Video-Blog: Archive for the ‘Doktorandenringvorlesung Anglistik SoSe 10’ Category

Sabrina Kusche: Die Medialisierung des Erzählens. Genres, Trends und neue theoretische Ansätze in der Erzähltheorie

Die Medialisierung des Erzählens ist in den letzten Jahren zu einem zentralen Schlüsselthema der anglistischen und amerikanistischen Literaturwissenschaft avanciert. Der Einfluss der neuen Medien auf das Erzählen wird zum einen durch das Aufkommen neuer literarischer Erzählgenres, wie E-Mail- und Pop-Romanen, als auch durch das permanente Entstehen neuer narrativer Formate im Internet selbst deutlich. Um solche neuen Genreausprägungen und narrativen Formate im Netz sowie deren kulturelle Relevanz untersuchen zu können, ist ein sicherer Umgang mit den Begriffen, Konzepten und Werkzeugen der trans- und intermedialen Erzähltheorie ein notwendiges Muss für die literatur- und kulturwissenschaftliche Auseinandersetzung mit diesen zeitgenössischen Texten. Die Vorlesung verfolgt daher drei Ziele: Zunächst sollen neue Genres und neue narrative Formate im Internet vorgestellt werden, um auf diese Weise einen Überblick über die Medialisierungstendenzen in der Literatur ermöglichen zu können. Zweitens sollen in einem theoretischen Rahmen die Begriffe und Werkzeuge der trans- und intermedialen Erzähltheorie erläutert werden, bevor diese dann drittens an ausgewählten Beispielen im E-Mail-Roman zur Anwendung kommen.

Sabrina Kusche studierte Anglistik und Germanistik an der JLU und der University of Sheffield. Im Februar 2009 schloss sie ihr Studium ab (Magister Artium) und begann die Promotion zum E-Mail-Roman an der JLU und der Stockholm University. Seit März 2009 hat sie ein Stipendium im LOEWE-Schwerpunkt (Landes-Offensive zur Entwicklung wissenschaftlich ökonomischer Exzellenz) „Kulturtechniken und ihre Medialisierung“. Sie ist Doktorandin im International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC), wo sie zudem eine Stelle als wissenschaftliche Hilfskraft ausübt, im International PhD Programme (IPP) “Literary and Cultural Studies” und im European PhD Network (PhDnet).

Dr. Michael Basseler: The Knowledge of Literature: Approaches, Methods, Applications

Even though the term Literaturwissenschaft inherently implies that literature and knowledge are somehow related, this connection is by no means an undisputed one. Does literature really know something? Or isn’t it rather that literature is exempt from the obligation of producing and/or transmitting (some kind of) knowledge? How does literature relate to other discourses of knowledge, e.g. the sciences and philosophy most notably, but also to more informal areas such as commonsensical world- or life-knowledge? And what’s the upshot of all these questions for our self-conception as scholars and students of literature?

The aim of this lecture is to provide students with a fairly broad survey of theories within literary and cultural studies that attend to the multifaceted relations of literature and knowledge, a topic that is arguably becoming increasingly important in our contemporary Wissensgesellschaft. The lecture will cover a wide range of theories, reaching from philosophically oriented approaches to the question of truth and knowledge in literature to cultural-historical approaches such as new historicism/poetics of culture and more recent trends, e.g. the idea of “literary studies as life-sciences” (Ottmar Ette).

Michael Basseler was awarded his PhD from JLU Giessen in 2008. He is an associate member of the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC) and assistant professor in Giessen’s English department. His main research interests are African American literature, cultural studies, and literary and cultural theory. His publications include Kulturelle Erinnerung und Trauma im zeitgenössischen afroamerikanischen Roman (Trier: 2008). He is also co-editor with Ansgar Nünning of a forthcoming handbook on the history of the American short story. His current research project deals with the question of how the short story in English reflects on, generates and disseminates forms of life and life-knowledge.

Nina Lange: Time in the Novel: Theories, Concepts and Methods for the Analysis of the Representation of Time

Undoubtedly, time plays a central role in our everyday life, but it is also of crucial importance in literature, where it serves both as a topic, and, due to the work’s temporal structure, as a constitutive category. Because of its relevance, the analysis of the narrative representation of time will become a very familiar one for students of English and American literatures. Though we are all well-acquainted with the phenomenon of time from our own experience, it is not sufficient to rely on one’s own intuition for the purpose of academic work. Instead, what is called for here is a sound theoretical framework and precise categories. The goal of this lecture is therefore to present different theories, concepts and methods for the analysis of time in the novel, but at the same time to examine them critically and adapt them to the object of analysis. The applicability of the theories will be shown using examples of modernist novels written by familiar authors – such as Virginia Woolf – as well as by lesser-known novelists deserving of more interest.

Nina Lange studied English, Mathematics and Music for a teaching degree at the Universities of Giessen and Sheffield (U.K.). After having completed her state exam in October 2009, she joined the International PhD Programme (IPP) “Literary and Cultural Studies”and is currently working on her dissertation on the narrative representation of time in modernist literature. Since January 2010, she has been working as a research assistant at the Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC).

Daniel A. Holder: ‘Old’ vs. ‘New Negro’: The Harlem Renaissance as a Key Topic in American Studies

Alain Locke’s concept of the ‘New Negro’ came to epitomise what is commonly referred to as the ‘Harlem’ or ‘New Negro Renaissance’, a flowering of African American cultural production during the 1920s in New York City’s Harlem, which was at the time the so-called ‘mecca’ of the Afro-diasporic world. This lecture will give students a broad overview of the phenomenon and will look at different fields of African American cultural production. It will provide the historical reasons for such a ‘Renaissance’ and will investigate artists, intellectuals and political figures central to the Harlem Renaissance, focusing on differing and conflicting notions of African American identity. Moreover, this lecture will put forth a broader and more inclusive cultural history of the phenomenon, re-reading it as a postcolonial, Afro-diasporic ‘New Negro Renaissance’ covering not only New York City but large parts of what Paul Gilroy termed the ‘Black Atlantic’.

Daniel A. Holder, geboren 1980 in Köln, studierte Regionalwissenschaften Nordamerika, Politische Wissenschaft und Anglo-Amerikanische Geschichte an den Universitäten Bonn und Köln sowie African American Studies an der University of Florida in Gainesville/USA. Seit Herbst 2009 promoviert er als Stipendiat am InternationalGraduateCenter for the Study of Culture (GCSC) zu dem Thema “Rewriting-Un-Americaness: African American Intellectuals, Post World War II Political Radicalism and McCarthyism“. Zusammen mit Marie Lottmann ist er Sprecher der GGK-Sektion 2: Literatur- und Kulturtheorien.

Thijs Willaert & Floris Biskamp: Postcolonial Problems, or: Why The Kite Runner Does (not) Matter

Many authors from former colonies consider their literary works a means of resistance to foreign domination – a tendency which has not gone unnoticed, neither in academia nor in your own local bookstore. Yet, while some critics have heralded this postcolonial movement as the liberation of the former colonies, others have accused it of being politically irrelevant, or even of consolidating the dominance of the West. Through a parallel analysis of current positions in academia and the paradigmatic case of The Kite Runner, our lecture aims to shed light on some central concepts and controversies within the polemical field of postcolonial studies and to provide a practical point of entry into this crucial debate.

Thijs Willaert studied English and Spanish literature at the Catholic University of Louvain. After obtaining a Master’s degree in Western literature and a postgraduate degree in Literary Sciences, he joined the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC) to begin work on his PhD dissertation, the subject of which is the interconnection between postcolonial studies and the works of Michel Foucault.

Floris Biskamp has studied Physics and Political Science in Gießen and Boston, Massachusetts. He is an assistant lecturer in the Department of Political Science in Gießen and a doctoral student at the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC), writing his dissertation on the relation between critical theory and postcolonial deconstruction.

Daniel Mai: Making Sense of the Past in Light of the Present: Collective Memory, Cultures of Remembrance and Your New Car

What do the Volkswagen Beetle, Konrad Adenauer and the Berlin Wall have in common? They are not only fashioned as established cultural icons through which ‘German identities’ are constructed, but also serve as highly symbolic markers of times gone by that are collectively remembered in common ways. But what does it actually mean to speak of the past in terms of ‘culture’ and ‘remembrance’? This lecture will give a short introduction to the field of collective memory studies – one of the ‘hot topics’ in the study of culture. Exploring the sociocultural aspects of memory, my aim is to provide students with a graspable explanation of the two influential concepts of cultural and communicative memory as well as cultures of remembrance. Being models of thought, these concepts not only enable us to understand how societies make sense of, reconstruct and revise their history. Breaking disciplinary boundaries, they can also be applied to modern companies in order to analyse (invented) corporate traditions and strategic processes of history and identity management.

Daniel Mai received his B.A. in Kulturwirt (English Literary and Cultural Studies, Business Studies) from the University of Duisburg Essen in 2007. From 2007 to 2009 he did his M.A. in Communication and Cultural Management at ZeppelinUniversity in Friedrichshafen and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Daniel Mai follows an interdisciplinary approach rooted in cultural studies. Since the fall of 2009 he has also been a member of the International PhD Programme (IPP) “Literary and Cultural Studies” and is granted a scholarship from the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC). His research focus is on the critical exploration of cultures of remembrance in companies.

Birte Christ: “White is not better than black, but rich is definitely better than poor”: The New Poverty Studies and the Category of ‘Class’

Since the publication of Walter Benn Michaels’ polemic The Trouble with Diversity (2006), the focal point of American cultural studies has undergone a shift towards class, and, in particular, towards poverty. At the heart of Michaels’ argument is his demand that we use the category of class as a category of inequality rather than of identity. I will first introduce you to this new scholarship of class and poverty and contextualise it by going back to Marxist theory and its impact on the BirminghamSchool and cultural studies in the U.S. In the second half of the lecture, we will look at some representations of poverty: FSA photography, sentimental writing, and a middlebrow text. The last part is designed to demonstrate how you can apply cutting-edge theory on class and poverty in your own close readings of American culture.

Birte Christ studied English and German literature as well as Political Science at the Universities of Freiburg and Austin/Texas. She has worked as a lecturer for German at YaleUniversity and as an assistant professor at the North American Studies Programs at BonnUniversity and FreiburgUniversity. Her dissertation focused on middlebrow serial fiction in U.S. women’s magazines of the 1910s and ‘20s. She is working on her second book, on representations of capital punishment in American culture.

Melani Nekić: Image, Writing and Layout: The Multimodal Analysis of Tourism Website

With subjects ranging from pieces of furniture to children’s drawings and museum exhibitions, the study of meaning-making activities as realised in diverse socio-cultural contexts and across text types has emerged as a cutting-edge and as yet open-ended topic. What many of these studies have in common is that they have been approached from a multimodal perspective.The aims of this lecture are, therefore, twofold. First, students will be introduced to the multimodal perspective by considering such questions as: What are the benefits of multimodal research? Which theories have served as a starting point for multimodal analyses? Which tools can be applied to the analysis of multimodal texts? Second, for illustrative purposes, the relevant theories, concepts and tools will be applied to the analysis of a tourism website. In what ways do meanings unfold when one navigates the themes commonly used to promote tourism – themes such as sports activities and aspects of cultural and natural heritage? How far do notions of culture tie into the analysis of tourism websites? How can we analytically proceed to investigate tourism websites? Students will thus get an idea of how multiple modes such as image, text and layout interact to construe tourist meanings.

Melani Nekić is a doctoral candidate at the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC) in Giessen, Germany. Her research interests revolve around functional linguistics, social semiotics and tourism studies. She holds a BA in English, French and Media and Communication Studies from the University of Mannheim, Germany, and an MA in Communication and Language Studies from the University of East Anglia, England. Currently, she is researching the relationship between tourism, cultural heritage and environmental management at the Juraj Dobrila University of Pula, Croatia.

Martin Spies: The Stuart Court Masque– An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Masque Genre in the 17th Century

The last decade has seen a renewed interest in what was probably the most spectacular and multifaceted of English courtly entertainments: the Stuart Court masque. Involving all manner of artists and craftsmen (e.g. writers, composers, architects, painters and pyrotechnists) as well as professional actors and members of the royal court, the court masques of the first half of the 17th century were allegorical demonstrations of royal power and propaganda staged for an exclusive audience. By focusing on the masques produced for the celebration of the marriage of the king’s daughter to the Elector Palatine in 1613, this lecture will suggest interdisciplinary means of achieving a more complex understanding of the masque genre.

Martin Spies is a research assistant in the English Department at the University of Giessen. He studied English, History and Literature at the Universities of Siegen and Southampton and received his PhD at the University of Ghent with a dissertation on “Lady Jane Grey and the Victorian Imagination” in 2009. His research concentrates on early modern and Victorian literature and culture.

Anne Rüggemeier: Narrating Selves. Generischer Wandel und gegenwärtige Entwicklungen der Autobiographie

In Zeiten von Social Networks und Blogging sind wir tagtäglich mit alltagstauglichen Selbstnarrativen konfrontiert oder auch dazu herausgefordert, uns selbst (digital) zu erzählen. Anhand welcher Kategorien wählen wir aus, was erzählenswert ist und was nicht? Was verstehen wir unter einem normalen, guten oder erfolgreichen Leben? Und was hat die literarische Gattung der Autobiographie damit zu tun?

Dieser Teil der Ringvorlesung nähert sich dem Thema Narrating Selves von zwei Seiten. Zum einen vermittelt er einen Überblick über die historische Entwicklung der Autobiographieforschung und führt anhand exemplarischer Positionen in die Komplexität autobiographischer Gattungsbestimmung ein. Zum anderen soll anhand der dynamischen Wechselbeziehung von (Er)Leben, Erinnern und Erzählen über die Bedeutung von Gattungen als konventionalisierte Erzählschemata nachgedacht werden, mit deren Hilfe wir unser eigenes Leben (narrativ) ordnen und wahrnehmen.

Anhand konkreter Textbeispiele aus der neueren autobiographischen Praxis wird verständlich werden, inwiefern die Literaturwissenschaft zu einer Neudefinition und Rekonstruktion des Genres und seiner Geschichte herausgefordert ist.

Anne Rüggemeier

studierte Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft, Anglistik und Geschichte an der Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen und der Oxford Brookes University. 2007 schloss sie ihr Studium mit dem Magister Artium und dem 1. Staatsexamen für das Lehramt an Gymnasien ab. Nachdem sie zwei Jahre als EU-Referentin bei der Max-Planck Gesellschaft tätig war, begann sie nach der Geburt ihres Sohnes im Oktober 2009 als Stipendiatin des Gießener International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC) an der JLU Gießen zu promovieren. Sie ist Mitglied des International PhD Programme (IPP) “Literary and Cultural Studies” und beschäftigt sich in ihrem Promotionsprojekt mit der Relationalen Autobiographie.