Events
23 Oct 2025 – 24 Oct 2025
Scholarly-artistic workshop
Exploration posthumanistischer Erzählpraxis: Verteilen, Skalieren und Perspektivieren
29 Oct 2025
Reading
Nacht der unerschossenen Gedichte 2025. Eine Begegnung mit ausgelöschter belarusischer Literatur
19 Nov 2025
Book presentation
»Nein!« ist nicht genug. Russische Autor:innen im Gespräch über Krieg und Literatur
27 Nov 2025
Lecture
Sofiya Filonenko: Contemporary Ukrainian Bestseller: Celebrities, Trends and Readership

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

The 20th Century in Basic Concepts: New articles in open access: Autorität, Diskriminierung, Generation, Markt, Migration, Moderne, Prävention, Täter/Opfer

New on the ZfL BLOG: Gianna Zocco on one of the beginnings of postcolonial literature in German
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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