Events
12 Nov 2025
                            Lecture
                            Nina Weller (ZfL): »Feuerdörfer«. Dokumentarliteratur und Erinnerungen an den Zweiten Weltkrieg                        
19 Nov 2025
                            Book presentation
                            »Nein!« ist nicht genug. Russische Autor:innen im Gespräch über Krieg und Literatur                        
20 Nov 2025
                            Lecture
                            Pola Groß (ZfL): Mascha Kaléko – Lyrikerin der Großstadt: von der Bleibtreustraße ins Exil                        
27 Nov 2025
                            Lecture
                            Sofiya Filonenko: Contemporary Ukrainian Bestseller: Celebrities, Trends and Readership                        
18 Dec 2025
                            Lecture
                            Aurore Peyroles (ZfL): Else Lasker-Schüler – von Berlin nach Jerusalem: die Dichterin des Expressionismus                        
29 Jan 2026
                            Lecture
                            Anja Keith (ZfL): Else Ury – die Bestsellerautorin aus der Kantstraße: erst verehrt, dann deportiert                        
 
            
                                        
                    
                                        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
 
  Call for Papers: Performing Imagined Communities on Stage: On the Revival of Popular Music and Comedy in East-Central and Eastern Europe
 
  The 20th Century in Basic Concepts: New articles in open access: Autorität, Diskriminierung, Generation, Markt, Migration, Moderne, Prävention, Täter/Opfer
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 more 
        
         
        
         
        
         
        
         
        
         
        
         
        
         
        
         
   
   
  