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on the homepage of the department "Modern German Literature" at the Institute for German Studies at the University of Kassel.
Literature is the world on trial in a linguistic space of possibility. It stages social action and inaction, shapes different views of life and the world, reflects knowledge and non-knowledge. It is especially sensitive to the excluded and questionable, the 'other' of valid knowledge.
Modern German Literary Studies in Kassel researches and teaches literary texts from the 15th to the 21st century. It is based on a broad concept of literature that integrates semi-fictional and factual texts, including Baroque encyclopedias, enlightened travel literature, and literature and its media.
The subject is committed to a broad cultural-scientific understanding of literary studies, which integrates approaches from the history of knowledge, mentality and gender. Interdisciplinary cooperation with other philologies, the social sciences, and art history characterize research and teaching.
Current foci of the department are e.g. early modern knowledge cultures and narrative literatures, knowledge(schaft) and gender 1500-1900, literature and philosophy from the Enlightenment to the Classical period (e.g. Georg Forster, Johann Gottfried Herder), Kassel literary history (18th-20th c.), contemporary pop literature, intercultural constructions of knowledge (Italian images 16th-20th c.), literature and the arts.