Kohlmann, Benjamin

What makes a bad ruler? And why are there so many of them in
Shakespeare’s plays? In answering these (and related) questions, we will turn
to a cross section of Shakespeare’s plays, ranging from Shakespeare’s Roman
plays to his engagements with ancient British lore, and from his history plays
to his late problem plays. We will read these dramas as important explorations
of rulership in their own right, but we will also place them in relation to
contemporaneous (historical, political, social) developments, and we’ll
consider them as significant and complex literary artefacts. Please note that
this is a reading-intensive class and that active participation in the class
discussions is required from all students. The first play we will discuss is Henry
V – you will need to prepare this play for Week 2.

The seminar offers an introduction to some key
contemporary trends in critical and radical theory. What this means is that you
will acquire essential skills in working with new critical and theoretical
texts, while also exploring how the ideas articulated in these texts can be
applied to a range of literary and cultural materials. Material discussed in
the class will cover anti-/postcolonial, Marxist/anarchist, and
feminist/queer/trans positions. We will approach individual texts though the
close reading of selected passages, but we also aim to shed light on the key
arguments and presuppositions which underpin them. As term progresses, we will
build up an archive of ideas that will equip you for future classes in the
fields of literary and cultural studies, broadly conceived. Critics discussed
include Louis Althusser, Giorgio Agamben, Judith Butler, Frantz Fanon, José
Muñoz, and Paul B. Preciado.

This lecture course offers an overview
of the literary history of the British Isles from the Anglo-Saxon period to the
present day. We will focus on the development of literary forms and genres, as
well as on the emergence of new sets of thematic concerns from one (literary)
period to the next. Attention will also be paid to literature's interactions
with, responses to, and influences on its surrounding socio-cultural contexts.
The lecture course is an obligatory part of the “Basismodul
Literaturwissenschaft” and hence is aimed at beginners. Course materials
(including short readers) will be made available electronically and uploaded to
GRIPS.  Note: This course cannot be taken
as part of the MA British Studies. If the lecture is an obligatory part of the
“Basismodul Literaturwissenschaft” in your course of studies, it cannot be
taken for a different module.

Critical and annotated versions of the
texts discussed in the lecture course can be found in the The Norton
Anthology of English Literature (vols.1+2).
It is recommended (though by no means mandatory) that you buy this anthology
for our course. The two volumes will also come in handy during your future
university studies. Since the Norton Anthology isn’t cheap (and not all
students may decide to buy a copy), the essential readings for each week will also
be uploaded to GRIPS.

This lecture course explores what was
arguably the most dramatic period of artistic, cultural, and political
transformation in British (literary) history. Focussing on the decades between
1900-1950, individual lectures will take an elongated view of modernism as a
broad cultural movement that affected artistic practices in poetry, the novel,
drama, cinema, and the visual arts. Sessions will focus on individual genres
and authors, but we will also explore issues such as writers’ responses to
World War I (and II), the emergence of new theories of artistic production, the
cultural impact of the New Woman, the rise of a self-consciously
‘international’ artistic avant-garde, new developments in technology, the rise
of communism and fascism, the movement towards decolonization, and more.