Courses - Summer Term 2011

Prof. Dr. Cecile Sandten

Content:
This course attempts to introduce modern literary theory to students of English Literature in order to make it intelligible and attractive alike. It will be shown that none of the different approaches, ranging from New Criticism, Formalism, Structuralism, Semiotics, Post-Structuralism, Psychoanalysis, Gender Studies, Intertextuality, Post-Colonialism, or New Historicism, is simply concerned with literary studies in a narrow sense. On the contrary, the above mentioned theories emerged from other areas of the humanities, and have implications well beyond literature itself. However, in this seminar we will explore the different theories and theoretical approaches by looking at their origins, premises and implications and by extracting their underlying messages.
Objectives:
As the main focus is placed on both the understanding as well as the application of theoretical premises and paradigms, we shall concentrate on Joseph Conrad’s short novel Heart of Darkness (1902) in order to make the different theoretical approaches comprehensible. A detailed course schedule will be available at the beginning of the semester.
Prerequisites:
In order to participate students of Anglistik/Amerikanistik need to have completed the lecture course "Introduction to the Study of Literatures in English" successfully.
Additionally, you are asked to have read Conrad’s Heart of Darkness by the beginning of the semester.
Requirements for Credit:
Apart from regular attendance, active participation will be expected. For the successful completion of the course you are required to give an oral presentation (15 minutes = Prüfungsvorleistung) and to write a substantial seminar paper (15-20 pages = Prüfungsleistung).
Reading List:
Joseph Conrad (1902): Heart of Darkness. Reclam Fremdsprachentext.
Eagleton, Terry (1993): Literary Theory: An Introduction. London: Blackwell.
Besides, a reader with seminal material will be provided at the beginning of the semester.
Registration:
There will be a list at the door of my office (Rh 39, Zi. 214). Please register there.

Prof. Dr. Cecile Sandten

Content:
Cape Town comprises a tale of two cities only. There is the city of the privileged, their rose and vanilla mansions hugging those contours of privilege close to the city's mountain chain, its forest slopes, and better beaches. However, there sprawls the immense city of the dispossessed and deprived, the apartheid dormitory towns and squatter camps, steadily filling up the waste ground between the city's mountain backbone and the barrier of range of the Hottentots Holland. Johannesburg is also divided – but now as much by poverty and violence as by race: there are the homeless people using manholes as cupboards; there are devastating changes along the postapartheid streets: walls grow higher; neighbourhoods are gated; the keys multiply.
Security is one of the buzz words ringing in the streets of this city. In this seminar we will explore the importance of two South African metropolises as political and cultural centres and as a social microcosms reflecting the state of its transcultural society due to its colonial past (apartheid) and its postcolonial (post-apartheid), effects. We will investigate the political, social, cultural and architectural history with a special focus on Cape Town and Johannesburg, especially through the study of written and visual representations (paintings, photographs, films, literary and academic texts/presentations).
Objectives:
In an interdisciplinary and comparative mode, by looking at neighbouring disciplines such as gender studies, arts, music, film, sociology, or urban studies, we will get an in-depth knowledge of some of the main issues of postcolonialism (diaspora, migration, dislocation, hybridity) and become familiar with aspects related to South Africa's recent history (apartheid). In addition, students will be introduced to concepts such as the flaneur and spacial-semantic layering.
Prerequisites:
None.
Requirements for credits/Type of Module Exam:
Apart from regular attendance, active participation will be expected. To successfully complete the course, students will have to give an oral presentation (20-30 minutes = Prüfungsvorleistung) and to write a substantial seminar paper (15-20 pages = Prüfungsleistung).
Registration:
There will be a list at the door of my office (Rh 29, Zi 214). Please register there.
Set Texts:
Mda, Zakes (1995): Ways of Dying. New York: Picador.
Schonstein Pinnock, Patricia (2000): Skyline. Cape Town: David Philip Publishers.
Van Niekerk, Marlene (1994): Triomf [trans. from the Afrikaans by Leon de Kock]. Woodstock & New York: The Overlook Press.
Vladislavic, Ivan (2006): Portrait With Keys: The City of Johannesburg Unlocked. London, New York: Norton.
In addition, a reader with seminal material on post colonialism and the metropolis will be provided at the beginning of the semester.

Prof. Dr. Cecile Sandten

Content:
This course attempts to introduce students to some of the novels by Stefan Heym, a Jewish-German writer who was born on 10th April 1913 in Chemnitz and died on 16th December 2001 in Ein Bokek, Israel. Heym's uncompromising stance made him unpopular with a succession of political regimes. The National Socialists, the CIA, and the East German secret police all held files on him. He was Hitler's youngest literary exile; McCarthyism was to drive him from the USA whose citizen he had become in 1943; and even in what appeared his natural home – the first socialist state on German soil – he was to become the country's leading dissident. Students will read a selection of novels and short stories which Heym originally wrote in English. Apart from a thorough engagement with Heym's novels and short stories, students will, as part of the seminar concept "Cultural Representations in/and Practice", actively take part in the inaugural conference on Stefan Heym which will take place in Chemnitz from 1st – 3rd July 2011, and which is organised by the International Stefan-Heym-Society.
Objectives:
As the main interest is placed on both, the reading as well as the interpreting of a selection of Stefan Heym's novels and short stories, theoretical premises and paradigms will focus on concepts such as exile, the dissident and the writer as a politically engaged spokes-person of his time. In addition, students will learn how to make a poster for a poster presentation which will be part of inaugural conference on Stefan Heym in which they will actively take part. If need be, students will do research in archives and libraries related to Stefan Heym's works.
Prerequisites:
Magister-students need to have successfully passed the intermediate exam (Zwischenprüfung); Master-students need to have successfully completed their BA in English.
Requirements for Credit:
Apart from regular attendance, active participation will be expected. For the successful completion of the course students are required to give an oral presentation (15 minutes = Prüfungsvorleistung) during the above-mentioned obligatory inaugural conference on Stefan Heym by preparing a poster which will be exhibited during the conference and to write a substantial seminar paper (15-20 pages = Prüfungsleistung).
Reading List:
A reader with seminal material and set texts will be provided at the beginning of the semester.
Registration:
There will be a list at the door of my office (Rh 39, Zi. 214). Please register there.

Prof. Dr. Cecile Sandten

Content:
The Forschungskolloquium/Examenskolloquium is open to students preparing for their final and for their intermediate oral and written exams. It is intended to give students the opportunity to present their research projects and to raise specific questions and/or difficulties at an early stage. Further, students are encouraged to engage in critical debates over approaches and topics with their peers. We will also revise general and specific topics required for intermediate and final exams and discuss required reading lists.
Registration:
There will be a list at the door of my office (Rh 29, Zi 214). Please register there.

Birte Heidemann, M.A.

Content:
In Northern Ireland, two groups of people with significantly conflicting senses of their own national and cultural identity inhabit the same territory. This has led to the emergence of a century-long conflict which resulted in the so-called ‘Troubles’ in the late 1960s. Though this political turmoil officially came to an end with the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, Northern Irish culture is still marked by split identities.
Northern Irish poetry is representative of these splits and struggles manifested in the recent past. This seminar will focus on selected poems by Colette Bryce, Deirdre Cartmill, Leontia Flynn, Alan Gillis and Sinéad Morrissey and Nick Laird who can be classified as the ‘next generation’ of Northern Irish poets.
Objectives:
By focusing on contemporary Northern Irish poetry, this seminar exposes students to historically informed literary, cultural and socio-political contexts for an understanding of the complexities inherent to Northern Ireland’s divided society. As the poets of the ‘next generation’ were born in the 1960s and 1970s, students will explore the extent to which Northern Ireland’s conflictual past still permeates their poems. To that end, students will be introduced. Creative writing assignments will complement the course inviting students to actively engage with the genre of poetry.
Prerequisites:
In order to participate students of Anglistik/Amerikanistik need to have completed the lecture course "Introduction to the Study of Literatures in English" successfully.
Requirements for Credit:
Apart from active participation, regular attendance is strongly recommended. For the successful completion of the course you are required to give an oral presentation (PVL) and hand in a substantial term paper (PL).
Set Texts:
SA reader with selected poems and theoretical texts will be provided at the beginning of the semester.
Registration:
There will be a list at the door of my office (Rh 39, Zi. 213). Please register there.

Birte Heidemann, M.A.

Content:
Rooted in the avant-garde movement of the 1920s and 1930s, the term ‘Theatre of the Absurd’ was coined by critic Martin Esslin to both describe and demarcate the work of a number of plays produced in the late 1940s to 1960s by primarily European playwrights. Both influenced by and representatives of the disillusionment dominating the post-war period, the plotless plays of the Theatre of the Absurd are characterised by a subversion of conventionalised language and surreal settings thereby departing from traditional dramatic forms. A theatre of situation instead of sequence, visual elements and light effects provide a multidimensional pattern of poetic imagery.
Objectives:
Given that the Theatre of the Absurd challenges conventional characteristics of drama, students will initially be introduced to its generic complexities. On the other hand, we will contextualise the genre within the socio-political situation of its time of origin. The seminar will first focus on the work of Irish writer Samuel Beckett who is considered one of the key playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd. We will read and discuss his plays Waiting for Godot (1953) and Endgame (1957) as well as Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming (1965) trying to uncover the hidden dimensions of their seemingly ‘absurd’ plots and performances. Film versions of the plays will bring the idea of performativity into discussion in addition to the textual analysis.
Prerequisites:
In order to participate students of Anglistik/Amerikanistik need to have completed the lecture course "Introduction to the Study of Literatures in English" successfully.
Requirements for Credit:
Apart from active participation, regular attendance is strongly recommended. For the successful completion of the course you are required to give an oral presentation (PVL) and hand in a substantial term paper (PL).
Set Texts:
Beckett, Samuel (1953): Waiting for Godot.
Beckett, Samuel (1957): Endgame.
Pinter, Harold (1965): The Homecoming.
Registration:
There will be a list at the door of my office (Rh 39, Zi. 213). Please register there.

Pavan Malreddy, M.A.

Content:
The second half of the twentieth century has witnessed a great deal of transformation with regard to the meaning of literature, its form, function and purpose. Marxism, avant-garde, post-structuralism, and postcolonialism in particular have had farreaching impact on what is conventionally known as English Literature(s), its geographical and cultural parameters. Literature has become more political than ever, and yet culture-laden, theoretical and intertextual means of aesthetic representation. It is thus important to preserve the aesthetic dimension of text while articulating its political relevance. Equally important is the need to understand how literature/text works (methods) and what are the patterns that make it work (theories).
Objectives:
Students will identify the major theoretical movements of the twentieth century literature, including their methods, non-methods, and socio-political contexts. In particular, students will learn literary theory and methods in relation to social and cultural theories at large.
Prerequisites:
In order to participate students of Anglistik/Amerikanistik need to have completed the lecture course "Introduction to the Study of Literatures in English" successfully.
Requirements for Credit:
Apart from active participation, regular attendance is strongly recommended. For the successful completion of the course you are required to give an oral presentation (PVL) and hand in a substantial term paper (PL).
Key Texts:
Culler, Jonathan. Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: OUP, 1997.
Lodge David and Nigel Wood. Modern Criticism and Theory A Reader, 3rd Edition.
Harlow: Pearson, 2008.
Registration:
There will be a list at the door of my office (Rh 39, Zi. 215). Please register there.

Pavan Malreddy, M.A.

Content:
As we approach the tenth anniversary of 9/11, it is becoming increasingly clear that the event has been hijacked into a casus belli for war and destruction in Iraq and Afghanistan, and other clandestine operations led by the US and its allied forces around the globe. According to critics, taken together, 9/11 and the redemptive violence the event has invoked since have effectively replaced the other major historical precedents of the 20th Century such as the Second World War and the Cold War. Following the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 anyone bearing the features of Asian or Muslim identity (“brown-colour”) became prime suspects of terrorism in the Western world. While these developments entail a process of reducing diverse cultural identities into singularity, the notion of the Orient as a collective geo-cultural entity, but more importantly, a cultivating ground of terrorists has become a latent discursive theme in contemporary literature, conflating Orient with terror, and skin colour with religion.
Objectives:
Students will learn how to read latent Orientalist themes in literature. Selected literature, film, and other artistic representations are frequently inlaid with subtle Orientalist themes despite their well-meaning intentions. Students will also learn the normative and non-normative definitions and meanings of terrorism.
Prerequisites:
Master-Students need to have successfully completed their BA in English
Requirements for Credit:
Apart from active participation, regular attendance is strongly recommended. For the successful completion of the course you are required to give an oral presentation (PVL) and hand in a substantial term paper (PL).
Registration:
There will be a list at the door of my office (Rh 29, Zi 215). Please register there.
Set texts:
Yasmina Khadra, The Attack, 2005.
Mohsin Hamid The Reluctant Fundamentalist, 2007.