Seminar: On Methods and Methodology: From Posthumanism to Ecocriticism to Blue Humanities

This seminar is devoted to theories, methods and methodologies by the example of selected texts, both verbal and visual with a focus on scholarly fields such as posthumanism, ecocriticism and blue humanities. Any other theories are welcome, depending on your needs. A reader will be provided in due time. From many years of teaching experience, those students familiar with theory perform significantly better in their final exams. This course is therefore a unique opportunity for you to revisit, reread, expand and practice how to apply literary and cultural theory that will aid you with your final assignment (‚Prüfungsleistung‘). Further, everyone is required to conduct a (group) presentation as a ‘test run’ to receive timely feedback on your learning progress from me and the group. Please note: This is a block seminar. We will meet in October for the first time and then jointly decide on two weekends in January 2023. Please wait and save your questions for our first session. Last but not least, please note that this course will not only contain a significant number of online sessions but might have to move online entirely at some point, depending on the situation. Please consider this when signing up. 

Texts:

A reader will be provided in due time that has to be read completely until January.

Requirements

• regular attendance and regard of the syllabus
• small writing assignments (tba)
• active participation: everyone is required to prepare an oral presentation either independently or in groups on a topic of their choice
• term paper and/or (graded) oral presentation depending on your module (please check beforehand – you will receive a data sheet to be submitted by week two)
• you *must* have read and thoroughly prepared *all primary texts* by the time we discuss them in class; some might be fairly short while others are significantly longer and more demanding – I therefore strongly recommend buying and reading the texts as soon as possible to avoid heavy backlog during the semester!