Research
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F. Schleiermacher, Kurze Darstellung des theologischen Studiums, 2nd ed. 1830, § 132.
The perfect understanding of a speech or writing is a feat of art and requires an art theory or technique, which we designate by the term hermeneutics.
Research profile of the Faculty of Humanities
The Faculty's highly differentiated humanities culture has led to a diverse research landscape. We see this breadth of topics and methods, which cannot be reduced to a few key concepts, as a distinguishing feature of our research culture.
Agile research design formats are characteristic of this. In contrast to tightly pre-planned and therefore seemingly externally determined large-scale projects or highly complex and therefore sluggish collaborative research apparatuses, they are based on individually manageable, almost non-hierarchical and therefore quickly responsive structures. Such lean architectures, which are appropriate for the advanced 21st century, ensure that the research capacities of FB 02 are not blocked by extensive application, Coordinator or reporting tasks, but benefit scientific and social progress almost undiminished. Modern principles such as the careful use of given research resources, strict problem-oriented interdisciplinarity or internal structural economy are guiding principles for the targeted and therefore effective research culture of the Faculty of Humanities.
Nevertheless, the Faculty is also involved in two university-wide research priorities in which several of its subject areas collaborate across departments and disciplines: in Cultural and Gender Studies and in Empirical Educational Research. Other areas of focus include „Textwissenschaft und Textkompetenz“, „Mehrsprachigkeitsforschung“ and research into the work and influence of the Brothers Grimm.
Main research areas at FB 02
Publications of the Faculty
Julia Drube: Zwischen den Krisen. Theologische Denkanstöße zu wichtigen Fragen unserer Zeit. Between the crises. Trier: ruach.jetzt 2024.
Climate change, wars, pandemic. We live in times of crisis. ZWISCHEN DEN KRISEN provides theological food for thought on relevant questions of our time: Does God want people to suffer? Is our democracy in danger? What use are prayers for peace? Or: Can we be happy at all despite crises? The contributors reclassify theological concepts - scientifically sound, yet understandable and comprehensible. Part of the proceeds will be donated to Diakonie and Caritas.
In addition to contributions from various theologians from German-speaking countries, the anthology includes science slams, photographs by Nina Knöll and a foreword by Anna-Nicole Heinrich, President of the Synod of the Protestant Church in Germany.
Andreas Heek/Aurica Jax/Ilse Müllner/Annegret Reese-Schnitker (eds.): Zur Sprache bringen. Biblische Texte und sexualisierte Gewalt in Pastoral und Schule. Grünewald: Ostfildern 2024.
The abuse scandal has been shaking the Catholic Church for years. Sexualized violence in church spaces is not an isolated case, but is supported by a system that combines power, violence and sexuality into a hostile combination.
In this volume, biblical texts are read critically in order to understand the systems of sexualized violence and to search for resources of strength and resilience in the texts. The authors from various fields of church activity (schools, pastoral care, adult education, academia) show examples of how these texts can be used in pastoral care and schools to find a language for sexualized violence that has a liberating character.
Susanne Schuster: Problem Theologin. Die Entwicklung des Theologinnenamtes in der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche in Thüringen und der Evangelischen Kirche der Kirchenprovinz Sachsen. Leipzig: Historische Verlagsanstalt 2024 (= Historisch-theologische Genderforschung 9)
Women have been able to study theology for around a hundred years. The Protestant regional churches were confronted with the existence of "theologically trained women". How should female theologians work in the church? For around fifty years, there was a controversial debate about whether women theologians should be given the pastoral ministry. In most cases, no agreement could be reached; instead, the theologically controversial issues were settled at the legal level. This process is traced for the first time for the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Thuringia and the Evangelical Church of the Church Province of Saxony. The focus is on which groups within the two regional churches and the supra-regional church confederations were involved in this process.
Nikola Roßbach (ed.): Zensur. Handbuch für Wissenschaft und Studium. Baden-Baden: Nomos 2024.
Censorship is highly topical. In the context of global crises, eroding democracies and strengthening autocracies and dictatorships, it even seems to be gaining in topicality. A scientific survey of the phenomenon and its research is urgently needed. This handbook is the first to present the state of censorship research from an interdisciplinary, transhistorical and global perspective. Following conceptual and theoretical foundations, it deals with the central actors and fields of action of censorship: Politics, religion, economics, art, media and law. This is followed by an overview of the history of censorship from antiquity to the 21st century. The global dimensions of censorship are developed in contributions on various regions of the world (Africa, Asia, Australia, North, Central and South America, Western and Eastern Europe). Finally, it deals with current controversies and polemics of censorship, censorship narratives and debates (e.g. on "cancel culture" and "identity politics").
The handbook is aimed at specialists in cultural, literary and media studies, history and law who are interested in censorship, as well as advanced students.
With contributions by
Sigrun Abels | Norbert Bachleitner | Jessica Bauer | Lars Distelhorst | Jennifer Ehrhardt | Sascha Feuchert | Johannes Frimmel | Florian Gassner | Juri Häbler | Christine Haug | Thomas Keiderling | Wolfgang Stephan Kissel | Hans J. Lind | Manfred Loimeier | Siegfried Lokatis | Matthias N. Lorenz | Christian Meierhofer | Claus Oberhauser | Stephan Packard | Jörg Requate | Dirk Rohmann | Nikola Roßbach | Roland Seim | Daniel Syrovy | Jan-Henrik Witthaus | Hubert Wolf | Wolfgang Wüst
Amelie Bendheim & Jennifer Pavlik (Hrsg.): Ästhetik des Anderen. Minoritäre Perspektiven in Literatur, Theater und (neuen) Medien. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag 2024.
How are concepts of the Other staged in literature, film or theater? The contributors look at the potential of aesthetic forms and reflect on how these can contribute to making sections of reality visible that often remain unconsidered: Perspectives of the Other. Beyond essentializing attributions, the aim is to reveal hybridities and ambiguities in order to question widespread and sometimes rigid thought patterns. Only in this way can a differentiated world and self-perception emerge that includes the other as a fundamental experience and understands it as an opportunity for irritation and amazement.
You can find more information here.
Andreas Wicke: Fünfzig Jahre voller Samstage – Paul Maars „Sams“-Romane. KinderundJugendmedien.de. Wissenschaftliches Internetportal für Kindermedien und Jugendmedien. 2023.
"Now I can only hope that you enjoy the story of Sams nearly as much as my (unfortunately not entirely objective) children", writes Paul Maar in 1971, when he sends the manuscript for A Week Full of Saturdays to the publisher Friedrich Oetinger. Since then, eleven novels have been published, selling over six million copies. The stories about Mr. Taschenbier and Sams have also been adapted as audio books and radio plays, films and plays, musicals and computer games. The first volume was published in 1973, so Sams will be celebrating its 50th birthday in 2023 - and in that time it has become one of the best-known German-language children's book characters. However, the novels are not only popular with children; there are now also many different approaches to analyzing and interpreting them in German studies. In Fifty Years of Saturdays, Andreas Wicke casts twelve literary-scientific spotlights on Paul Maar's impressive children's literary success project, and excerpts from the original Sams manuscript and the correspondence between author and publisher are also published here, some for the first time.
To the individual chapters:
- Origin and reception
- On the interpretation of the main characters
- Dimensions of fantasy theory
- Social-historical and political background
- Illustrations
- Intertextual play
- Sams on the stage
- The Sams in radio play, audio book and film
- Language, comedy and poetry
- Translations
- Sams at school
- Literature and reality
Click here for the overview page: https: //sams.kinderundjugendmedien.de/
Andra Ioana Horcea-Milcu / Ann-Kathrin Koessler / Adrian Martin / Julian Rode / Thais Moreno Soares: Modes of mobilizing values for sustainability transformation. In: Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability (64).
There is broad agreement on the potential role of values to incite intentional transformative change towards sustainability. However, there is no proposed heuristic on how to mobilize values for sustainability transformation, especially in the context of multilevel decision-making. We aim to fill this gap based on a literature analysis conducted as part of Chapter 5 of the IPBES Values Assessment. We outline four modes of mobilizing values for sustainability transformation: enabling, including, shifting, and reflecting. They differ in terms of the mix of agency and conversely of outside steering needed for each value mobilization mode. We then explore key tensions and insights that emerge through this classification: interdependencies between the modes of mobilizing values, tensions between shifting versus enabling and including values, tensions between which values to shift and which values to enable, and tensions between levels of values intervention (individuals, community, and society).