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

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.

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

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

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

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

Events

05 Dec 2024 – 06 Dec 2024

ZfL Annual Conference
Activism and Academia. Fields and Methods in Academic Activism

Details

05 Dec 2024

Keynote
John Guillory (NYU): Scholarship, Activism, and the Autonomy of Social Spheres

Details

09 Dec 2024

Discussion
Feuerdörfer in Belarus: NS-Verbrechen und Erinnerungspolitik

Details

10 Dec 2024

Book launch
Nach Simmel, mit Simmel

Details

12 Dec 2024

Issue launch & discussion
Vom Krieg zerrissene Kulturlandschaften: Nachdenken über die Ukraine

Details

13 Dec 2024

Seminar
The Dissident Library: Movement of a New Type? Spontaneity and Consciousness Inside the Soviet Dissident Movement

Details

10 Jan 2025

Book launch
Hermann Borchardt und der Club der Harmlosen. Wiederentdeckung eines Romans

Details

15 Jan 2025

Wednesday lecture
Mischa Suter (Geneva Graduate Institute): Geld an der Grenze: Koloniale Strukturen und kollidierende Temporalitäten

Details

16 Jan 2025 – 17 Jan 2025

Workshop
The Political Novel in Europe and the Challenges of the Digital Era

Details

24 Apr 2025 – 25 Apr 2025

Workshop
Von der Carstenn-Figur bis in die Gegenwart: Kulturgeschichte der Moderne in Berlin-Wilmersdorf

Details

17 Sep 2025 – 19 Sep 2025

Conference
Natural-Cultural Memory in the Anthropocene. Tracing – Archiving – Remembering

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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