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Organization >> Faculty of Arts and Humanities >> Institute of English Studies >>
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Literary/Cultural History and Genres- Person in charge
- N.N.
- Details
- Seminar, 2 cred.h
language of lecture is English, Teil des Moduls E-Lit-B
- Fields of study
- WPFL Angl-B-2F 4
- Contents
- Please note that you must have completed both examinations of the Aufbaumodul E-Lit-A (Concepts&Methodologies seminar (THE) and the lecture course (exam) before registering for one of the class in this module.
YILMAZ: Queer Vampires, 1800s-2020s
S. Brooke Cameron asserts that “[f]rom its first appearance in Romantic-era Gothic fiction, the modern vampire has been inextricably tied to queer sexualities” (2023:117). In this class, we will trace the evolution of the vampire figure, beginning with its emergence in early 19th century fiction and following its transformation over the course of two centuries, culminating in its manifestations in contemporary literature and film. In doing so, we will evaluate the vampire’s many iterations, asserting its inherently queer nature by scrutinising texts through the lens of queer theory. In this class, the notion queer will both entail a discussion of LGBTIA+ representation and of polygamy and heteropessimism. We will reflect on the respective historical contexts of the texts, and consider vampirism and queerness in various literary periods, including Romanticism, (Late) Victorianism, Modernism, and the contemporary era. The syllabus includes works of Irish, British, and North American writers, for example, John Polidori, Sheridan Le Fanu, Bram Stoker, Rachel Klein, and S.T. Gibson, among others. We will also discuss the two films Nosferatu (1922) and Dracula (1931). Note that this class requires a lot of reading.
While short fiction and poems will be made available on OLAT, you need to purchase your own copies of the following texts (e-books are permitted only with pagination):
Sheridan Le Fanu (1872), Carmilla (London: Pushkin Press, ISBN 978-1-78227-584-8)
Bram Stoker (1897), Dracula (London: Penguin Classics, ISBN 978-0141439846)
Rachel Klein (2002), The Moth Diaries (London: Random House, ISBN 978-0553382181)
S.T. Gibson (2021), A Dowry of Blood (London: Orbit, ISBN: 978-0-356-51931-9)
SCHEWE AND SCHUH: Spirits, Voices, Futures: Queer Speculative Worlds
This course focuses on queer speculative fiction in British and North-American literature, as explored in the different intersecting genres of utopia/dystopia, science fiction, and fantasy. We will trace the history of speculative worlds to early-modern utopia and the paranormal, looking back to Margaret Cavendish’s “The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing-World” (1666) and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’s “Since I Died” (1873). After understanding the history of queer speculative imagination, we will analyse early LGBTQIA+ representation with Gregory Casparian’s An Anglo-American Alliance: A Serio-Comic Romance and Forecast of the Future (1906) and “The World Well Lost” (1953) by Theodore Sturgeon. Finally, we will move to contemporary examples, discussing Becky Chambers’s The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet (2014), Rivers Solomon’s “St. Juju” (2019), Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone’s This is How You Lose the Time War (2019), and Netflix’s Nimona (2023). The respective literary historical and periodical contexts of these works and theoretical approaches to queer speculative fiction and the genres of utopia, science fiction, and fantasy will be discussed with a particular focus on queer representation and reading, broaching intersectional questions of race, gender, and sexuality in writing about speculative futures and worlds.
Note: This is a reading intensive course, and it is advisable to have read the core texts prior to the start of the semester. Please also note that this seminar will be taught via blended learning, alternating between face to face and online sessions (via Zoom), though a majority of seminars will be face to face.
Content note: This course is chiefly concerned with writing that portrays experiences of othering, exclusion, discrimination, and trauma. Taking an intersectional approach, it inevitably covers dimensions of racism, ableism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and other related phenomena. Be advised that these topics can be triggering or distressing and take this into account when choosing to register for this course.
Literature: These three books are core texts for this course, please buy and read the following editions if possible (ebooks and other/cheaper editions that you may already own or buy secondhand are also fine of course). Be advised that all of these books are available as paperbacks: Becky Chambers, The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet (2015), ISBN: 978-1473619814, retails at 8 EUR if bought new. Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone’s This is How You Lose the Time War (2019), ISBN: 978-1529405231, retails at 9 EUR if bought new. Gregory Casparian’s An Anglo-American Alliance: A Serio-Comic Romance and Forecast of the Future (1906) is freely available via https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/52913. All other texts required for the seminar will be made available via OLAT after the first session.
SCHWARCK: Tragedy, Denial and the American Dream
This course introduces students to the main generic features and dramatic concepts of tragedy (the notion of fate, the tragic hero, the role of irreversibility, hamartia etc.). We will begin by examining its ancient Greek origins with Sophocles’s influential Oedipus the King (429–425 BC). This class centres on the study of two texts that employ tragedy to critically examine the idea of the American dream by revolving dramatically around characters who are staged to be driven by denial. Arthur Miller’s postwar play All my Sons (1947) tells the story of a father and factory owner, who is accused of having knowingly shipped defective (and fatal) airplance engine parts, yet who manages to keep his (allegedly) tragic deed in firm denial. Denial lies also at the bottom of the narrative in Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925), in which tragedy is combined with romance, crime and a rag to riches story in order to project a ‘hero’ who desperately tries to reignite and reinvent a romantic dream. A key goal of this class will be that its participants learn to see that, in spite of all its focus on the individual ‘heroic’ character, tragedy gains its pervasive traction due to relations that are necessarily ‘beyond the individual’.
Note that participants will be asked to attend two substitute sessions. The time slot for these sessions will (likely) be on two Wednesday evenings (exact dates TBA) from 6:00 to 8:00 pm. In addition to that, (if feasable) we will also attend a production of Oedipus the King(directed by Karin Beier) at the Deutsche Schauspielhaus Hamburg.
The play by Sophocles will be available on OLAT. Please acquire the following two editions before the class begins:
Arthur Miller: All My Sons (ISBN 9780141189970, Penguin Modern Classics).
Scott F. Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby(ISBN: 978-3-15-009242-2, Reclam)
ZIMMERMANN: American Drama: From Modernism to Postmodernism & After
Starting from the assumption that both modernist and postmodernist theater break with the tradition of realism, we begin the class with Susan Glaspell’s one-act play Trifles. We then contrast the various modernist styles – expressionist drama, epic theater and modern versions of realist drama – with their postmodern counterparts. We conclude the course with the question whether recent plays in the 21st century require a new period term such as post-postmodernism. A thematic focus in this class will be on African American drama and the representation of black-white relations.
Among the plays to be discussed are Sophie Treadwell, Machinal; Thornton Wilder, Our Town; Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman; Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun; Tony Kushner, Angles in America – Part One; Branden Jenkins-Jacobs, Neighbors and Jeremy O. Harris, Slave Play.
GLAUBITZ: Irish Short Stories Group 1
According to Declan Kiberd, short forms like poetry, satire, jokes, anecdotes, fairy tales and short stories have been a persistent feature of Anglophone Irish literature at least since 1700: They were flexible enough to respond quickly and incisively to the political and cultural turmoil of colonial Ireland, modernization and globalization. They were also memorable enough to circulate widely (even outside established print culture and beyond Ireland). Tales and short stories from Ireland from the 19th to the 21st century are therefore a suitable point of departure for exploring both history and literary history. Among the writers discussed are Jonathan Swift, Sheridan Le Fanu, James Joyce, Dermot Bolger and Claire Keegan.
Please sign up for one group only. Switching between classes during term will not be possible. Course materials will be available on OLAT.
GLAUBITZ: Irish Short Stories Group 2
According to Declan Kiberd, short forms like poetry, satire, jokes, anecdotes, fairy tales and short stories have been a persistent feature of Anglophone Irish literature at least since 1700: They were flexible enough to respond quickly and incisively to the political and cultural turmoil of colonial Ireland, modernization and globalization. They were also memorable enough to circulate widely (even outside established print culture and beyond Ireland). Tales and short stories from Ireland from the 19th to the 21st century are therefore a suitable point of departure for exploring both history and literary history. Among the writers discussed are Jonathan Swift, Sheridan Le Fanu, James Joyce, Edna O’Brien, Dermot Bolger and Claire Keegan.
Please sign up for one group only. Switching between classes during term will not be possible. Course materials will be available on OLAT.
SPANGENBERG: The Development of the Consciousness Novel
Entry requirements: the completion of “Basismodul E-Lit-A”
The consciousness novel traces the workings of the individual mind, exploring the processes of perception and trying to render consciousness as accurately as possible. The consciousness novel is often seen as the quintessentially Modernist genre and only then did the representation of interiority in itself, i.e. not as a way to provide motivation for a character’s decisions and acts, become a prime concern of writers. However, the development of techniques to represent consciousness goes back as far as the 17th century. In this class, we will trace this development from early examples of the presentation of consciousness (in extracts), to Jane Austen (the first to shift extended representations of consciousness from the first to the third person), to two Modernist classics (Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway and James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man).
Texts to be acquired:
Jane Austen. 52022. Emma. Oxford: Oxford UP.
Virginia Woolf. 2000. Mrs Dalloway. London: Penguin.
James Joyce, 1916. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Any edition.
WINKLER: Female Voices in North American Poetry
In this class, we will read poetry written by North American women from the 17th to the 21st century. We will consider different periods, e.g. Puritanism or Modernism, and see in how far the poems can be considered representative of their cultural and historical backgrounds. Furthermore, we will read texts dealing with a wide variety of topics – such as religion, gender roles, identity, and race – and how they display a female perspective. We will read canonical poets, e.g. Anne Bradstreet, Emily Dickinson, Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde and Maya Angelou, before turning to contemporary phenomena, such as slam poetry and Instagram poets.
CONTENT WARNING: Please note that several of the texts in this class may feature descriptions of or references to self-harm, physical and (possibly) sexual violence. Other texts will deal with racism and racially motivated violence. These topics and descriptions may cause distress and may be triggering.
All texts will be made available on OLAT.
WINKLER: Developments in North American Short Fiction from the 19th to the 21st Century
During the 19th century, short fictional texts became increasingly popular in American literature and they have remained so until today. In this seminar, we will read and analyze classic American short stories from the last 200 years. On the one hand, we will discuss characteristic features of the periods the texts were written in (such as Realism or Modernism) and the subgenres they may pertain to (e.g. Gothic tales or initiation stories). On the other hand, we will also consider thematic questions and discuss how these texts deal with topics such as race, the legacy of slavery/colonialism and gender. We will read texts by a large variety of authors including Edgar Allan Poe, Sarah Orne Jewett, Ernest Hemingway, Louise Erdrich and many others.
CONTENT WARNING: Please note that several of the texts in this class may feature descriptions of or references to self-harm, physical and (possibly) sexual violence. Other texts will deal with racism and racially motivated violence. These topics and descriptions may cause distress and may be triggering.
All texts will be made available on OLAT in due time.
Courses
| | 050342 | | Mon | 10:00 - 12:00 | LS10 - R.201 | | Course from 13.4.2025 to 13.7.2025, Queer Vampires, 1800s-2020s
, expected number of participants: 20
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| | Dilâra Yilmaz |
| | 050614 | | Mon | 14:00 - 16:00 | LS10 - R.201 | | Course from 13.4.2025 to 13.7.2025, Queer Vampires, 1800s-2020s
, expected number of participants: 20
|
| | Dilâra Yilmaz |
| | 050625 | | Mon | 18:00 - 20:00 | LS10 - R.225 | | Course from 13.4.2025 to 13.7.2025, Tragedy, Denial and the American Dream
, expected number of participants: 20
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| | André Schwarck |
| | 050299 | | Tue | 14:00 - 16:00 | HRS7 - R.8 | | Course from 13.4.2025 to 13.7.2025, American Drama: From Modernism to Postmodernism & After
, expected number of participants: 20
|
| | Jutta Zimmermann |
| | 050624 | | Tue | 16:00 - 18:00 | LS10 - R.201 | | Course from 13.4.2025 to 13.7.2025, Tragedy, Denial and the American Dream
, expected number of participants: 20
|
| | André Schwarck |
| | 050623 | | Tue | 18:00 - 20:00 | LS10 - R.201 | | single appointment on 13.5.2025 | 18:00 - 20:00 | LS10 - R.002 | | Course from 13.4.2025 to 13.7.2025, Irish Short Stories Group 1
, expected number of participants: 20
|
| | Nicola Glaubitz |
| | 050621 | | Wed (except Wed 4.6.2025) | 12:00 - 14:00 | LS1 - R.104a | | single appointment on 4.6.2025 | 12:00 - 14:00 | LS11 - R.309a | | Course from 13.4.2025 to 13.7.2025, Achtung: Ausweichraum am 04.06.2025! Spirits, Voices, Futures: Queer Speculative Worlds
, expected number of participants: 20
|
| | Melissa Schuh
Anneke Schewe |
| | 050343 | | Wed (except Wed 4.6.2025) | 14:00 - 16:00 | LS1 - R.104a | | single appointment on 4.6.2025 | 14:00 - 16:00 | OS70 - UrSta | | Course from 13.4.2025 to 13.7.2025, Achtung: Ausweichraum am 04.06.2025! Spirits, Voices, Futures: Queer Speculative Worlds
, expected number of participants: 20
|
| | Anneke Schewe
Melissa Schuh |
| | 050629 | | Thu | 10:00 - 12:00 | LS13 - R.61 | | Course from 13.4.2025 to 13.7.2025, Irish Short Stories Group 2
, expected number of participants: 20
|
| | Nicola Glaubitz |
| | 050628 | | Thu (except Thu 5.6.2025) | 14:00 - 16:00 | LS10 - R.201 | | Course from 13.4.2025 to 13.7.2025, Achtung: Ausweichraum am 05.06.2025!
, expected number of participants: 20
|
| | Ann Spangenberg |
| | 050626 | | Thu | 16:00 - 18:00 | LS10 - R.201 | | Course from 13.4.2025 to 13.7.2025, The Development of the Consciousness Novel
, expected number of participants: 20
|
| | Ann Spangenberg |
| | 050617 | | Fri | 8:00 - 10:00 | LS10 - R.201 | | Course from 13.4.2025 to 13.7.2025, Female Voices in North American Poetry
, expected number of participants: 20
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| | Elisabeth Winkler |
| | 050630 | | Fri | 12:00 - 14:00 | LS10 - R.002 | | Course from 13.4.2025 to 13.7.2025, Developments in North American Short Fiction from the 19th to the 21st Century
, expected number of participants: 20
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| | Elisabeth Winkler |
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