Winter Term 2025/26
Find here the abstracts for the workshops of the Winter Term 2025/26.
IPP Workshop Series
for BA, MA & PhD students
The IPP Workshop Series offers IPP members the opportunity to lead a workshop on current concepts and methods in the Study of culture. The aim of the series is to create an interactive discussion group for doctoral candidates and students. The topics can range from general introductions to various "schools" of literary and cultural theory to concepts, methods and topics of literary and cultural theory. The sessions are open for BA, MA and PhD students.
All the sessions will be in the GCSC-GGK Building (Otto-Behaghel-Str. 12) from 14.00 to 16.00.
Please register for the event on Stud.IP through the links provided below.
Literary/Cultural Studies | Marina Iaroslavtseva | 13.11.2025 | 14-16 | SR 126
Governmentality: How Culture Trains Conduct
The workshop introduces governmentality as a framework of literary and cultural analysis. Working through Foucault (via Dean and Rose), we consider how novels, films, television and platform media problematize conduct, legitimate particular rationalities of rule (such as "family values", security, welfare), and mobilize techniques that constitute conduct. We consider how texts position subjects, organize spaces and exposures, and use affect as a relentless mode of control, and attend to breaks in routine where other possibilities open up.
Methodologically, the session unites close reading with minimal context of discourse, and distinguishes stated intention from immanent impact in form and affect through careful choice of paratexts and public reception. After a short introduction, participants break into groups in order to use the method on short, readable texts to demonstrate its portability from medium to medium and from level to level of study. The intention is to leave participants with a portable, reusable way of demonstrating how culture trains conduct and to share the method in their own research and teaching.
Literary Studies | Mortada Haidar | 20.11.2025 | 14-16 | SR 126
Show, Don’t Tell: Theory and Writing in Dialogue
How to analyse works of literature in your dissertation? How to avoid the pitfalls of descriptive writing? This workshop aims to familiarize students with the general methods of applying theory to your corpus, in the vein of conducting a “close reading” of literature. While critical analysis of a text is often a given in higher education, it is not uncommon for scholars of all levels to describe rather than analyse. The goal of this workshop is to explain how to put theory in conversation with the analytical part of dissertation writing. Hence, this workshop looks at examples of literary analysis, paying close attention to their style and application of theory. The workshop compares different examples of literary analysis, from scholars of various levels. The participants are also encouraged to bring examples of their own writing to receive feedback during the workshop. Therefore, the workshop is open to students of all levels, whether they are doctoral students in the process of writing their dissertation or master’s students thinking about their upcoming assignments.
Masculinity Studies | Nhi Do | 04.12.2025 | 14-16 | SR 126
Introduction to Masculinity Studies
This workshop offers an introduction to the key theories, concepts, current debates, and questions in the field of Masculinity Studies. Designed for university students across all disciplines, the session introduces critical concepts that examine how masculinities are socially constructed, performed, and maintained within various cultural and historical contexts. Central to the discussion is the landmark work of Raewyn Connell, particularly her concept of hegemonic masculinities, which provides a framework for understanding gender hierarchy and the relations of masculinities with power and social inequality. The workshop also features contributions from other scholars such as Michael Kimmel and David L. Eng, who have advanced the study of men and masculinities through
sociological, feminist, and intersectional lenses. In addition to engaging with these ‘classic’ perspectives, the workshop introduces participants to the emerging field of ecomasculinities, which investigates the links between masculinities and nature, through a brief look into the works by Paul M. Pulé, Stefan Brandt, and Rubén Cenamor.
Through guided discussion and interactive activities, participants will gain a critical awareness of how masculinities shape and are shaped by social structures, and how reimagining masculinities can contribute to current conversations in cultural studies today. No prior knowledge of gender studies is required for this workshop.
Literary Age Studies | Yauheniya Lekarevich | 29.01.2026 | 14-16 | SR 126
Deconstructing the Life Course: An Introduction to Literary Age Studies
While literary studies have long engaged with identity categories like gender, race, and class, age often remains a transparent, unexamined lens through which we read. This workshop introduces Literary Age Studies, a critical field that interrogates age not as a biological inevitability but as a system of cultural meanings, social scripts, and power relations. The first part of this workshop will establish a theoretical foundation. We will survey foundational works and concepts that enable us to analyze the life course as a social construct. We will focus on how this construction often establishes adulthood as a normative, 'unmarked' destination, an invisible middle, while framing both youth and old age as marginalized states of 'becoming' or 'declining.' This dynamic renders the experiences of the young and the old hyper-visible and problematic, while adulthood operates as a silent, presumed norm. To illustrate these concepts, the second part will turn to a targeted case study: the rise of Young Adult (YA) and New Adult (NA) fiction. These genres serve as potent examples of the social and market construction of age, revealing how life stages can be defined, packaged, and sold. We will discuss how these market-driven categories both reflect and shape our cultural imagination, exposing inconsistencies in how we envision the journey from adolescence to adulthood.
Participants will leave with a critical vocabulary and a new analytical framework, ideal for researchers seeking to incorporate the dimension of age into their literary analysis.
Narratology | Caesy Stuck | 05.02.2026 | 14-16 | SR 126
Why Narratology? How to use Narrative Analysis for Interdisciplinary Research
Since the so-called "narrative turn" in a range of fields within the humanities, the concept of narrative has been used extensively in a variety of contexts and has seen a significant expansion in its aims and objectives. Beginning with the divide between classical and postclassical approaches, this shift has also led to a strong diversification of approaches within narratology. This workshop provides an introduction to the study of narratology and a basic map of the field’s current diverse approaches. It will also introduce the basics of narrative analysis and its fundamental concepts, guided by the key questions: What is a narrative? What is a narrative strategy? How do degrees of narrativity function? And how can the study of narrative help us understand and conceptualize the world?
The aim of the workshop is to equip participants with ideas about how to utilize tools of narrative analysis in their research. Participants are encouraged to bring their research projects and consider how they would like to apply narrative analysis or how they think they could benefit from it. By the end of the workshop, participants should have a grasp of the basic concepts of narrative, have some of their questions answered, and gain basic resources for how to utilize narrative theory in an interdisciplinary context.