Research Projects

"Palimpsest Spaces" - Research Network Initiative at the TU Chemnitz, Faculty of Humanities

Since its initial emergence, the concept of palimpsest has been primarily associated with the study of scriptural writing. However, the revival of the term as a metaphor is largely due to the fact that, from Sigmund Freud to Gérard Genette, there have been repeated attempts to incorporate the term into literary and cultural studies research. The research network initiative "Palimpsest Spaces" ("Palimpsesträume") at Chemnitz University of Technology is working to open up the potential of the concept of palimpsest within an inter- and transdisciplinary research network. To this end, it is expanding the concept of "palimpsest spaces" that has emerged in literary studies in recent years. The aim is to submit the research project to the DFG's "Research Groups" funding program in the near future.

Spokes person: Prof. Dr. Cecile Sandten, email: cecile.sandten@phil.tu-chemnitz.de

Metroglorification and Diffuse Urbanism: Representations of the Postcolonial Metropolis in Anglophone Literatures and Cultures

The project aims at a comprehensive investigation of contemporary, literary and media representations of postcolonial metropolises in the context of postcolonial theorisation, urbanity and gender studies. As a basis for further investigation of the texts and films that belong to the corpus of metropolitan representations, the project will select for analysis those that are geographically fixed to the postcolonial metropolises. Within this framework, this interdisciplinary project will focus on literary and media representations and depictions of the metropolis. Therefore, the project will involve analyzes of literary and media representations of the postcolonial in the urban spaces of metropolises such as Bangalore, Bombay/Mumbai, Delhi, Calcutta/Kolkata (India), Montreal, Toronto (Canada), Melbourne, Sydney (Australia ), Singapore, Hong Kong (Asia), Nairobi, Johannesburg, Cape Town and Lagos (Africa). Increasingly, the protagonists portrayed occupy precarious palimpsestic, liminal, border, transit or underworld spaces. Based on a spatial-semantic concept of stratification, the texts used for analysis will be discussed in terms of their intrinsically architecturally, socially, culturally and politically highly complex, formal-aesthetic constitution and history in narratives, poetic renderings and cinematic depictions.

Narrating Flight and Asylum

Throughout history, people have always been fleeing war, famine or displacement. Yet, since the beginning of what has been termed the refugee crisis of 2015, there has been an on-going discussion within political or media contexts regarding the issue of certain European nation states closing their borders to asylum seekers and refugees - a discussion that is often accompanied by racism and xenophobia or profound 'fears'. In order to explore the possibilities of political intervention and ethical commitment towards the "other", the focus of this project is therefore on the ways in which flight and asylum are narrated within the context of the broader topic of asylum accounts.