Events
24 Apr 2025 – 25 Apr 2025
Workshop
Kulturgeschichte der Moderne in Berlin-Wilmersdorf – von der Carstenn-Figur bis in die Gegenwart
30 Apr 2025
Book presentation & panel discussion
Georgi Demidow und die Sprache der Repression (Literatur, Film, Geschichte)
13 May 2025
Working Group
Sustained Resistances and Theoretical Resonances: The Anti-System Mobilizations in Georgia and Serbia
04 Jun 2025
Wednesday lecture
Hannes Bajohr (UC Berkeley): Latenzraum und Erzählung. Weltmodelle in Literatur und KI
18 Jun 2025
Wednesday lecture
Eliot Borenstein (NYU): Speak of the Devil. The Putinist Crusade against Satan at Home and Abroad
19 Jun 2025 – 20 Jun 2025
Workshop
Common Resentments, Diverging Plots: On the Forms and Functions of Popular Conspiracy Culture in Eastern Europe
08 Jul 2025
Film screening & discussion
Playful Politics: An Evening with Dušan Makavejev’s “WR: Mysteries of the Organism” (1971)

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