Events
17 Sep 2025 – 19 Sep 2025
Conference
Natural-Cultural Memory in the Anthropocene. Tracing – Archiving – Remembering
23 Oct 2025 – 24 Oct 2025
Scholarly-artistic workshop
Exploration posthumanistischer Erzählpraxis: Verteilen, Skalieren und Perspektivieren
23 Oct 2025
Panel discussion
Nonhuman Narration in Arts & Literature: Tales of Chatbots, Stones and Cells

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.
News

New in the audio collection: The Mariner’s Mirror Podcast with Jonathan Stafford, Henning Trüper, and Burkhardt Wolf

New on the ZfL BLOG: Chiara Visconti explores the afterlife of GDR science fiction
Research
History of Theory
analyzes the genealogy of theory and develops innovative forms of historicizing it.
read moreWorld Literature
disusses the global interrelations of literature and its potential to shape the world.
read moreKnowledge of Life
investigates the knowlege of life in historical and interdisciplinary respects.
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