The ZfL NEWSLETTER keeps you informed about events, publications, and news.

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

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

From winter semester 2023 on, the ZfL dedicates its research to its annual theme ACTIVISM AND ACADEMIA.

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

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.

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

Events

24 Apr 2025 – 25 Apr 2025

Workshop
Kulturgeschichte der Moderne in Berlin-Wilmersdorf – von der Carstenn-Figur bis in die Gegenwart

Details

30 Apr 2025

Book presentation & panel discussion
Georgi Demidow und die Sprache der Repression (Literatur, Film, Geschichte)

Details

13 May 2025

Working Group
Sustained Resistances and Theoretical Resonances: The Anti-System Mobilizations in Georgia and Serbia

Details

22 May 2025

Book presentation
Rhetorik als Waffe – über Putins Reden als Mittel der Politik

Details

04 Jun 2025

Wednesday lecture
Hannes Bajohr (UC Berkeley): Latenzraum und Erzählung. Weltmodelle in Literatur und KI

Details

11 Jun 2025

Wednesday lecture
Anke te Heesen (HU Berlin): Frauen vor Mustern

Details

13 Jun 2025 – 14 Jun 2025

ZfL Literature Days
Heirs

Details

18 Jun 2025

Wednesday lecture
Eliot Borenstein (NYU): Speak of the Devil. The Putinist Crusade against Satan at Home and Abroad

Details

19 Jun 2025 – 20 Jun 2025

Workshop
Common Resentments, Diverging Plots: On the Forms and Functions of Popular Conspiracy Culture in Eastern Europe

Details

24 Jun 2025

Book presentation
Lifeworlds Beyond Dictatorship?

Details

02 Jul 2025

Book presentation
Hermaphrodite Logic

Details

08 Jul 2025

Film screening & discussion
Playful Politics: An Evening with Dušan Makavejev’s “WR: Mysteries of the Organism” (1971)

Details

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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