GRK 1733:  Globalisation and Literature. Representations, Transformations, Interventions

• Subject Area: Literary Studies
• Term: from 2012 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 181475650

Literature constitutes an archive for the analysis of processes of globalization that is still largely unexplored. Literary Studies is thus especially qualified to contribute to the examination of these processes in ways which have not been sufficiently taken into account so far. The DFG Research Training Group examines the significance of literature in processes of globalization from a historical perspective which covers the time from antiquity to the present. Our research interests focus on the question of how literature interacts with and is driven by cultural, economic, and political globalizing dynamics. On the one hand, the research training Group asks in which ways literature is transformed by historically variable media relations (e.g. the changing status of books in societies in which communication is globalized by means of the internet); on the other hand, it analyzes how literature not only represents and reflects, but also criticizes and intervenes in globalization processes. In this context, the nation constitutes only one reference point that has been overemphasized by the traditional division of academic literary studies into national philologies. Besides examining literature in a narrow sense, the research training group also considers the narrative and figural dimensions of other genres (travelogues, essays etc.). The group of supervising professors is composed in such a way as to guarantee the support of doctoral dissertations and postdoc studies in fields of research that reach far beyond Europe. In order to create a productive network of research, individual research projects do not primarily concern certain regions but follow more general thematic aspects. The research training group therefore strongly encourages research that views different regions and/or historical stages from a comparative perspective. The study program, which covers theories of both literature and globalization, provides the basis for this kind of research. Moreover, it provides a forum for an intense exchange of ideas between Ph.D. students, professors and visiting scholars from the fields of both literary studies and social studies.

• DFG Programme: Research Training Groups
• Applicant Institution: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
• Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Robert Stockhammer
• Participating Researchers: Professor Dr. Christian Begemann; Professor Dr. Klaus Benesch; Professor Dr. Tobias Döring; Professorin Dr. Annegret Heitmann; Professor Dr. Martin Hose; Professorin Dr. Inka Mülder-Bach; Professor Dr. Christoph K. Neumann; Professor Dr. Riccardo Nicolosi; Professorin Dr. Evelyn Schulz; Professor Dr. Bernhard Teuber