Search result: Catalogue data in Spring Semester 2015

GESS Compulsory Elective Course Information
Only the topics listed in this paragraph can be chosen as GESS compulsory elective course
Literature
NumberTitleTypeECTSHoursLecturers
851-0300-39LLiterature and Science in Exile 1933-1945W3 credits2VA. Kilcher
AbstractThe banishment of scientists and artists by National Socialism altered the cultural and intellectual profile of literature and science both in Germany and in the numerous countries of exile.
ObjectiveThis lecture argues that the exile of many writers, publicists and scientists caused some of the most influential shifts in literature and science during National Socialism.
Not only are course participants provided with knowledge concerned with historic-political aspects of exile from 1933 to 1945; but they are also confronted with changing paradigms in thinking and writing of literature as well as of science that have been affected by exile. Moreover the lecture pursues the question whether there is a specific manner of exile writing (a 'culture' or a 'poetology of exile').
Basic sourcebook: Deutsche Literatur im Exil 1933-1945. Texte und Dokumente. Stuttgart: Reclam 2003. (=UB 9865).
851-0300-90LRace, Class, Gender: Cultural Knowledge by Thomas MannW3 credits2SA. Kilcher, A. Totzke
AbstractThe seminar focuses on the cultural knowledge by Thomas Mann. In the narrations of Thomas Mann the controversial categories race, class gender can be analysed. It is characterised in his works by ambivalent conceptions of alterity and minority. In their analysis stereotypical character descriptions are also going to be considered as their discourse-historical backgrounds.
ObjectiveDetermine aspects of cultural studies in literature as alterity, ethnicity, gender constructions, Religion.
Training problem-based circumvention with literature and its social functions.
Drafting on category-typological and narratological foundations. Critical examination of research positions and developing own research focus.
ContentThomas Mann war wie kaum ein anderer Autor ein geradezu manischer Interpret seines eigenen Schaffens. Die Forschung orientierte sich jahrzehntelang an den Selbstkommentaren des Autors und so dominierten textimmanente und biographische Interpretationen. Im Gegensatz dazu will dieses Seminar Manns Werk unter kulturwissenschaftlicher Perspektive beleuchten und dabei auch neue theoretische Zugänge (Diskursanalyse, Postcolonial/ Gender Studies u.a.) fruchtbar machen. Die Komplexität der Texte kann nicht allein auf die Intention des Autors zurückgeführt werden, da ein literarischer Text als Teil eines durch bestimmte Regeln und Konventionen geprägten Diskurses zu verstehen ist. Deshalb widmet sich das Seminar schwerpunktmäßig den Diversitätskategorien Race, Class und Gender, die zunächst theoretisch untersucht und anschließend auf die Texte Thomas Manns bezogen werden. Manns Erzählwerk zeichnet sich durch ambivalente Alteritäts- und Minoritätsdarstellungen aus: So finden sich beispielsweise stereotyp gezeichnete Figuren wie die des Börsianers oder des kapitalistischen Unternehmers, die u.a. mit antisemitischen Klischees verbunden werden und dem um 1900 entworfenen Typus des erfolgreichen "jüdischen Parvenüs" entsprechen. Auch die Repräsentationen weiblicher und/ oder als geschlechtsspezifisch untypischer Protagonisten soll kritisch untersucht werden. Im Hinblick auf die Darstellung der Frauenfiguren spricht die Forschung von einer misogynen Tendenz, die sich vor allem im Motiv der horror feminae zeige: Im tradierten Bild der femme fatale manifestiert sich die (männliche) Angst vor dem weiblichen Geschlecht. Auffällig ist zudem, dass Figuren mit "unmännlichen" Eigenschaften in Manns Erzählwerk zumeist auch ökonomisch scheitern, so dass Parallelen zu repressiven zeitgenössischen Wirtschaftsdiskursen gezogen werden können. Das Hauptaugenmerk liegt jeweils auf der Frage, ob die Texte Manns die stereotypen Diskurse bloß affirmieren oder diese auch subversiv unterlaufen. Ziel des Seminars ist demnach, den kritischen Blick der TeilnehmerInnen auf repressive Ordnungskategorien wie Geschlecht, Ethnie und soziale Klasse zu schulen.
LiteratureZur Vorbereitung des Seminars wird die Lektüre der frühen Erzählungen empfohlen (Textgrundlage: Große kommentierte Frankfurter Ausgabe, Band 2.1: Frühe Erzählungen 1893-1912).
Prerequisites / NoticeGerman
851-0300-89LBelieving and Knowing: Religion within Popular Culture
Does not take place this semester.
W3 credits2V
AbstractThe course discusses various social scientific and cultural studies' analyses of the role of religion within (post)modern societies. These theoretical approaches are confronted with a variety of popular cultural "texts" (film, comics, literature, art). Which interrelations exist between religion and other ways of knowledge or in as far can popular culture be regarded as a medium of the religious?
ObjectiveThe course aims towards a better understanding of the complex functions of the religious within modern societies of knowledge while at the same time it attempts to detect and describe different forms of the religious within popular cultural media. Furthermore a variety of theoretical approaches towards the religious from the social sciences, cultural studies and philosophy will be critically examined.
ContentTwo decades ago Pierre Bourdieu stated a "new definition of the religious field" with regard to different observations, which still claim validity: These comprise the crisis of institutionalised religions, the concurrent return of the religious outside the big churches and persuasions, the spread of fundamentalism, the extensive absence of the religious as topic of the cultural elites within Western countries as well as the transformation and replacement of religious traditions by other cultural practices and forms, especially by popular culture.
On the background of this diagnosis on contemporary culture the task of critical cultural studies should be to examine and evaluate the significance of these transformations of religions with regard to the often-postulated "societies of knowledge". As "the other of reason" religion and popular culture form a strained connection to rationalism. At the same time seems the assumption of an ever-increasing secularisation of modern societies in the light of these observations to have become obsolete. With the catchphrase of the "post-secular society", academia and public opinion respond likewise to the challenge of this paradigm.
The course examines in a first step the validity or usefulness of various social scientific and cultural studies analyses of the function of religion within modern or post-modern societies (a.o. Luckmann, Bourdieu). These approaches will then be confronted with texts of different popular cultural media (film, comics, literature, art). Which reciprocity exists between religion and other forms of knowledge and in as far can popular culture be regarded as medium of the religious? For instance Noël Carroll emphasises the affinity of popular culture towards universal emotions and norms, which can be regarded as an aspect of the religious. Apparently religion offers over-arching patterns of orientation, which can determine everyday routines as well as putting different corpuses of knowledge into wider frameworks of interpretation. "Believing and knowing" therefore stand less for a dichotomy than rather for a complex relation of reciprocal influences.
LiteraturePierre Bourdieu, Die Auflösung des Religiösen, in: ders., Rede und Antwort, Frankfurt am Main 1992

Frank Thomas Brinkmann, Comics und Religion: das Medium der "neunten Kunst" in der gegenwärtigen Deutungskultur (Praktische Theologie heute, Bd. 44), Stuttgart 1999

Noël Carroll, A philosophy of mass art, Oxford 1998

Hans-Martin Dober, Filmpredigten, Göttingen ²2011

Clifford Geertz, Dichte Beschreibung. Beiträge zum Verstehen kultureller Systeme, Frankfurt a. M. 1995

Hans-Martin Gutmann, Der Herr der Heerscharen, die Prinzessin der Herzen und der König der Löwen. Religion lehren zwischen Kirche, Schule und populärer Kultur, Gütersloh 1998

Thomas Hausmanninger, Verschwörung und Religion, München 2013

Jörg Herrmann, Sinnmaschine Kino. Sinndeutung und Religion in populären Filmen (=Praktische Theologie und Kultur, Bd. 4), Gütersloh 2001

Inge Kirsner/Michael Wermke (Hgg.), Religion im Kino. Religionspädagogisches Arbeiten mit Filmen, Göttingen 2000

Dies./Olaf Seydel/Harald Schroeter-Wittke (Hgg.), Überzeichnet - Religion in Comics, Wuppertal 2010

Thomas Luckmann, Die unsichtbare Religion, Frankfurt a. M. ²1993

Johann Baptist Metz, Kleine Apologie des Erzählens, in: concilium 9/1973, S. 329-333

Iris Poßegger/Sven Bretfeld, Von Thangka bis Manga. Bilderzählungen aus Asien, Leipzig 2012

Jutta Wermke (ed.), Comics und Religion: eine interdisziplinäre Diskussion, München 1976
Prerequisites / NoticeThe course is connected to the former courses "Comics. Forms and Functions of a Text and Image Relationship" (HS 2012) as well as to "Knowledge and Emotions" (HS 2013). Their visit however is no prerequisite for the attendance.
851-0306-04LWhy do we (not) need God? Answers from Theology, Philosophy, Science, Literature and CultureW3 credits2SE. Edelmann-Ohler
AbstractQuestioning the conception of God and defining his relevance for modern society is no longer the exclusive responsibility of theology. Not least the "return of religion" in post-secular societies scrutinizes "God" in areas like brain-research, politics, ethics or as "makeweight" of science.
ObjectiveStudents are familiar with concepts of "God" from different disciplines and can describe the forms and contents of these concepts
ContentDie Kluft zwischen Naturwissenschaft und Religion wird heute in den verschiedensten Disziplinen am Beispiel Gottes diskutiert. Während im "New Atheism" Gott und damit Religion als potentielle Quelle von Fundamentalismus gegenüber einer ausschließlich als rational privilegierten naturwissenschaftlichen Erkenntnis abgewertet wird, ist "Gottes Existenz" innerhalb neurobiologischer und psychologischer Modelle weniger umstritten, vielmehr wird hier mit wissenschaftlichen Mitteln nach dem "Ort Gottes" im menschlichen Gehirn gesucht. Im Kontext von Politik und Ethik wiederum wird das Konzept "Gott" verstärkt im Horizont von Handlungsalternativen und Zurechenbarkeiten in moderner Forschung und Technik verhandelt. Im Seminar werden aktuelle, historische und literarische Entwürfe dieser Thematik besprochen. Wir lesen unter anderem Texte von Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Herbert Schnädelbach, Alfred Döblin, Ödön von Horvath, Jürgen Habermas, Manfred Lütz und Andrew Newberg.
851-0309-12LRe-Reading Thomas Mann's Novellas from the Persepctive of the History of Ideas and Knowledge Restricted registration - show details
Number of participants limited to 30.
W3 credits2SJ. Reidy
AbstractThe course presents Thomas Mann's novellas in chronological order. The discussions will center on questions pertaining to the contextualization of these texts within the history of ideas and knowledge.
Objective- The students will familiarize themselves with a cross-section of Thomas Mann's novellas.
- On the basis of these primary texts, while taking into account current research, the course will establish several cultural-historical avenues of analysis and interpretation, e. g. the texts will be read through the lenses of the history of economics, the history of medicine and, more generally, the history of ideas.
ContentThomas Manns Kurzprosa ist nicht minder kanonisch als seine grossen Romane: Erzählungen wie "Tonio Kröger", "Der Tod in Venedig" und "Mario und der Zauberer" zählen ebenso zum Lektürekanon wie "Buddenbrooks" oder "Der Zauberberg". Manns Erzählungen also stehen im Fokus dieser Lehrveranstaltung: Pro Sitzung soll, in chronologischer Folge, jeweils ein Erzähltext diskutiert werden, wobei stets Seitenblicke auf den aktuellen Forschungsstand sowie auf wichtige kultur- und wissensgeschichtliche Bezugspunkte zu richten sind.
LiteratureAnzuschaffen sind nach Möglichkeit folgende Leseausgaben:

Thomas Mann, Frühe Erzählungen 1893-1912. In der Fassung der grossen kommentierten Frankfurter Ausgabe. Fischer.

--- Sämtliche Erzählungen in vier Bänden. Unordnung und frühes Leid: Erzählungen 1919-1930. Fischer.

--- Sämtliche Erzählungen in vier Bänden. Die Betrogene: Erzählungen 1940-1953.
851-0315-01LWriting: Precision of Language as a Field of Research for Literature Restricted registration - show details W1 credit1GF. Kretzen
AbstractWhen we write a literary text we enter into a set-up for experiments and explore the possibilities ensuing from the specific structure and consistency of such a text. Literary writing allows us to go over to another kind of knowledge. Thus, the question: what is it that I want to write about? is replaced by: what do I write?
ObjectiveIn this course we shall analyze and apply conditions and criteria for literary writing on the basis of our own texts.
The course is intended for persons who are interested in literary approaches to exactitude.
Any attempt to write literature is confronted with an unforeseeable linguistic dynamism whose feasibility is determined by laws and rules quite different from those of science and technology. For the science-oriented writer, experiencing the self-evidence produced by literary approaches in his or her own writing project opens up a field of language with new content and new methods.
ContentIn the natural sciences as well as in engineering we set up experiments, analyze equation systems, and formulate theories. In order to complement these practices, the course «Writing» shall pursue precision in literary writing, its choice of word and its self-evidence.

When we write a literary text we also enter into a set-up for experiments and explore the possibilities ensuing from the specific structure and overall consistency of such a text. This form of writing takes us from the question: what is it that I want to write about? to the question: what do I write?
How do such literary approaches differ from the ways in which the natural sciences use language?
In this course we shall analyze and apply conditions and criteria for literary writing on the basis of our own texts.
The course is intended for persons who are interested in literary approaches to exactitude.
Any attempt to write literature is confronted with an unforeseeable linguistic dynamism whose feasibility is determined by laws and rules quite different from those of science and technology. For the science-oriented writer, experiencing the self-evidence produced by literary approaches in his or her own writing project opens up a field of language with new content and new methods.
Prerequisites / NoticeThose wishing to participate are required to send in between two and three pages text of their own writing that will be discussed in class. The next step will be writing a text on a preset topic as a basis for discussing the various realizations of a given task.
851-0365-00LIntroduction to English Literature: Stories of TechnologyW2 credits2SA. Brand-Kilcher
AbstractDid the adventures of Ulysses inspire Mark Zuckerberg on his way to invent facebook?
In what way might literature influence technical and scientific thought processes? How do modern technology and media influence texts and the production of texts?
Recent literary and cultural theory reflect this complex interconnection of writing/reading and technology.
ObjectiveGet in touch with literature, get to know concepts and ideas in literary theory and learn to use them to analyse and discuss a text. Learn to see connections between your own field of research and literature. Explore how texts inspired the technical revolution and how the technical revolution changed and influenced literature.
ContentIs Silicon Valley the new Promised Land also for writers? The old techniques of writing change radically in times of modern technology and media. The solitary poet is not alone anymore, he has got his laptop and through the world-wide-web stays connected to the world, whether he wants to or not. On the other hand: people who might have hundreds of Facebook-friends might still sit alone at home. There will be room to discuss how social the social network is. Short stories depicting the "tech-people", today's gods, will be read and discussed in class.
Blogs and Selfies - everybody is a writer and an artist today. The Internet is a complex connection of writing and reading. Concepts of literary and media theory will be introduced. The concept of authorship is put to the test through modern technology and its possibilities. Theoretical debates will be analysed (Kittler, Bolter).
But we will not only concern ourselves with theory. In the American novel Galatea 2.2 by Richard Powers a professor of literature is challenged by the computer scientist Philip Lentz to teach a computer literary analysis. And we might even experiment with this: Create your own blog and present it in class.
LiteratureAs an introduction: David Jay Bolter: Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing. Hillsdale 1991.
851-0331-01LSixteen Variations of Time in LiteratureW3 credits2VB. Comment
AbstractTime is the primary object of literature. It may take the form of duration or the moment of its abolition, just as Roland Barthes imagined.
ObjectiveIt is common knowledge that language is structured upon the tense. From the present to the imperfect subjunctive, from the aorist to the future perfect, literature hasn't taken any breaks in mistreating and bending a simple chronology in order to develop convolutions, spirals, premonitions, anticipations and fusions. By approaching sixteen literary case studies drawn from world literature and his own texts, Bernard Comment unfolds the issue of time in literature just like an horologist who deals with mad and disconcerting watches. Chateaubriand, Borges, Frisch, Rolin, Joyce, japanese haïku, Flaubert, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Hemingway, Rimbaud, Pessoa, Tabucchi are some of the authors that occupy central stage-sixteen short journeys through the soft and malleable texture of time.
851-0346-03LThe Dramatics of Italian Thinking Between Dante and Humanism
Does not take place this semester.
W3 credits4V
AbstractThe course traces in humanist philology (recovery and new interpretation of classic tradition) the crucial significance of an ethical and theoretical perspective of Italian Humanism.
ObjectiveThe philosophical value of italian Humanism is still a debated issue. To many historians and philosophers this decisive cultural moment of european civilization carries a meaning that is nearly exclusively literary and artistic. The idea that guides the research that the course unfolds implies that precisely our remarkable humanist philology (recovery and new interpretation of classic tradition) we may trace the crucial and emphatic significance of an ethical and theoretical perspective.
851-0300-91LOn Playing with the Alphabet in Literature and Art (1600-2010)W3 credits2SS. S. Leuenberger
AbstractThe seminar investigates texts from the baroque era to the present, all of them structured around the letters of the alphabet. In these texts, the exploration of the letters of the alphabet is not a self-referential reflexion on language and the methods of producing texts but discusses the question of the commitment of literature, of history and remembrance, of theology and politics.
ObjectiveThe play with the alphabet is a transnational phenomenon that is rooted in the ancient world of Europe and in the medieval tradition of the Kabbala. It is based on the concept of the meaning of the letters and their combinations in mysticism and magic. The seminar will show that forms of letter play are not only readable as a reflexion on language and the production methods of texts. The students will familiarize with the development of the exploration of the alphabet in the history of literature and in cultural history that started with considerations of the nature of god and the world, of creation and primordial language. In times of upheaval, of war and of catastrophe, letter plays served to bring up the possibility of restitution of language and the world after doom.
ContentDas Leipogramm, Tautogramm, Anagramm, Pangramm, Akrostichon und Palindrom, Figurengedichte und die Lautdichtung sind literarische Spielformen, die die Aufmerksamkeit des Schreibenden wie des Rezipienten auf die Buchstaben des Alphabets lenken. Die europäischen Literaturen seit der Antike haben eine grosse Zahl alphabetischer Texte hervorgebracht. Dabei spielte die graphische Anordnung der Buchstaben und damit der visuelle Aspekt von Anfang an eine zentrale Rolle, sowohl bei der historisch weit zurückweisenden Verwendung der Buchstaben in magischer Funktion und innerhalb der Sprachmetaphysik der hebräischen Kabbala des Mittelalters als auch in den buchstabenkombinatorischen Experimenten des deutschen Barock und in der Kunst des frühen 20. Jahrhunderts, beispielsweise in der Malerei Picassos und Klees, im Futurismus und bei den Dadaisten.
Die Umwandlung der überlieferten Verfahrensweisen der Buchstabenkombination in poetische Techniken seit dem 17. Jahrhundert soll im Seminar untersucht werden. Dabei führt das Textcorpus über den Bereich einer einzelnen Nationalliteratur hinaus: Gelesen werden u.a. Texte aus dem Barock, etwa Harsdörffers Frauenzimmer-Gesprächspiele, aus den europäischen Avantgarden, etwa Arbeiten der Dadaisten Ball, Tzara, Hausmann und des italienischen Futuristen Marinetti, sowie aus der nach 1945 entstandenen Literatur, z.B. Beiträge von Ernst Jandl und Eugen Gomringer zur Konkreten Poesie wie auch der französischen sprachexperimentellen Gruppe Oulipo und der amerikanischen Postmoderne.
Entstanden sind alphabetische Texte auffallend häufig in Zeiten der Krise und des politischen Umbruchs. Im Seminar zu prüfen ist, inwiefern diese Buchstabenspiele, ihrem Ursprung im mystischen Denken entsprechend, als Auseinandersetzung mit der Frage nach den schöpferischen Möglichkeiten und Grenzen des Menschen zu verstehen sind, indem sie die auf der Sprache basierende Neuschaffung fiktiver und realer Welten thematisieren.
851-0346-04LFrom the Postmodernism to the New RealismW3 credits2VM. Ferraris
AbstractAt the turn of the century the cultural hegemony of postmodernism has ceased to exist, as established by the debate around New Realism following the Manifesto of New Realism (2012) by Ferraris. The debate acquired an international dimension involving a large number of disciplines (architecture, psychology, literature, pedagogy, theology). The course is a comprehensive introduction to New Realism.
ObjectiveStudents know the terms and the context of postmodernism and new realism. They can define the two currents of thought and they know how to relate them as well as how to connect them to other involved disciplines. More specifically, students will focus on the following four stages:
1. splendours and miseries of postmodernism
2. the limits of constructivism
3. negative realism
4. positive realism.
Content"From Postmodern to New Realism". At the turn of the century the cultural hegemony of postmodernism has ceased to exist, as established by the debate around "New Realism" following the Manifesto of New Realism (2012) by Maurizio Ferraris (well-known in Switzerland thanks to the volume edited by Christoph Riedweg Nach der Postmoderne. Aktuelle Debatten zu Kunst, Philosophie und Gesellschaft, 2014.) The debate soon acquired an international dimension, spreading to the United States, England, Germany, Russia, Spain and Latin America; it also involved a large number of extraphilosophical disciplines (architecture, psychology, literature, pedagogy, theology). The course, which provides a comprehensive introduction to new realism, will be divided into four stages: splendours and miseries of postmodernism; the limits of constructivism; negative realism; positive realism.
LiteratureThe relevant reading and material for the course will be indicated and/or rendered available at the beginning of the course.
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