Team
The chair of Modern German Literature and Comparative Literature focuses in particular on the social and political contexts of literature from the 19th to the 21st century.
The team at the chair contributes to the German Department’s profile in cultural studies and contemporary studies through research and teaching, and is also committed to a comparative perspective on German-language literatures and their interrelationships with other cultures and literatures, in line with the principles of intercultural German studies.
Key research areas include contemporary literature and literary life from the post-war period to the present day, intercultural phenomena of reception and adaptation, the literary and cinematic construction or destabilisation of identity and otherness, negotiations of collective violence and memory culture, postcolonial studies, and the tension between artistic freedom and forms of censorship.
Ongoing and completed projects are situated within research fields such as comparative literature, antisemitism studies, intertextuality theory, censorship studies, memory studies, contemporary history and historical discourse analysis, and explore not only canonical authors such as Kleist, Joseph Conrad and Jean Genet, but also key contemporary authors.