Summer Semester 2024

Here are the classes taught by staff members of the Chair of English, Postcolonial and Media Studies during the summer semester 2024.

Prof. Dr. Mark U. Stein
AR Felipe Espinoza Garrido
Rita Maricocchi
Can Çakır
Dorit Neumann

Prof. Dr. Mark U. Stein

Black and Asian British Short Stories
096761 | Seminar | Tue 10-12

Postcolonial Translocations: Reading Texts Elsewhere
096849 | Seminar | Wed 10-12

Postcolonial Translocations
096850 | Lecture | Thu 12-14

Postgraduate Class II (Nation and Migration)
096862 | Colloquium | Tue 12-14

PTTS Colloquium
096878 | Colloquium | Tue 14-16

AR Felipe Espinoza Garrido

Queer Diasporic Graphic Narratives
096858 | Seminar | Tue 08.30-10

The graphic narrative has exhaustively – and convincingly – been theorized as inherently disruptive, not least in the fields of diaspora studies and queer studies. For scholars of diasporas, migration and of the transnational, graphic novels have become sites of ”foregrounding colonial legacies and (re)scripting missing or misrepresented identities in their precise contexts” (Mehta and Mukherji 2015, 2), often constructing ”sophisticated counter-geographies and alternative, cross-national imagined communities” (Davies 2019, 127). They have also been asserted as a medium ”well suited both to representing postcolonial issues and to generating provocation” (Knowles, Peacock, and Earle 2016, 379–80). For scholars of queer studies, graphic narratives have been understood as ”a distinctly queer mode of cultural production” (Scott and Fawaz 2018, 199) and as a form embedded with ”queer temporal openings” which ”provide a generative medium for queer worldmaking” (McCullough 2018, 377). Simultaneously, scholarship on queer diasporas has generated interdisciplinary routes of inquiry (e.g. Ellis 2020; Fernandéz Carbajal 2019; Gopinath 2020; 2005; Luibhéid and Cantú 2005; Patton and Sánchez-Eppler 2000) where questions of migrant, diasporic and racialized identity imbricate ”hybridized identificatory positions [that] are always in transit, shuttling between different identity vectors” (Muñoz 1999, 32). . As such queer diasporic graphic narratives expose and disrupt these interdependent tensions of gender, sexuality, nation and belonging. Against this backdrop, this Seminar will draw upon a cast range of graphic novels to help

theorize approaches to studying graphic fiction
understand graphic narratives as interconnected with other (audio)visual genres
read the graphic form as a site of negotiating the intersections between diasporic formation and queerness

Postgraduate Class I (Literary Studies)
096859 | Colloquium | Tue 12-14 (s.t.)

This postgraduate colloquium is the second part of Research Module I and is open to MA NTS students interested in pursuing projects related to literary and cultural studies. Students taking this part of research module I will build on knowledge, experience and skills gained in semester 1. Students will further develop specialised research interests, pursuing independent studies on one or several topics of their choice which may/will lead to (and later complement) their Master theses. The colloquium is specifically designed as a space for presenting ideas on individual MA thesis projects with peers and the course instructor providing feedback. Students also receive guidance on how to plan for and write their MA theses in a timely manner. Information on academic writing, research methodologies and theoretical frameworks, including career advice will also be provided depending on students' needs. If you are enrolled in this course, please email me any (preliminary) ideas on your MA thesis topic at least a week before the first day of class. Make a self-needs assessment and also include in your email research skills that you already possess & research skills which you think you lack. Date of first session will be announced to registed course participants via email. In this second part of Research Module I, you will also be expected to complete and hand in your research portfolio which you started working on in semester 1.