From summer semester 2022 on, the ZfL dedicates its research to its annual theme COUNTER WORLDS.

The podcast BÜCHER IM GESPRÄCH features researchers talking about their new publications.

The ZfL associates present their research at home and abroad. ZfL EN ROUTE shows where.

The MEDIA CENTER provides visual and audio documentation of the ZfL’s research activities.

The ZfL BLOG regularly publishes contributions on current literary and cultural research.

The series INTERJEKTE and FORUM INTERDISZIPLINÄRE BEGRIFFSGESCHICHTE present knowledge in Open Access.

At the annual ZfL LITERATURE DAYS we discuss current topics of the literary and the academic world.

You find the ZfL in the legendary Mossehaus that was reconstructed by architect Erich Mendelsohn in the 1920s.

Events

31 May 2023

Wednesday lecture
Deuten deuten. Philologie, Hermeneutik und die Entstehung der Geisteswissenschaften

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06 Jun 2023

Conversation
Always Near III: Empty Planets. On Uninhabitable Landscapes

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09 Jun 2023 – 10 Jun 2023

ZfL Literature Days at Literaturhaus Berlin
Games

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22 Jun 2023 – 24 Jun 2023

Conference
The Right to Testify. The Public Status of the Witness in Times of Social Change

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13 Jul 2023 – 15 Jul 2023

Annual Conference at the ZfL
Counterworlds. Intervention and Escapism in Times of Turmoil

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13 Jul 2023

Panel discussion
Intervention, Unlearning, (Post-)Critique: The Humanities at a Crossroads

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14 Jul 2023

Keynote
Maggie Nelson: Practices and Problems of Freedom

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20 Oct 2023 – 21 Oct 2023

Workshop
The Tropes of Theory

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The ZfL

The ZfL is a humanities institute for literary research in interdisciplinary contexts that draws from a cultural studies framework. Its methods also engage with the structural transformations within historical-hermeneutic subject areas that have taken place in recent decades. In contrast to the study of literature at universities, predominantly organized by nationality, the ZfL fosters a broad concept of literature, but also uses interdisciplinary tools to fundamentally question the etiology of various literary concepts, their potential for the future, and the relationship between literature and other arts or cultural practices. This is done in the three program area History of Theory, World Literature, Knowledge of Life, and in the key projects.

 

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Research

I.

History of Theory

analyzes the genealogy of theory and develops innovative forms of historicizing it.

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II.

World Literature

disusses the global interrelations of literature and its potential to shape the world.

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III.

Knowledge of Life

investigates the knowlege of life in historical and interdisciplinary respects.

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IV.

Key Projects

work on issues that run across the thematic fields of the program areas.

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