Drawing on a variety of literary texts, periods, and genres, this seminar will present and explore different ways of reading. Topics will include literary hermeneutics and textual deconstruction.

This introductory graduate seminar has several goals. First, it offers an introduction to methods of reading and writing in the Humanities. To this end, we will examine a variety of theoretical approaches including philology, discourse analysis, New Historicism, cultural memory, postcolonial studies, reception studies, media theory and digital humanities with case studies on drama, poetry and prose as well as audiovisual media. Second, the proseminar provides an orientation to the field of Germanistik / German studies, the history of the discipline, and a variety of debates within the field. Third, the proseminar offers students training necessary for academic work. Professionalization exercises and practical workshops to refine skills needed for graduate-level research are therefore a central part of this seminar. Fourth, the proseminar offers elements of guidance regarding determining your course of graduate study. You will learn how to pose questions to frame your topic, determine your material, articulate your methodology, present results, and, most importantly, explain the scope, implications, and consequences of your project to other scholars within or beyond your own field. Parts of this seminar will be taught in conversation with colleagues from multiple universities and fields including film and media, literature, and history: Hilde Hoffmann (Ruhr-Universität Bochum), Mary Jo Maynes (University of Minnesota), and Leslie Morris (University of Minnesota). This multi-sited format will allow for collaborations between students across disciplines. Our collaborative discussions will focus on interrogating archives, aiming to conceptualize interfaces between archival research, aesthetic production, and political action. We will ask what scholars in the Humanities can contribute to a key question of our time: what is the role of imagination in shaping scenarios of social cohesion and division with regard to shared pasts and futures?

Repeat Rules

Course is not repeatable for credit.