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The seminar seeks to provide an entryway into the debate about the role of literature and literary aesthetics in modern society. What is at stake, for example, when we let a bestseller-label influence our choice of reading? On what grounds is the qualifier “best” defined? What is the status of bestsellers in higher education? How is it that certain titles make the “prescribed reading” lists of English high-school teachers while others don’t? We live in an age where social media channels – Vlogs, Twitter, and Co. – aligned with increasing globalization and the speed in which events across the world are broadcasted have as much a say in education as flesh-and-blood instructors. It is this condition that makes the questions posed above the more pressing – not least because they reflect some of the themes explored in school curricula (Rahmenlehrpläne) for the Berlin-Brandenburg area of the last years: “cultural identity and the arts”, “challenges and chances of globalization”, “the impact of the media on society” (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/deed.de) Through a course of reading from the fields of sociology, literary criticism, and pedagogy, the seminar will aim for answers to meet some of the challenges of the twenty-first-century classroom. |
