Chamisso’s “Theater of Nature”

4:00 p.m. | Reinhard Möller 
Keynote Lecture on Georg Forster

5:00 p.m. | Michael Eggers 
Collecting vs. Classifying: Some Thoughts on the Genesis of Carl von Linné’s System of Nature Based on His Travel Accounts 

Guest Lecture

As part of the course “Introduction to Comparative Literature 2” Maria Oikonomou (Comparative Literature, Thessaloniki) will give a guest lecture on “Migrant/Revenant: The Vampyric Return in Literature” on July 2, 2020. 

On 14 and 15 February 2020, the workshop "Comparison - Translation - World Literature. Comparative Practices in Discussion" took place in Bern, organised by Melanie Rohner, Alena Heinritz and Joachim Harst.

Reading and Discussion with Patricio Pron

January 30, 2020, 5:15 p.m.
Room 3.03, Classen-Kappelmann-Str. 24

Patricio Pron, Henriette Terpe, and students will read from the short story Un divorcio de 1974 and its German translation, which was produced as part of a seminar. Afterward, they will discuss specific and broader questions of translation with the audience.

Patricio Pron has received numerous awards for his literary work. He also works as a literary translator and literary critic.

The discussion will be conducted in German. 

Guest Lecture

January 7, 2020, 7:30 p.m.
Room 3.03, Classen-Kappelmann-Str. 24

Prof. Dr. Linda Simonis will give a lecture titled “Political Epigraphy: Inscriptions as Media of Governance and Administration” as part of the advisory board meeting. All interested parties are cordially invited.

Author Discussion

December 5, 2019, 4:00–5:30 p.m.
Classen-Kappelmann-Str. 24, Room 3.03

A conversation between authors Juliána Kalnay and Fernanda Melchor about the novel Season of Hurricanes (German edition, 2019), the international literary scene, and the cultural and political significance of literary awards.

Fernanda Melchor received the HKW International Literature Prize and the Anna Seghers Prize for her novel. The conversation will be conducted in Spanish with German translation. 

Geoliterary Comparative Literature Workshop

November 22, 2019, 12:30–18:30 
Room 0.012 in the Philosophikum (Department of Iberian and Latin American History)

Kenneth White’s geopoetics proves to be a method (methodos, Greek = way) for fostering an intelligent and creative relationship between humanity and the Earth. The Earth is viewed as a universal unifying force. Geopoetics is oriented toward a borderless, open space and understands itself as a present-oriented and future-oriented mode of culture. With regard to poetry and prose, the practice of geopoetics also encompasses its critical dimension—that is, its contextualization in relation to geopoetics avant la lettre as well as to the ethical principles of geopoetics. The first conference of the Geoliterary Workshop, hosted by the University of Cologne, will explore the foundations of geopoetics from a comparative perspective, as well as the positioning of géopoétique within current literary spatial research and the specific analysis of geological condensations.

Program

12:30–1:00 p.m.
Introduction (Bauer, Grimm)

1:00–2:00 p.m.
Angela Lotz (M.A., Wales): Grammar of Things, Poetics of the World—The Expression of the Earth in Kenneth White’s Geopoetic Literature + Discussion

2:00–3:00 p.m.
Claudia Grimm (M.A., Cologne): A Close Examination: Mountain, Stone, and Mineral in Kenneth White’s Geopoetics + Discussion

3:00–3:30 p.m.
Break

3:30–4:30 p.m.
Dr. Erika Schellenberger (Marburg): Peter Kurzeck and the Romantic Search for Home in Contemporary Literature + Discussion

4:30–5:30 p.m.
Dr. Dana Bönisch (Bonn): Geopoetics as Ethopoetics? Topological Narrative in the Context of Global Conflicts + Discussion

5:30–6:30 p.m.
Dr. Sidona Bauer (Cologne): George Sand’s La Filleule (1853) in the Light of Geopoetics and Literary Geography + Discussion

Organizers: Dr. Sidona Bauer, Claudia Grimm, Junior Professor Joachim Harst  I  Department of Romance Languages and Comparative Literature