32515
Seminar
SoSe 20: Fictions and Metaphors of Truth
Florian Sedlmeier, Curd Benjamin Knüpfer
Comments
ONLINE COURSE: With the postmodern intervention and the linguistic turn in the second half of the twentieth century, truth has gained a bad reputation. There are no grand narratives anymore, as Lyotard puts it. Everything is relative and should be relativized. And the playfully sincere contestation of established epistemologies has certainly facilitated an understanding of truth that exposes its fictional character and examines the metaphors deployed in the name of truth. In the last decade in particular, though, the erosion of stable concepts of truth seems to produce backlashes across the political spectrum—whether the discussion is about climate change or media bubbles, where the notion of the factual and the longing for stable truths return.
From within this contemporary assessment, the seminar offers a deep interdisciplinary history of the fictions and metaphors of truth that shape American literature, philosophy, and politics ever since the Enlightenment. Students will engage in a productive dialogue across the Humanities and the Social Sciences. In order to obtain credit, regular attendance is a must. Course participants will be expected to take an active part in class discussions and closely familiarize themselves with all of the required reading material. They will be expected to demonstrate their knowledge of the texts through regular homework assignments consisting of written work, presentations, as well as contributing to group-based discussion tasks. To obtain full credit, a term paper must be actively designed throughout the semester and submitted for evaluation within the early weeks of the semester break.
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12 Class schedule
Regular appointments
Tue, 2020-04-21 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2020-04-28 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2020-05-05 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2020-05-12 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2020-05-26 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2020-06-02 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2020-06-09 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2020-06-16 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2020-06-23 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2020-06-30 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2020-07-07 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2020-07-14 14:00 - 16:00