Klosterberg, the third novel by GSPoL alumn Boris Celeste Hoge-Benteler, explores themes of shelter and isolation, of inner realms of escape and the blurring of boundaries. With a rapturous, poetic voice, it pushes the possibilities of perception and language, drawing us into a mental landscape that is at once unsettling and compelling, claustrophobic and liberating.

At some point, every researcher faces the question of how to share their work with a wider audience. This workshop invites participants to explore publication options and strategies early on. While the main emphasis will be on turning a dissertation into a publication, other formats of scholarly output will be considered as well. 

Literatur begegnet uns im Buchhandel, auf der Bühne, im Museum – aber auch auf der Straße, in sozialen Medien oder im Alltag. In ihrem Vortrag geht Dr. Lis Hansen der Frage nach, was heute als Literaturvermittlung gilt und wie sie zwischen ästhetischer Erfahrung und gesellschaftlicher Relevanz wirken kann.

Katharina Scheerer has received the Dissertation Award of the German Society for Research in the Fantastic (GFF) for her dissertation "Popular Modernity: Science Fiction between Pulp and Avant-Garde (1863–1947)." The international jury praised her work as a significant contribution to the study of the fantastic and science fiction. Warm congratulations on this achievement!

Based on their brand-new Palgrave Handbook of Feminist, Queer and Trans Narrative Studies, co-editors Corinna Assmann and Vera Nünning will outline key debates and concepts at the intersection of narrative theory and feminist, queer and trans* theory, and discuss their implications for the study of narrative. Everyone interested is warmly invited to attend!

The Graduate School Practices of Literature offers a workshop with Frederike Jacob on how to moderate literary events. Doctoral candidates, master students, and faculty members are warmly invited to attend!

We warmly congratulate Katharina Scheerer on the successful defense of her dissertation! Her research at the Graduate School Practices of Literature focused on "Space Travelers, Martians and Golems: The Relationship between Avant-garde and Popular Culture in Science Fiction around 1900."

Prof. Byrd and Prof. Vendrell will focus on printed materials by people whose work has been typically excluded from the mainstream book trade due to gender, sexuality, race, or class—people who have found alternative venues in which to debate and document queer experience and their struggles for freedom. All welcome!

In this lecture, the researcher and novelist Dr. Christina Neuwirth will draw on the experience of writing in different forms and for different audiences, broadening out to introduce the work of other writers and scholars who have drawn on scholarly and creative techniques, to argue for playful, boundary-blurring approaches to academic writing. Everyone interested is welcome to join this event!

Drawing on Shakespeare’s and Hobbes’ work on the intrinsic theatricality of power, Luciana Villas Bôas (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro/Universidade de São Paulo) will talk about Lula’s presidential inauguration and the storming of the esplanade as two recent events that have changed the way we relate to the foundations and the future of democracy.