Literary Studies

Literary Studies explores the different forms of Anglophone literatures: The field is concerned both with canonical works from the English-speaking world and with popular texts and documents from the past and present. Literary Studies encompasses the different methods of textual analysis, the manifold theoretical approaches to literary texts, as well as the cultural, social, and historical contexts of the production and reception of works of literature.

As students of English in Flensburg, you will be introduced to texts from a variety of genres, literary periods, and geocultural/sociopolitical contexts. In seminars on British and North American literatures you will analyze novels, short stories, poetry, drama, graphic novels, life writing, and other literary texts. Seminars might focus on writings by specific groups such as Indigenous, African American, and Asian American literatures or English-language texts by Canadian, Australian, Caribbean, Irish, Scottish, Asian or African writers, on literary periods such as the American Renaissance or Postmodernism, or on specific topics, such as futurity, ecocriticism, or the representation of adolescence in Anglophone fiction. More advanced seminars will also encourage interdisciplinary approaches and draw attention to film adaptations of literary works or the interactions between literature and other forms of art. In the course of your studies, you will learn how to employ the critical terminology and skills necessary to analyze literary texts and to use interpretative approaches and critical perspectives, for instance from the methodological fields of postcolonial studies, Indigenous Studies, or Transnational American studies, to further your understanding of literary texts and their sociocultural contexts.