Search result: Catalogue data in Spring Semester 2021

GESS Science in Perspective Information
Only the courses listed below will be recognized as "GESS Science in Perspective" courses.

Further below you will find courses under the category "Type B courses Reflections about subject specific methods and content" as well as the language courses.

During the Bachelor’s degree Students should acquire at least 6 ECTS and during the Master’s degree 2 ECTS.

Students who already took a course within their main study program are NOT allowed to take the course again.
Type A: Enhancement of Reflection Competence
Suitable for all students.

Students who already took a course within their main study program are NOT allowed to take the course again.
Literature
NumberTitleTypeECTSHoursLecturers
851-0080-00LNew Forms and Contents in Nonfiction Writing Restricted registration - show details
Number of participants limited to 30.
W3 credits2SW. Eilenberger
AbstractThe course will give an introduction into the new forms of reflection, also of topics from the natural sciences, in nonfiction writing.
ObjectiveTo develop an understanding for the functions and forms of contemporary non-fiction. To acquire elementary competences in non-fiction writing.
ContentSachbücher (engl. non-fiction-books) erleben auf dem Buchmarkt derzeit eine Renaissance. Als primärer Zweck dieser Gattung gilt oder galt die Wissensvermittlung, insbesondere als Vermittlung wissenschaftlich generierter Inhalte an ein breites Lesepublikum.
Die Entwicklung der Gattung dient damit als aussagekräftiger Indikator für die Dynamik des Verhältnisses von Wissenschaft, Wissensvermittlung sowie den diesbezüglichen Erwartungshorizonten einer interessierten Öffentlichkeit.
Anhand ausgewählter Publikationen (und daran anschließenden Übungen) wird der Kurs diesen Dynamiken nachgehen und dabei insbesondere neuere formale wie inhaltliche Entwicklungslinien untersuchen, wie etwa der Trend zum narrativen Sachbuch, zu explizit wissenschaftskritischen Sachbüchern oder auch stark prominenzgetragenen Publikationen.
851-0347-00LThe Worlds of LiteratureW3 credits2VD. Eribon
AbstractWe will try to see how literature has tackled multiple historical, social, political questions by inscribing them in individual and collective trajectories, through biographical, autobiographical, autofictional, autoanalytical writing.
ObjectiveIn this light, we will reread French-speaking authors such as Paul Nizan, Aimé Césaire, Léon-Gontran Damas, Edouard Glissant, Maryse Condé, Patrick Chamoiseau, André Gide, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean Genet, Violette Leduc, Annie Ernaux, Edouard Louis… By placing their works next to those of non-French-speaking authors who proceed in a comparable manner.
Content"I was born in 1842" writes Assia Djebar in the first volume of her autobiography, “L’amour, la fantasia”, published in 1985. That is, when the French colonial troops burned down the village of her ancestors. For her, born in 1936, restoring her personal history therefore amounts to restoring and exploring the history of Algeria for a century and a half. Taking this striking example as a starting point, we will try to see how literature has tackled multiple historical, social, political questions by inscribing them in individual and collective trajectories, through biographical, autobiographical, autofictional, autoanalytical writing. In this light, we will reread French-speaking authors such as (among others, of course) Paul Nizan, Aimé Césaire, Léon-Gontran Damas, Edouard Glissant, Maryse Condé, Patrick Chamoiseau, André Gide, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean Genet, Violette Leduc, Annie Ernaux, Edouard Louis… By placing their works next to those of non-French-speaking authors who proceed in a comparable manner.
Prerequisites / NoticeDer Kurs wird online als Webinar stattfinden.
851-0348-00LThe Italian Nation from Risorgimento to Fascism: Images, Symbols, StructuresW3 credits2VA. M. Banti
AbstractThe course will examine the process of formation of a national-patriotic movement in the Italy of the Risorgimento, and then move on to investigate the methods of "nationalization of the masses" in liberal (1861-1922) and fascist (1922-1945) Italy.
ObjectiveI will pay particular attention to the narratives and symbols that give life to the idea of nation, guided by these questions: is there a transformation of the ethical and symbolic materials that structure the national-patriotic discourse from the nineteenth century to the fall of fascism? And what legacy has all this left to Italy today?
ContentThe course will examine the process of formation of a national-patriotic movement in the Italy of the Risorgimento, and then move on to investigate the methods of "nationalization of the masses" in liberal (1861-1922) and fascist (1922-1945) Italy. I will pay particular attention to the narratives and symbols that give life to the idea of nation, guided by these questions: is there a transformation of the ethical and symbolic materials that structure the national-patriotic discourse from the nineteenth century to the fall of fascism? And what legacy has all this left to Italy today?
851-0297-00LManipulation in Literature and Cultural HistoryW3 credits2VS. S. Leuenberger
AbstractThis lecture focuses on the manipulation and control of individuals and the masses. The power of manipulation is based on subtle use of persuasive linguistic elements and knowledge of the desires and fears of the intended audience. In addition to a theoretical overview, the lecture concentrates on the literary and discursive texts that dispute the control of protagonists.
ObjectiveStudents will learn about manipulation as a linguistic and narrative phenomenon steeped in myth and classical rhetoric. Against the backdrop of cultural-historical developments, particularly with regard to major changes in media technology, we will examine how the reach of manipulation was extended from the individual to the masses. Students will be able to refine their critical discourse analysis skills and interdisciplinary abilities by studying texts from literature, politics, sociology, philosophy and psychoanalysis which reflect this shift in emphasis.
ContentSince the dawn of time mankind has tried to exert influence over others through the utilisation of certain techniques: initially for self-preservation – for example the interpretation of Sigmund Freud in Totem und Tabu. Later, desire became the driving force – centre stage: the desire for pleasure, power and control. Manipulation manifests itself in the form of characters and words, it is an authentically linguistic occurrence: classical antiquity, with the rhetoric, develops a system of verbal power of persuasion and, already then, questions were being raised in literary and discursive texts about how people could, or even should, manipulate. The exertion of influence and its impact will be clearly described, propagated, commented upon, criticised and ironised.
In contrast to oppressive overpowering, the power of manipulation (in Latin, manus hand, plere fill) is on the one hand, based on the subtle use of persuasive linguistic elements – it is always a (literary) discourse, too – and on the other, on knowing precisely what the fantasies, desires and fears of the manipulated are. The discourse of manipulation has its beginnings in the age of sophists and their belief in an omnipotence of language and rhetoric. It underwent further transformation under political and psychological signs in the early modern period through Giordano Bruno and Niccolò Machiavelli and culminated in the 20th century in a critique of the deception strategies of the “culture industry” (T.W Adorno) and “psychotechnology” (B. Stiegler) in global capitalism. Nowadays social media is the “radicalisation machine” (J. Ebner) that present new challenges for society. Written in the 19th century, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion already gave indications of how present-day conspiracy theorists would manipulate their audience, and its impact can still be felt today. Since manipulation is a linguistic, narrative and also literary phenomenon, the central theme of the lecture is how in literature itself this often politically controversial and manipulative behaviour is picked up and reflected through poetry: such as in Tristan from Gottfried von Strassburg, Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister, Friedrich Schiller’s Die Verschwörung des Fiesco zu Genua or Heinrich von Kleist’s Der zerbrochne Krug, the works of Edgar Allan Poe and Thomas Mann (Mario und der Zauberer) and, most recently in Eckhart Nickel’s novel, Hysteria.
851-0340-00LWriting Technology: Cyborgs, Cybernetics, and Translating MachinesW3 credits2VP. Gerard
AbstractIn this course we will examine the two sides of writing technology. On the one hand, we will direct our attention to that most conspicuous writing technology of our world: the digital writing of modern computers.
ObjectiveOn the other hand, we will consider a set of fictional works that imagine the future of technology in writing. More profoundly, however, we will explore the nature and limits of the being who both writes and is written by these technologies, the being we used to call human but which, if we follow the reasoning of Donna Haraway, long ago became an organic-mechanical hybrid—a cyborg.
ContentIn this course students will familiarize themselves with ideas central to both the modern study of literature and the historical development of information technologies. Through a mixture of literary and non-literary texts, we will examine notions like “code,” “medium,” and “translation” as concepts, metaphors, and formal practices. Our readings will range from the early work on cybernetics by Norbert Wiener, Alain Turing, and Claude Shannon to texts on media theory by Marshall McLuhan and Friedrich Kittler to classic science fiction novels by Philip K. Dick and Samuel R. Delaney. To give students a sense of the consequences of information theory for literary studies, and to introduce the historical links between communication technology, translation, and Global English, we will compare Edgar Allen Poe’s short story “The Gold Bug” with its translation into BASIC-English, a “universal” language composed of 850 English words selected according to statistical principles. Finally, we will consider the experimental literary form of Samuel Beckett’s Watt, a novel whose prose attains a degree of algorithmic formalization that brings English, as Hugh Kenner once said, “close to the language of digital computers.”
LiteratureNorbert Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings
Alan Turing, Computing Machinery and Intelligence
Claude Shannon, “The Mathematical Theory of Communication”

Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media
Friedrich Kittler, Literature, Media, Information Systems
Donna Haraway, A Cyborg Manifesto

Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Samuel R. Delaney, Babel-17
Edgar Allen Poe, “The Gold Bug” / “The Gold Insect”
Samuel Beckett, Watt
851-0303-00LEconomy and LiteratureW3 credits2SA. Kilcher, C. Weidmann
AbstractEconomics and literature are closely related: Literature does not only deal with economic conditions, but follows economic principles on a poetological level. Conversely, the economic knowledge production draws on its poetology. In the seminar, we will look at how a «rhetoric of economics» connects the poetological with methods of natural and social sciences.
Objective- Economic theories from the point of view of cultural studies and sciences
- Poetology from an economic perspective
- Basic literary texts of the modern age
- Poetology of Knowledge
ContentAs different as they may appear at first glance, economy and literature are deeply intertwined. In general, the economic - from the drama of the 18th century (Nathan the Wise, Faust) to the modern novel (Emma Bovary, Oliver Twist, Alice in Wonderland, Buddenbrooks) to the science fiction of the 20th century where technological invention is always organized around economic structures of innovation - is a structural motif that addresses both social, technological and poetological conditions. But literature and economics are, more fundamentally, structurally analogous in many respects: Both are described by scientific disciplines that can hardly be separated from their object of investigation and tend to appropriate methods of other sciences, both deal with issues of resource allocation and contingency management. Money and signs work in the same way, in that (both) their values are neither just real (natural) nor merely simulated (fictitious), but are negotiated in complex social processes. In the seminar, this connection is to be tackled from several angles: on the one hand, with a view on economic motives in literature and their principles of allocation, on the other hand, on the economic prerequisites for writing, and conversely, with regard to the importance of literature for economic argumentation and knowledge production at large (rhetoric of economics). This relationship will prove to be exemplary of how scientific methods (e. g. Econometrics, simulation), the rhetorics at heart of natural and social sciences (e. g. rational agent model, statistics), and historical readings (e. g. economic history) make use of the poetological whenever there is a need to unveil a ‘concealed’ reality, e.g. nature that first has to be understood.
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