This course is offered in collaboration with the Slavic Institute and is open to students of all languages who are interested in questions of literary theory: What is literature? What does literature do to us? What do we do with literature? Who is the reader, and what defines a literary work of art? And is the author really dead? In this course, we will explore and discuss fundamental questions about literature together, read and critically analyze classics of literary theory, and practice engaging in open discussion with one another.

Fan studies primarily focus on contemporary fan cultures, mostly in the digital sphere. But how can we study historical fan cultures dating back to the 19th century? What sources provide insights into these cultures? What methodologies can be used to analyze them? In this joint seminar offered by the Department of Media and Cultural Studies and the Department of Scandinavian Studies, we aim to approach fan studies primarily from a historical-source perspective and to analyze sources such as letters, scrapbooks, postcards, and memorabilia from a historical-ethnographic standpoint. After approximately two to three introductory sessions during regular class time—in which we will be introduced to research on historical fan cultures and its challenges, and assignments will be distributed—we will meet on May 9 for a one-day workshop at the Erich Auerbach Institute, located at Weyertal 59 (rear building, 2nd floor). At this workshop, we will discuss key research issues in English with leading national and international experts in the field. The seminar will conclude with approximately five sessions during regular class hours, during which we will discuss the assigned tasks in light of the insights gained from the workshop.

Following the publication of Jean-François Lyotard’s essay La condition postmoderne in 1979, the term “postmodernism” became the hallmark of certain philosophical discourses, particularly French theoretical thought, which today is primarily associated with the names Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. This course explores the intellectual genealogy of philosophical postmodernism. Drawing on a selection of texts ranging from Friedrich Nietzsche to Hannah Arendt to Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, we will examine transformations in German philosophy within “French theory” and, among other things, discuss Jacques Bouveresse’s thesis that postmodern thinkers are “the objective heirs” of Oswald Spengler’s right-wing conservative Nietzscheanism.

Are there fans in the theater—whether of individual actors and actresses, the institution itself, specific plays, or individual directors? Is there a relevant overlap between fandom and its practices and the theater that helps us better understand both the history of fandom and that of the theater? Only recently has research begun to pay attention to this overlap: Fandom and the stage, fandom studies and theater studies have rarely been linked in the past. This seminar is part of an international conference titled “Fans in the Theater? About Unbeloved Fannish Spectators and Theater’s Self-Image 1860–1920,” which will take place October 23–25, 2024, at Schloss Wahn. Attendance at the conference is mandatory for seminar participants. The conference experience will be framed by three pre-conference sessions that introduce the topic, as well as 1–2 concluding sessions in which we will summarize the conference.

From a comparative perspective, this seminar examines classic texts that have been discussed in Germany and Scandinavia in the context of the debate on naturalism. The focus is on programmatic poetological texts (including those by Émile Zola, August Strindberg, and Arno Holz) as well as prose and drama, which we will analyze together through close reading. In doing so, we aim to address, in particular, the research questions of to what extent one can speak of “naturalism” in Scandinavia at all, and what significance can be attributed to the intertextual relationships between Scandinavian and German texts. The course is offered in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Torsten Hahn from the Institute for German Language and Literature I and is intended for master’s students as well as advanced bachelor’s students.

Georges Perec’s work is now considered part of the canon of 20th-century French literature, as evidenced by its inclusion in the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. His texts stand out from the playful, experimental works of the Oulipo group in that they simultaneously offer a sociocultural analysis of postwar society and revolve around the deeply traumatic experience of the Shoah for his own family. His work was also received with great enthusiasm in the German-speaking world from an early stage; some works—such as his radio play Die Maschine (1968)—were even written specifically for him. Using selected narrative and essayistic texts, our seminar will explore Perec’s original writing methods, their cultural and historical context, and their resonance in experimental German literature. Special attention will be given to his works Espèces d’espaces (Dreams of Spaces, 1974) and W ou le souvenir d’enfance (W or the Memory of Childhood, 1975). In addition, we will examine German-language responses to the Oulipist program: Alongside poems and theoretical reflections by Oskar Pastior, who published jointly with Perec, the seminar will examine aspects of mathematical-combinatorial poetics in the work of Max Bense as well as experiments with linguistic material in the work of Franz Mon, and will trace the consequences of these approaches in narrative texts by Thomas Bernhard and Marcel Beyer.

The colloquium provides a setting in which advanced students and doctoral candidates can become familiar with the basic concepts and foundational texts of narrative theory, discuss them, and apply them to their own projects. Particular emphasis is placed on the concepts of mimesis (imitation) and diegesis (representation) in their various historical and theoretical manifestations from antiquity to postmodernism. It is important to us that these concepts (and narrative theory in general) are not only significant for literary texts but are also relevant to other media artifacts. Therefore, in this colloquium we will also discuss the extent to which non-language-based artifacts can be analyzed using concepts from narrative theory. We will examine various media such as film, theater, visual arts, and digital media, and explore how the concepts of mimesis and diegesis can be applied to these media. The seminar will take a discussion-based and interactive format. The focus will be on the joint reading and analysis of foundational texts. In addition, you will have the opportunity to suggest your own texts, which we can then discuss together in the seminar. This will give you the chance to contribute your individual interests and research focuses and to explore them in the context of narrative theory and its application to various media.

In this seminar, we will examine intertextual and transcultural connections and the histories of these relationships between premodern and modern literary texts from Arab and European cultures. Which classical themes, forms, and motifs crossed geographical boundaries and found their way into modern literary texts? How have these themes evolved in more recent works, and what ideological, social, or personal conditions have driven these changes? We will explore these questions through close readings of specific texts. Few people realize that Western “classics” such as Dante’s Divine Comedy (1321) find a precursor in a work by Al-Ma’arri, the Epistle on Forgiveness (11th century), and that Defoe’s “Robinson Crusoe” (1719) shares connections with Ibn Tufail’s Hayy ibn Yaqzan (“The Philosopher as an Autodidact,” 12th century). A prime example from the 20th century is the Argentine author J.L. Borges, who regularly draws on Attar’s “The Conference of the Birds” to transform this premodern mystical allegory into a foundational text of his “literary pantheism.” For the Argentine writer, the reference to an Arab author also serves to lend his literary self-representation a sense of universality. In this way, we aim to uncover the forgotten, unknown, or unnamed “origins” of European cultural modernity and to better understand their emergence and transformation. To this end, we draw on literary and cultural theoretical approaches from “postcolonial studies,” interculturality and transculturality, as well as travel and migration studies. Finally, by examining specific examples, we aim to reflect on both the theory and practice of comparative studies.

The colloquium continues the collaboration between the departments of Comparative Literature and Linguistics at the University of Cologne and is designed this semester as a colloquium for master’s and doctoral students. In individual sessions, master’s and doctoral students present their projects (whether in progress or completed) and open them up for discussion. General questions regarding the structure and organization of the master’s program can also be addressed during these sessions. In addition, the program is enriched by thematically focused reading sessions as well as individual guest lectures by international scholars. The overarching goal is to explore parallels and differences between comparative literary and linguistic research. Presentations may be given in German or English; as a rule, both languages may be used during the discussion.

The summer school is being held in cooperation with the University of Kentucky and Pennsylvania State University and offers a comparative look at how ancient heritage is handled in Germany and the United States. Using selected examples (including the Battle of Varus and the Battle of Gettysburg), the program examines various techniques for appropriating and “utilizing” ancient traditions. Among other things, the summer school explores the role that antiquity plays in current political debates in both countries. It also addresses the presentation of ancient artifacts in museums, as well as the role of antiquity in shaping the self-identity of the African American population in the U.S. and the Jewish community in Cologne, which was first mentioned in historical sources in 321 CE. Furthermore, the summer school serves as a platform for academic exchange between German and American students and faculty.

Ever since Carlo Ginzburg spoke of a 19th-century “paradigm of circumstantial evidence,” it has been recognized that the humanities, criminology, and detective stories are closely related both epistemologically and historically. Classic detectives are masterful interpreters of signs, while influential thinkers of the time—Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud—employed a detective-like “hermeneutics of suspicion” (Ricoeur) to penetrate beneath the surface of reality. Even in the 20th century, scholars in the humanities—and literary scholars in particular—liked to cast themselves as detectives when, for example, in the spirit of American “critique,” they examined texts for their complicity with or subversiveness toward existing power structures. Yet detective-style reading has recently come under criticism as well, as evidenced, for instance, by Rita Felski’s call for a “post-critical” reading. Building on these observations, the seminar will instead explore how scholarly reading is portrayed in modern and postmodern detective novels. For it is striking how many texts in the genre—from Borges and Nabokov to Auster and Piglia—use the proximity between the detective and the reader to address scholarly forms of reading and writing and to view the academic world with a critical eye. A recurring theme here is the question of how close professional suspicion—since every sign can be deceptive and must therefore be scrutinized—comes to paranoia, such that gaining insight comes at the cost of losing touch with reality. At the same time, postmodern detective stories in particular offer insights into the emotional connections between the material world, signs, and readers—connections that are also so important for scholars.

For several decades, comparative studies—the comparative examination of cultural and artistic artifacts—were understood as an umbrella or subdiscipline of philology: as “general and comparative literary studies.” However, it has always gone beyond a narrower understanding of literature: on the one hand, as the forerunner of modern media studies, where the latter has evolved into media philology. On the other hand, it has also been present in the systematic reflections and early historical foundations that have always operated across and in comparison of different media (e.g., considering theatrical performances as dramatic texts, interpreting images and poems, and bringing together the aesthetics of architecture, visual arts, and music with the analysis of linguistic structures).   Today, comparative media studies is understood in at least two ways: as media cultural studies that is comparative in nature—spanning cultures, languages, and genre traditions—and as a discipline that compares media, such as written and performance cultures, visual and textual media, or print and internet societies.  From a genuinely media-cultural studies perspective, however, these two approaches prove to be convergent: there is no cultural difference without media distinctions, and no media difference that can be explained solely in technical or genre-based terms. This perspective becomes indispensable, at the very latest, for the media-convergent and glocalized communication experiences of the 21st century. In this sense, this interdisciplinary course offers insight into the systematics, history, and specific methods of comparative media studies: into the disciplinary history of comparison—from Aristotle through the theoretical development of world literature and the history of global discovery, (post)colonial mediality, all the way to modern global networking and disconnection; into the systematics of comparison, its methods, its practice, and its ethos; and into media-comparative approaches such as adaptation studies, inter- and transmediality research, the cross-media art of understanding as textual and visual hermeneutics, and the examination of literary and media multilingualism.

Conventions or customs refer to those patterns of action and behavior based on repetition that structure the social life of human communities at a level below the law. They are socially accepted and available to all who make use of them. We take them for granted as regulators of everyday life, and it is precisely this existence of conventionalized practices that forms the foundation of social stability. Yet while the conventional is, in this sense, particularly persistent, it is at the same time subject to processes of dynamization: although conventions are often long-lasting, they too are subject to change, in that they can be modified or differentiated, sanctioned, or rejected. In this context, the seminar focuses on the question of how the narrative genres of medieval literature depict the dynamization of conventionality. At the beginning of the seminar, a theoretical and methodological framework will be developed through seminar discussions based on the reading of selected scholarly works (Reckwitz, Bourdieu, Reberg, Strohschneider, etc.), which will guide our analysis of the texts. Using selected textual examples from medieval narrative literature, we will then, on the one hand, examine the poeticization of social practice across various subjects. On the other hand, we will consider literature itself as an aesthetic convention.

The seminar is offered in cooperation with the Comparative Literature program. Given its methodological interdisciplinarity and the heterogeneity of the objects under consideration, it aims to provide a critical introduction to the issues of universality and specificity in cultural objects. The seminar will be based on a collaborative “close reading” of selected objects from various media. Supplementary theoretical and cultural-historical literature from both Chinese- and German-speaking regions will also be drawn upon. Among the questions addressed in the seminar are the relationship between medium, writing, and reading practices: To what extent do different media and scripts shape different reading practices? What can “reading” mean in European and Chinese cultural history? Can non-written artifacts also be “read”? In this vein, the seminar will also explore insights into “Chinese” versus “German” semantics and aesthetics within the tension between the general material nature of the respective media and the specific cultural and aesthetic forms in China and Germany, in order to relate these to their respective cultural and sociopolitical contexts and environments.

On the one hand, detective stories implicitly invite readers to step into the role of detectives. In particular, they are meant to gather information step by step and gradually figure out who is who, often hindered by misleading, false, or simply missing clues. Linguistic analyses of detective narratives and their implicit guidance of readers take into account, for example, the multiple references to the characters involved (anaphoric expressions), using short detective stories by Christie, Conan Doyle, and Chesterton as examples. Rather than being mechanical and tedious, these references provide interesting implicit information not only about the development of the plot but also about the various perspectives and the identities of the characters. On the other hand, detectives themselves can be understood as readers whose work consists of a more or less laborious process of deciphering signs. Therefore, one might ask them what we can learn from them about reading. In this context, one could, for example, examine the role of rhetorical figures in solving cases and constructing chains of evidence (cf., for instance, Carlo Ginzburg’s thesis that metonymy and metaphor should be understood as the basic operations of detective reading). In addition, postmodern detective stories—from Borges to Auster—frequently explore the epistemological, subject-theoretical, and metaphysical consequences of detective-style reading. Finally, there are also detective stories that explicitly address reading, writing, and other philological techniques (correction, annotation, editing). The colloquium aims to foster an interdisciplinary epistemological, cognitive, and metatextual dialogue on these topics.

The “ligne claire” drawing style, pioneered by the Belgian artist Hergé, has not only had a lasting influence on the Franco-Belgian tradition of bande dessinée, but has also left a distinct mark on more recent comics, manga, and graphic novels elsewhere. Since the mid-20th century, the clear contours, flat colors, and increasingly cartoonish character designs of the ligne claire have shaped notions of a general comic book aesthetic far beyond the scope of a single drawing school. The episodic and increasingly humorous adventure narrative demonstrates the transmedia appropriation of popular literary forms and, in turn, provides templates for further adaptations and sequels. The politicization of the plot and character portrayals—sometimes avoided, sometimes sought—gives the “ligne claire” albums a heterogeneous and not always uncontroversial profile. In our seminar, which takes a comparative approach, we will discuss both classic and contemporary examples of this style in terms of their media-specific characteristics, narrative structures, and historical-cultural implications. The program includes albums by Hergé, Edgar Jacobs, and Yves Chaland, as well as by Eric Heuvel, Jason Lutes, Sarah Glidden, Rutu Modan, and Chris Ware. Knowledge of French is welcome and useful, but not a prerequisite for participation.

Not only did the automobile give rise to new cultural practices and discourses from the very beginning, but it also soon found its way into literature and cinema. There, it appeared as a guarantor of individual mobility and freedom, as a vehicle for dynamic spatial experiences or exhilarating acceleration, but also as a status symbol, a death machine, and the embodiment of a modernity to be rejected. Drawing on current theories of mobility and space, these and other facets of automobility and automobilism will be discussed using selected texts and films from Romance and Scandinavian cultures.

In this seminar, we will discuss literature classified as “pop” from a distinctly comparative perspective. In addition to analyzing the texts in terms of form and content and contextualizing them (including through visual art and film), we will focus in particular on observing the affinities (in a genealogical sense) and differences among the works.

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.