Events
31 May 2022
Seminar
The Dissident Library: Non-Conformists. The Ukrainian Intelligentsia in the Dissident Movement, 1960s–1980s
01 Jun 2022 – 03 Jun 2022
International Conference
The Red Globe. Writing the World in Eastern European Travel Literature of the Cold War
10 Jun 2022
Conference
Algorithmizität als Kultur des Verstehens? Digitale Erkenntnisprozesse in den Humanities
16 Jun 2022 – 18 Jun 2022
International Conference
Socialism’s Divergent Masculinities. Representations of Male Subjectivities in Soviet Constellations and Beyond
23 Jun 2022
Festive Event. Inaugural Lecture as Honorary Member of the ZfL
Giga Zedania: Mamardashvili, Artaud and the metaphysics of Soviet life
27 Jun 2022 – 29 Jun 2022
Annual conference of the “The Short Life of Soviet Yiddish Literature”
“What is on Trial Here is the Yiddish Language”: The Making and Unmaking of Soviet Yiddish Literature
29 Jun 2022 – 30 Jun 2022
Workshop
Wie postdigital schreiben? Verfahren der Gegenwartsliteratur

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 Focus Projects.
News

New on Youtube: Angela Steidele and Christina Ernst in conversation on Anne Lister and the neighborhood between literature and research

New on the ZfL BLOG: Leander Scholz on the ecological imaginary (Klages, Margulis, Sense8)
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.
read moreFocus Projects
work on issues that run across the thematic fields of the program areas.
read more