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Masterclasses, Keynote Lectures & Workshops

The IPP organises masterclasses and workshops with renowned professors and researchers from around the world. They share their current research with our candidates and discuss contemporary developments in literary theory and history from different perspectives. Some masterclasses are organised as part of the defence of one of our candidates, creating synergies that benefit all members of the centre.

 

Previous masterclasses, keynote lectures & workshops

Dr. Katarzyna Macedulska (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland) 

Workshop: Literature in the Last Best Place: Montana’s Nature Writing

29.10.2025, 14.00 - 16.00 - SR 109 (GGK/GCSC Building)

 

This workshop offers participants an immersive exploration into the rich literary landscape of Montana, emphasizing the deep connection between place and writing. Starting off with some geographical, historical, and cultural facts about the Big Sky Country, we will go on to explore its place-based storytelling: both the treasured beauty and some harsh realities. From the established canonical writers, such as James Welch (i.a. Fools Crow, 1986; Winter in the Blood, 1974), William Kittredge (i.a. Hole in the Sky, 1992; We Are Not in This Together: Stories, 1984), and Annick Smith (Homestead, 1995; Crossing the Plains with Bruno, 2015; co-producer of A River Runs Through It, 1992) to the most contemporary authors such as Bryce Andrews (i.a. Down from the Mountain, 2019; Holding Fire, 2023) and Chris La Tray (Becoming Little Shell, 2024), we will discuss the issues of land ethics, wilderness and preservation, exploitation and restitution, all of which are connected with the meta-questions of identity, belonging, and care. More than that, we will focus on the intricacies of human-nature connection by looking into how Montana writers have used literature to interrogate, challenge, and reimagine the human-nature binary, and how environmental concerns are recognized, exposed, and acted upon through narrative and reflective forms. The intricacies of human-nature relationships will also be analyzed in terms of human histories and social complexities, particularly the fraught history of conflict and coexistence between settlers and Indigenous peoples. We investigate how writers have contextualized and represented their regional challenges in time and what responses and solutions emerge from their texts. A few short texts will be distributed before the seminar to make participants acquainted with the subject. Also, our workshop will certainly benefit from active involvement, and I would like to receive questions referring both to the general subject of environmental criticism and to the particular theme of our workshop, as well as the provided text fragments.

 

 

Prof Rolf J. Goebel (University of Alabama) 

Workshop: Looking Back and Looking Forward in Literary Studies

09.07.2025, 14.00 - 16.00 - SR 126 (GGK/GCSC Building)

 

This workshop/master class addresses the following questions, among others: What is the fate of literary studies in the age of intermediality and interdisciplinarity? How can text-based paradigms--hermeneutics, deconstruction, reader-response criticism, etc.--be rethought to illuminate visual and sonic artifacts? Conversely, how can the study of performative arts--music, art installations, etc.--contribute to the event-character of textual reading? The session will begin with a brief introduction outlining some basic topics, questions, and problems, followed by open discussion, taking into account student interests and work.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prof Dr Timothy C. Baker (University of Aberdeen) 

Keynote: Rereading Childhood: Autobiography, Criticism, and Memory

04.06.2025, 18.00 - 20.00 - MFR (GGK/GCSC Building)

 

All literary criticism is to some extent autobiographical: the way we select and analyse texts says as much about us at the works themselves. Authorship can be seen as an act of rereading as much as writing, and tracks our own changing relationships with texts over time. Likewise, many current writers are explicitly choosing to blur the lines between literary criticism and memoir to show how the categories of reader and writer always overlap. In this session Timothy C. Baker will be reading from and discussing their recent hybrid memoir Reading My Mother Back: A Memoir in Childhood Animal Stories, in which they revisit children’s classics to tell a story of grief, trauma, and family secrets. Baker’s memoir tells the story of his mother’s life, and death, through the animal stories they shared, both familiar and less-well-known. The memoir touches on memory, loneliness, disability, and religion, and shows how literature can provide a way to understand our experiences and connect with what we have lost. Reading My Mother Back offers a bold and personal view of why the stories we read, share, and write about matter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prof Dr Mary Ann Snyder-Körber (University of Würzburg) 

Mobile Feminisms: Gender, Social Media, Transnational Interactions

14.01.2025, 15.00 - 17.00 - SR 126 (GGK/GCSC Building)

 

 

What happens when feminism goes mobile, traveling across time and space as well as medial frameworks and cultural repertoires? The most obvious answers include the pluralization of what can be considered feminism to feminisms and the wider category of women’s movements. The exploration of mobile feminisms, in turn, pushes back against assumptions of online monoculture and heightens awareness of the material and imaginative affordances of connective media.

The presentation phase of the workshop understands itself as two-part project report: first, reporting on a two-year collaborative project in which graduate students from Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi and Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg worked on the questions posed by mobile feminisms, and, second, contributing to the larger ongoing project of reinvestigating the cultural studies tradition and retooling its approaches for the contemporary world. 

Closer consideration of case studies identified and explored in the transnational Mobile Feminisms project creates the bridge to the more participatory phase of the workshop in which we can think about teaching-based collaboration as a motor of cultural studies scholarship

 

 

 

Prof Dr Frans-Willem Korsten (Leiden University) 

Why Humanities Matter: Law and Literature and the Long-Term Determination to Fight for Justice

15.01.2025, 16.00 - 18.00 - SR 109 (GGK/GCSC Building) 

 

The humanities are being targeted and threatened globally. Major, famous universities have eliminated their faculty of Humanities, governments have questioned what value the Humanities might have, and Humanities faculties in the Netherlands are currently eliminating entire programs. To be defensive in such circumstances is silly. We had better check where the humanities are coming from, historically speaking, and see what their role should be in the current circumstances. For those who want to point to humanists as the origin of the humanities (which is historically speaking questionable), it is worthwhile noting that all the major humanists were at some point banned, threatened, or simply killed. Historically, the disciplinary origin of the humanities is to be found in the 19th century European universities, with their task to help found and invigorate the nation-states and their colonial expansion, whether globally or on the continent. 

The question then is what the humanities’ political task is today if a seemingly self-evident support by the state is crumbling. Should the Humanities still proceed in producing civility? Enlarging criticality? Strengthening commitment? Such questions immediately imply other questions: in the service of whom, and which or what kind of political actors would have an interest and the determination to still support the Humanities? Are not aggressive right-wing parties claiming to know the proper way to civility; are they not extremely critical; do they not require substantial commitment? In the context of literature and law the path that lies ahead requires that we keep on analyzing the relation between art, law and justice in relation to (manipulated) affective households, on a micro and macrolevel. It requires the combination of theory and praxis, or the willingness to participate in forms of activism, for instance to help realize (underground) archives that protect the transmission of the kinds of knowledge we care for in the service of a justice. And it requires a willingness to help realize a culture of law that is no longer anthropocentric. In short: what Rudolph von Jhering called the struggle for law has acquired a new relevance. 

 

 

Prof Dr Marco Caracciolo (Ghent University) 

Challenges of Complexity in Contemporary Anglophone Fiction

26.11.2024, 18:00 - 20.00 - Conference Room (GGK/GCSC Building) / Online

 

 

Whether it is understood formally or cognitively, complexity is often seen as a desirable feature in the practices surrounding literary interpretation. But complexity can also prove threatening, overwhelming, or politically paralyzing, as authors including Samuel Arbesman and Eva Haifa Giraud have pointed out. In this talk, I will look at a range of contemporary Anglophone fictions that interrogate what one might think of as the dark sides of complexity. These novels tend to probe complexity and its limits in relation to pressing issues such as climate change or global mobility. My examples will include novels by Hanya Yanagihara (To Paradise) and Mohsin Hamid (Exit West). Combining narrative theory and New Formalism, I will explore how literature uses formal means to capture complexity as undesirable implication, and how such formal resources may prompt a (re)negotiation of how complexity is imagined and experienced affectively in real-world terms as well. 

Everyone is welcome to attend, you need not be a member of the IPP or affiliated with the GGK/GCSC. Link to online access: https://webconf.hrz.uni-giessen.de/b/isa-sdu-rca-df6

Moderator: Prof. Dr. Jan Alber

 

 

Dr Mary Harrod (University of Warwick) 

Out of Time: The Politics of Fantasy in French Screen Romance of the 2010s

18.10.2023, 10.00 - 12.00 - SR 109 (GGK/GCSC Building)

 

In this lecture, I will put concepts of romantic fantasy and transnational (post)feminism into dialogue with one another through the case study of contemporary French filmed romantic comedy. More specifically, I will explore the way in which the genre’s recently amplified embrace of fantastic tropes – notably linked to time travel and atemporality more broadly – while in some ways mirroring global trends, responds to a situation whereby greater demands for gender equality have troubled Gallic cultures of intimacy.

Focalising a range of differently positioned case studies, the masterclass will draw on concepts of romance as both textual and social genre to consider the narrative and iconographic contortions required to keep the former alive as the latter comes under increasing fire, as well as fault lines within these and thus the shifting social context that they instantiate. Significantly, this optic encompasses concepts of transnational (market) identity, bearing in mind the intersectionality between generational (temporal) and cultural (geo-spatial) difference recently foregrounded by French responses to #MeToo, and simultaneously representing a classic topos of the fantastic mode. In this regard, the lecture will finally interrogate the recent trend from the point of view of affective theories of cosmopolitanism and felt internationalism, especially as these intersect with popular feminism as an increasingly global concept, to ask whether the trans-local marketisation of ‘progressive’ discourses of gendered intimacy depoliticises these.

 

Bionote: Mary Harrod is Associate Professor in French Studies at the University of Warwick. She has authored multiple books: From France with Love: Gender and Identity in French Romantic Comedy (I.B. Tauris, 2015), Heightened Genre and Women’s Filmmaking in Hollywood (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), and co-edited the following collections: The Europeanness of European Cinema: Identity, Meaning, Globalization (I.B. Tauris, 2015, with Mariana Liz and Alissa Timoshkina); Women Do Genre in Film and Television (Routledge, 2017, with Katarzyna Paszkiewicz), Winner of British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies Best Edited Collection Prize 2019; and Imagining ‘We’ in the Age of ‘I’: Romance and Social Bonding in Contemporary Culture (Routledge, 2021, with Diane Negra and Suzanne Leonard). She is also the co-chief General Editor of French Screen Studies, with Ginette Vincendeau.

Register on StudIP 

 

 

Dr. Stefano Rozzoni (University of Bergamo) 

Emerging Critical Perspectives on the Digital in Literary and Cultural Studies

05.07.2023, 10.00 - 12.00 - Konferezraum 001 (GGK/GCSC Building)

 

How do emerging technological tools influence studies in the humanities? How can a dialogue be established between quantitative data and qualitative evaluations of literary and cultural texts? How does the growing emphasis on new digital methodologies relate to the need to maintain a critical eye on ethical issues in textual analysis?
 
To address these questions, the workshop is conceived as a space for discussing both experimental and established approaches in literary and cultural studies involving the use of digital tools to address urgent global issues, particularly current ecological crises.
 
The first part of the workshop provides an overview of recent critical discussions addressing the diversified approaches embraced by the field of Digital Humanities, which have shaped into sub-fields such as "critical digital humanities" (Dobson 2019, Viola 2023) and "digital environmental humanities". Following this concise theoretical introduction, three diverse ongoing research projects related to these fields, developed by the workshop conductor, will be presented.
 
The second part of the workshop is dedicated to collectively reflecting on the strengths and weaknesses of the topics and examples provided and sharing personal evaluations on the evolving study trajectories emerging from the growing influence of the digital in the humanities.
 
No previous knowledge of Digital Humanities is required, while experts in the field are encouraged to participate and bring their own vision on the topic.

 

Bionote: Stefano Rozzoni is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bergamo. He has previously worked as a postdoc Assistant and lecturer at Universität Graz, Austria. His current postdoctoral project is dedicated to exploring human-nonhuman relational ethics in contemporary anglophone literary and cultural texts (2010-present) through the lens of the Digital Environmental Humanities. His research interests encompass environmental narratives, posthumanism, and the pastoral genre within British Modernism and contemporary literature and culture. His work includes various media and covers topics such as Franciscanism, ecology, and economics; urban and rural spaces; human-nonhuman relationalities; and ecofascisms.

 

 

Dr. Stefano Rozzoni (University of Bergamo) 

Affirmative Narratives for a Post-PhD Career: A Group Discussion

04.07.2023, 18.00 - 19.30 - SR 326 (GGK/GCSC Building)

 

 

Envisioning a scholarly career, both within and outside academia, after completing a PhD can feel daunting. Dominant cultural narratives often paint a discouraging picture, emphasizing the systemic difficulties of the job market and the uncertainties stemming from current economic instabilities. However, amidst these accounts, there are numerous success stories of young researchers who have pursued fulfilling postdoctoral positions. While these stories often go unnoticed, shedding light on them can provide alternative perspectives and offer guidance for planning and projecting one's future career paths.

 
With this in mind, the workshop aims to create a safe and relaxed environment where participants can share their concerns, doubts, and questions regarding their postdoc aspirations. It also serves as a platform for developing affirming and encouraging discussions about one's life after the PhD through concrete examples and practical tips.
 
Following a critical introduction to the topic, the workshop will feature Stefano Rozzoni sharing his own postdoc experience. This session will foster an informal exchange of questions and answers, allowing participants to delve into the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead after completing a PhD.
 
 

 

Bionote: Stefano Rozzoni is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bergamo. He has previously worked as a postdoc Assistant and lecturer at Universität Graz, Austria. His current postdoctoral project is dedicated to exploring human-nonhuman relational ethics in contemporary anglophone literary and cultural texts (2010-present) through the lens of the Digital Environmental Humanities. His research interests encompass environmental narratives, posthumanism, and the pastoral genre within British Modernism and contemporary literature and culture. His work includes various media and covers topics such as Franciscanism, ecology, and economics; urban and rural spaces; human-nonhuman relationalities; and ecofascisms.

 

 

Prof. Brian Richardson (University of Maryland)

Representations of Readers in Modern Fiction: Paradoxes and Dilemmas

24.05.2023, 16.00 - 18.00 - Konferezraum 001 (GGK/GCSC Building)

 

 

 
The act of reading is prominently depicted in numerous modern and contemporary narratives, and often produces very mixed results, including disillusion and death. Reading is also often associated with sexual coupling. This talk outlines key moments from the rich history of the representation of reading in fiction and proposes a theoretical framework to embrace the more extreme examples.
 

Bionote: Brian Richardson is a Professor in the English department of the University of Maryland, where he teaches modern literature and narrative theory. He is the author or co-author of seven books, including Unnatural Voices: Extreme Narration in Modern and Contemporary Fiction (2006, Perkins Prize winner); Unnatural Narratives: Theory, History, and Practice (2015), A Poetics of Plot for the Twenty-first Century: Theorizing Unruly Narratives (2019), and Essays on Narrative and Fictionality: Reassessing Nine Central Concepts (2021), a collection of his recent articles on several basic narratological subjects. His latest book, The Reader of Modernist Fiction, is scheduled to be published in 2024. Richardson has edited or co-edited ten collections of essays on narrative theory, including the anthologies Narrative Beginnings: Theories and Practices (2008) and with Jan Alber, Unnatural Narratology: Extensions, Revisions, and Challenges. He guest-edited special issues of Style on Concepts of Narrative (34.2, 2000) and on The Implied Author (44.1, 2011), an issue of Conradiana on Conrad and the Reader (35.1, 2003), and a group of essays on Unnatural Narrative and Feminist Theory in Storyworlds (2016). An issue of Style devoted to an analysis of his work appeared in December 2017. He has published over 100 articles; these have explored reader-response theory, narrative sequence, endings, character, fictionality, realism, African American and postcolonial narratives, the poetics of drama, and the narratives of literary history. His work has been translated into French, German, Czech, Portuguese, Danish, Magyar, Italian, Spanish, Turkish, Arabic, and Chinese. In 2011 he served as President of the International Society for the Study of Narrative.