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WiSe 19/20: (Un)Romantic Orient: the 'East' in German Popular Culture

Gautam Chakrabarti

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Subject: It is no secret that Europe’s intellectual and political-ideological forays into different Asian (West, South and East) literary-cultural traditions and contexts have been, especially since the middle of the nineteenth century, spearheaded by what is loosely termed ‘German Orientalism’, a scholarly movement that sought to respond to what Raymond Schwab called “the arrival of Sanskrit texts in Europe.” Another aspect of this ‘school’ would be what Ussama Makdisi claims to be individual national creations of tailormade ‘Orients’, in response to “western-dominated modernity”. This course envisages the possibility of analysing how these intellectual attitudes and processes have influenced and shaped various German cultural re/configurations of the the ‘East’, as represented through novels, short stories, films and other audio-visual media that have excited the popular imagination in the twentieth century. Program: This course seeks to contextualise, within the domains of literary-cultural and intellectual-conceptual history, German academic understanding and theorisation of the ‘East’ in the past one and a half centuries, while attempting to locate the romantic/ised reflections of scholarly output in the realm of popular culture. It will seek, through readings and discussions of selected (portions of) texts—both literary and cinematic—to analyse and, when called for, problematise Germanophone articulations of a Romantic perception of the ‘Orient’; in the process, the relationship between so-called ‘high’ and ‘low’ cultures will be engaged with. There will be a few film-screenings and regular group-discussions and students’ presentations throughout the semester, and, possibly, a field-visit to a relevant site within Berlin. The instructor will make the individual texts available on Blackboard and requests that students avoid—if possible—printing them, with regard to the Environment. Is this course suitable for you? This course is open to students from all academic disciplines, especially in areas that encourage and require interdisciplinary studies in the humanities and social sciences. The student should be prepared to study a number of academic texts in English from the fields of literary-cultural history, cultural studies and the social sciences. S/he should be interested in reflecting critically on the broad patterns of intellectual, mercantile, political and cultural exchanges between Europe and Asia in the time of Empire and Colony and postcolonial debates. Workload and Evaluation: In order to obtain 5 ECTS credits, the student will need to attend the course regularly and participate actively in discussions (at least 80 % of the sessions); study the weekly course materials (an average of 10-15 pages of mainly English texts per week); participate in group-projects (background/field research) with a presentation in class (for approx. 10-15 minutes) or, exceptionally, write a short essay (approx. 750-1,000 words); pass the written examination (90 minutes). close