Search result: Catalogue data in Spring Semester 2017

GESS Science in Perspective Information
Only the topics listed in this paragraph can be chosen as "GESS Science in Perspective" course.
Further below you will find the "type B courses Reflections about subject specific methods and content" as well as the language courses.

6 ECTS need to be acquired during the BA and 2 ECTS during the MA

Students who already took a course within their main study program are NOT allowed to take the course again.

These course units are also listed under "Type A", which basically means all students can enroll
Type A: Enhancement of Reflection Competence
Students who already took a course within their main study program are NOT allowed to take the course again.
Literature
NumberTitleTypeECTSHoursLecturers
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. It may be an existing text , such as an essay yet from school or a post for a student magazine. The next step will be writing a text on a preset topic as a basis for discussing the various realizations of a given task.
851-0365-02LIntroduction to English Literature: Science and Fiction Part IIW2 credits2SA. Brand-Kilcher
AbstractWho are we? Why are we here? Both science and literature alike are often motivated by a deep desire to answer life's big questions. We will look at differences and similarities in approach, methods and output in search for answers.
ObjectiveFind out more about shared ground between sciences and humanities and how that relationship changed over the last three centuries.
Develop a critical awareness about concepts such as a neat distinction between dry objectivity and emotional subjectivity which breaks down when the human identity of scientists is considered.
ContentWhat will save us in the end: surgery or poetry? That is one of the questions posed in Ian McEwan's novel "Saturday". Mc Ewan's novel and other texts and essays will be read and discussed.
Today there is not one scientific style anymore but rather a multiplicity of scientific genres. You can bring your own scientific text to class in order to analyze, discuss and possibly improve it.
LiteratureRecommended reading: Ian Mc Ewan: Saturday (2005);
Charlotte Sleigh: Literature and Science (2011).
851-0301-06LKnowledge of Resentment - Anti-Jewish Textual and Visual TraditionsW3 credits2VH.‑J. Hahn
AbstractThe lecture examines central moments of anti-Jewish production of knowledge from antiquity until today. The guiding question refers to the shifts of paradigms or the reprogramming of these traditions. Apart from textual sources also visual representations of Jewishness from different periods of time (Early Christianity, Late Middle Ages, Protestant Reformation etc.) will be analysed.
ObjectiveThe lecture aims at an exemplary as well as a critical examination of Western culture and science, which had not only generated the idea of human rights but are also affected by traditions of anti-Jewish "knowledge". Apart from seminal positions within research on Antisemitism, also current discussions in the field of research on Racism are included in the analysis. Additionally the lecture will present different aesthetic strategies within a variety of media in which anti-Jewish images of Jewishness are reproduced, tightened or critically deconstructed.
ContentDas Wissen vom Anderen dient dem Entwurf des Eigenen. So produziert gerade der moderne Antisemitismus, dessen Anfänge in der Ablehnung der Emanzipation seit dem ausgehenden 18. Jahrhundert liegen, ein sich ständig wandelndes, flexibles und anpassungsfähiges Wissen des Ressentiments. Insbesondere im 19. Jahrhundert sind dabei Wissenschaft und Antisemitismus vielfach miteinander verknüpft. Eine Wissensgeschichte des Antisemitismus geht deshalb von dem wissenschaftlichen Anspruch aus, der dem in den 1870er Jahren geprägten Neologismus unmittelbar eingeschrieben ist, und fragt, welche älteren Text- und Bildtraditionen jeweils aufgegriffen und transformiert werden und wie dieses gewissermaßen toxische Wissen zur Begründung von Gemeinschaften dient. Ganz grundsätzlich wird so die Frage nach den prägenden Faktoren zeitbedingter Vorstellungen von Wissenschaftlichkeit gestellt. Während antisemitische Vorstellungen um 1900 herum selbstverständlich in Disziplinen wie der Nationalökonomie, der Psychologie, den Gesellschaftswissenschaften oder der Philosophie anzutreffen sind, sind auch technische Fächer betroffen. Insbesondere bei der Wahrnehmung moderner Technologien lassen sich etwa in kulturkritischen Texten aus der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts antisemitische Deutungsmuster beobachten.
851-0334-01LMemoire of Occupied Paris: The Oeuvre by Patrick ModianoW3 credits2VO. Barrot
AbstractIn France Patrick Modiano embodies the absolute figure of the great author. In 2014 he obtained the Nobel Prize in Literature. Peter Englund of the Swedish Academy considered him as the "Marcel Proust of our times". His work has been translated in 40 languages. The course will provide with the necessary tools to approach his inspiration, style and universe.
Objective1. Paris
2. The Occupation of Paris by Nazi
3. The Style of Modiano

During the course we will familiarize with 3 books (available in the collection Folio) and 2 films by Patrick Modiano: "La Place de l'Etoile", his first novel (1968), "Dora Bruder" (a story of a 15-year-old-girl of Eastern European Jewish immigrants, who disappears in 1942 (1999)), "Un pedigree", his first attempt of autobiographical writing (2005); "Lacombe Lucien", a film by Louis Malle, of which Modiano wrote the original scenario (1974); "Le Parfum d'Yvonne", a film adapted from "Villa triste" by Patrice Leconte (1995).
851-0301-07LNarrating Time? Restricted registration - show details
Number of participants limited to 30
W3 credits2SC. Jany
AbstractIt seems quite natural to capture past times by way of narrative representation. Certain philosophers and historians even claimed that time is inherently narrative and therefore articulated best in the form of narrations. But is it even possible to narrate time? What kind of translation is that? And, above all, what are the costs of, and the resistances to, such a translation?
ObjectiveThis course means to train the students' ability to thoroughly read and critically penetrate literary texts. Its second aim is to introduce basic problems of narrative representation, above all the relation between temporal development and narrative processes. The third aim is to develop the question of whether literature is, unlike historiography, aware of the fundamental unavailability of time, as that of how such knowledge is expressed.
LiteratureReadings may include: Nietzsche, Storm, Thomas Bernhard, Max Frisch, Paul Ricoeur, Hayden White, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht.
851-0300-71LFantastic Literature and Occult Knowledge
Information for UZH students:
Enrolment to this course unit only possible at ETH. No enrolment to module 550cm0 and 167c at UZH.

Please mind the ETH enrolment deadlines for UZH students: Link
W3 credits2VA. Kilcher
AbstractThe course focuses on the complex relation between the Fantastic and Occultism, which is understood as part of the history of knowledge of the imaginary after the 18th century.
ObjectiveThe course aims at conveying a general overview on various theoretical and literary conceptions of the Fantastic. At the same time it wishes to transmit the knowledge of occultism and its forms of representation.
ContentThe Fantastic may be understood as the conflictual surpassing of the fundamental literary function of fantasy during the modern age. Fantasy no longer structures an autonomous wonderful world, but it breaks in on the real as the imaginary. After 1800, and in the form of the imaginary, the fantastic breaks into a world that is thought to be rational and scientifically explainable while dissolving the causative correlations of the Enlightenment. In the backdrop of such tensed evolution, the Fantastic establishes itself within the context of the secularisation and of the scientification of knowledge. Yet, the Fantastic also promotes new forms of knowledge that come into conflict with the academic sciences during the 18th and 19th centuries and assert themselves as counterknowledge. This becomes evident and comprehensible in relation to occult sciences, namely theosophy, occultism, spiritism etc. With reference to the Fantastic counterknowledge becomes evident in a wide variety of distinctive images, and narratives, that relate of the uncanny, the gothic, the grotesque, the demonic, the surreal etc. At the same time, occult sciences look for the proximity to the arts of the Fantastic, that promise a new aesthetic -- as well as their possibilities in the media -- for the representation and the narration of the imaginary and the obscure.

The course has a twofold goal. It wishes to understand the notion and the history of Fantastic literature beginning with the 19th century, taking as case studies crucial and intriguing writers such as E.T.A. Hoffmann, Gustav Meyrink and Jorge Louis Borges. At the same time, the course aims at ascertaining the notion "occult knowledge" (resp. occult sciences) and its epistemological aspiration in conflict with academic knowledge. The lecture, therefore, aims at the reconstruction of the complex interrelation between the Fantastic and Occultism as a part of the history of knowledge of the imaginary right up to Psychoanalysis.
851-0300-59LUniversal Science. Models of Encyclopedia Between Philosphy and Literature (1600-2000)
Information for UZH students:
Enrolment to this course unit only possible at ETH. No enrolment to module 173 at UZH.

Please mind the ETH enrolment deadlines for UZH students: Link
W3 credits2SA. Kilcher
AbstractThe form of encyclopedia is central to knowledge since the modern era. It claims to embrace all phenomena of nature, history and culture and to represent this totality in a universally valid form. Despite its demand for universality the form of encyclopedia changes strongly throughout the centuries. The seminar is going to discover this development from renaissance to the present day.
Objective1) Overview of the most important encyclopedia projects from renaissance to the present; 2) theoretical understanding of different encyclopedia models; 3) comprehension of the aesthetic aspects of encyclopedia; 4) role of encyclopedic models in theory and history of the novel.
ContentThe form of encyclopedia is central to knowledge in modern era. Such knowledge claims to embrace all phenomena of nature, history and culture. Encyclopedia, in this context, is claimed to be the universal form which can describe this totality. However, if we look at the history of encyclopedia, it shows clearly that this was not at all a universally valid form. In fact, the actual form of encyclopedia changes various times: Combinative models in the 16th century were replaced in the 17th century by rational systems. In 18th and 19th century these rational systems were exchanged for alphabetic lexicons. And these lexicon got substituted for networks such as the Internet. The seminar will investigate, on the one hand, a historical approach to the changing models of encyclopedia. On the other hand, it is interested in an epistemological and poetological analysis of encyclopedic models. We will therefore focus both aesthetic aspects and the role of encyclopedia for certain literary genres, such as the novel.
LiteratureAndreas B. Kilcher: Mathesis und Poiesis. Die Enzyklopädik der Literatur 1600-2000. München: Fink 2003
851-0334-02LA Country Without Heroes: Romance and National Identity in Modern ItalyW3 credits2VS. Jossa
AbstractThe course aims to focus on some of the symbolic passages in the process of nation-building in Italy in the 19th and 20th centuries, as Italy reached its unity only in 1861.
ObjectiveThrough the study of Foscolo's Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis (1798), Collodi's Pinocchio (1880), Calvino's The Path to the Nest of Spiders (1947), and Tomasi di Lampedusa's The Leopard (1958) the course aims to give students an understanding of how and why Italy was born so late as a political entity. By focussing on the different stages of the process of Nation building in Italy, the course also aims to make students aware of how Italy's national identity developed: two books (Foscolo's and Collodi's) were written in the 19th century, and will help students to understand the pre-Risorgimento (the making of Italy), and the post-Risorgimento (the making of the Italians); whereas the other two books (Calvino's and Tomasi's) come from the 20th century, and will help students to understand the Resistenza (the making of the Republic), and the post-war Italy (the crisis of nationhood).
The course also aims to discuss the problem of the absence of a national hero in the Italian literary tradition, such as Wilhelm Tell for Switzerland or D'Artagnan for France or Robin Hood for Britain.
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