Events
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Guests:
Valentina Ringelmann
(University of Bamberg)
Guest lecture in the seminar 'Risikoreich? Adventurous storytelling in historical change' (Dr. Susanne Schul)
An adventure is not only experienced, but is created in a special way by being told about it. As a narrative, the adventurous is represented in numerous textual forms and discourses, e.g. as a novel or as an adventure sequence in a narrative that follows completely different genre patterns, as well as an adventurous stylization in various media contexts and everyday forms of communication that stylize moments of risky experience. The seminar explores this diversity of the adventurous by taking Hartmann von Aue's courtly novel "Iwein" as the starting point for this exploration.
The courtly knight's trial or "âventiure" is one of the most important components of the courtly novel. Both the concept and the term used for it were adopted from French at the end of the 12th century and developed into one of the central narrative elements of courtly poetry. Adventurous storytelling is always characterized by coincidences. It fascinates recipients with dangerous and unpredictable events, enticing and binding them with the expectation of the unexpected. At the same time, it promises to integrate all the coincidences that lurk on the adventure journey into a narrative. Adventurous storytelling thus oscillates between contingency and coherence - an apparent contradiction that pervades not only medieval but also modern narratives and makes them particularly exciting but also risky.
Marion Darilek
(University of Tübingen)
Guest lecture in the seminar 'Medieval storytelling in the media network' (Dr. Susanne Schul)
Whether the story is about Siegfried the dragon slayer but also tragic hero, the sinister but also faithful Hagen or the beautiful but also vengeful Kriemhild or about King Arthur, courtly knights, the quest for the Grail or dangerous journeys of probation, the reception of the great medieval myths of the "Nibelungs" and the "Arthurian Court" is always determined by a media transfer through which they are told in a "new way". The term 'media network' refers to the intermedial interweaving of different individual media. This results in changed production conditions and reception attitudes as well as new literary and media practices and skills compared to purely verbal-linguistic storytelling.
The seminar is dedicated to two prominent narratives from the Middle Ages and compares them with forms of reception in various media (image, comic, film, internet, series, etc.). In addition to imparting basic knowledge of the source narratives and exemplary analyses from various media contexts, special emphasis will be placed on narrative and media theory approaches.
Peter Somogyi
(University of Dresden)
Guest lecture in the seminar 'To Wonder: Encounters with the "Stranger" in Medieval Literature' (Dr. Susanne Schul)
What happens when people are astonished? Amazement can be understood as an emotional reaction associated with confusion or uncertainty, but also fascination or desire, with defense or appropriation, and is neither conceptually nor phenomenologically easy to grasp. And yet, wonder is repeatedly made the beginning and goal of narratives. The seminar is dedicated to astonishment in a field of tension between the self and the foreign and takes the Middle High German verse novel "Herzog Ernst" (around 1180) as a starting point.
Both the problematic conditions in the 'homeland', which are characterized by the competition between princes and kings, between national and central power, and the hero's dangerous trials in the 'foreign' Orient, which refer to a multitude of literary sources, medieval knowledge from encyclopaedias and ancient descriptions of the world, are characterized by multidimensional negotiation processes. These are determined by an entanglement of different categories that generate inequality. The seminar aims to analyze the interaction of different positions of inequality in the narrative and to consider their entanglements and interactions.
Seminars:
Heroic figures - shaping heroes: Medieval literature in an explanatory and educational video (Dr. Susanne Schul)
Explanatory and educational videos are short video clips that are also known as "explainers" or "how-to videos". These clips are used both in the field of marketing and in the field of knowledge transfer, e.g. in the context of exhibitions or television programs as well as in various teaching-learning contexts on You Tube. An explanatory and educational video presents its content in different formats (e.g. in the form of animated drawings or in the personal appearance of a teacher) and presents a subject in a simple and understandable way. Storytelling and multi-sensory elements are therefore characteristic of this special teaching format. All 'unnecessary' elements are dispensed with, both in terms of form and content. The videos, most of which are between one and three minutes long, do not exhaust topics, but rather efficiently highlight the relevant points. The project seminar has turned to this teaching and learning format, investigated its potential and developed its own educational and explanatory videos on the Middle High German "Nibelungenlied" as project work.
Workshop with Ralph Erdenberger
In the winter semester 2019/20, the seminar series "Medieval Reception" started with a focus on audio narratives. The students worked intensively with Ralph Erdenberger's adaptations of the "Song of the Nibelungs" ("The Treasure of the Nibelungs") and Wolfram von Eschenbach's "Parzival" ("Parzival - the Red Knight"). On 15.01.2020, the artist came to Kassel for a four-hour workshop as part of the seminar. This began with a lecture by Mr. Erdenberger, in which he introduced himself and his areas of work and gave impulses for the creation of his own audio narratives. This was worked on in the second part of the workshop: Based on the fairy tale "Ritter Beringer", the students worked in small groups to develop the beginnings of their own audio narratives, which were further fleshed out in the subsequent seminar sessions.
Student Seminar - "Old Norse"
The "Old Norse" seminar was launched in the 2019/20 winter semester by two students from Kassel's German Studies department. The reason for this was that although the University of Kassel offers a number of opportunities to study ancient languages - including Middle High German, Gothic, Latin and Ancient Greek - there had not yet been a course dedicated to the ancient languages and medieval literature of Scandinavia. The aim of the course was therefore to provide an overview of literary and linguistic aspects of Old Norse.
In the linguistic part, led by Marcel Linnenkohl, grammatical phenomena were examined using text examples alongside small translation exercises.
At the same time, Old Icelandic was repeatedly placed within the Indo-European language family by identifying similarities and differences to Latin, Gothic or Middle High German, for example. The focus here was on phonetic developments, inflectional classes and the various ablaut series of strong verbs.
The Prose Edda and the Song Edda served as the textual basis for the literary studies section, led by Annika Palm. Using the texts contained therein, the students approached Old Norse mythology, repeatedly addressing literary-historical peculiarities and building bridges to modern reception. The spectrum of topics ranged from mythological explanations of the beginning and end of the world to the gods and the Norse saga of the Nibelungs. As a special highlight, even Thor paid a visit to the seminar.
In the final session, it was finally the students' turn to present their academic achievements. They came up with many great projects that dealt creatively with the topics covered in the seminar: Drawings and paintings of Norse deities and mythological creatures, rune stones, self-written texts, videos with elements of contemporary reception and various sculptures.
A continuation of "Old Norse" will take place in the summer semester 2020, in which new texts will be translated, even more grammatical phenomena will be discussed and further literary and reception-historical topics of Old Norse mythology will be addressed.
Conferences:
Medieval learning paths - concepts of didactics of older language and literature for German lessons(March 2 and 3, 2018, University of Kassel)
Pupils' learning paths are varied, often convoluted and sometimes lead to dead ends. For example, the paths that lead children and young people to knowledge about the Middle Ages are often shaped by popular cultural ideas. Pupils therefore already have a certain amount of prior knowledge about and interest in the Middle Ages. Both can open up enormous motivational potential for German lessons, which must be exploited. The topic of the Middle Ages provides particularly productive access to extracurricular places of learning, such as castles, museums and churches, allowing lessons that appeal to and involve all the senses. By learning on hiking days and excursions, pupils can literally retrace their learning paths, step out and deepen their knowledge.
In recent years, various didactic experts have shown that medieval topics promote students' skills at both a linguistic and content level. In this respect, the switch from content-centered curricula to competence-oriented core curricula represents both an opportunity and a challenge for teachers, because although competence orientation makes it possible in principle to engage with medieval language and literature, it does not make it compulsory. Teachers and their access to teaching materials, student editions and the didactic preparation of topics therefore often decide what is covered in class. However, the range of medieval language and literature is only sparsely represented in textbooks. However, the topics of the Middle Ages offer numerous starting points for interdisciplinary lessons with subjects such as history, religion, general studies, art, etc. In addition, the experiences of alterity that learners have with foreign thought patterns, language levels and literary genres have a high potential for reflection with regard to foreignness, language acquisition and language change. And so, despite various initiatives in recent years for the subject-specific and didactic preparation of teaching material, the development of the topic of the Middle Ages for German lessons is still a desideratum.
This is precisely where we would like to start with our conference and discuss current didactic projects and their potential for German lessons. Our work on this topic emerged from two subject-specific and subject-didactic cooperation seminars with a subsequent excursion, in which the students developed their own didactic concepts and corresponding teaching material. The students contribute conceptually and organizationally to the conference and would like to enter into a disciplinary exchange with fellow students, teachers and experts on didactic concepts, the testing of teaching and learning materials, as well as the discussion of opportunities and limitations of medieval topics and literature in German lessons.
[1] Karg 2011, p. 103; Heiser 2012, p. 271; Mendes 2012, p. 12; Miedema/Sieber 2013, p. 7; 8; Küenzlen et al. 2014, p. 10.
[2] Cf. Krohn/Wunderlich 1983, p. 9; Hofmeister 2006, p. 159; Hinterholzer 2007, p. 42; Bärnthaler 2010, p. 29; Pfeiffer 2010, pp. 60-61; Wichert 2010, p. 51; Mendes 2012, pp. 12-14; Hamm 2013, p. 144; Miedema/Sieber 2013, p. 8; Schwinghammer 2015, pp. 158; 160.
Date: March 2 and 3, 2018
Location: University of Kassel
Kurt-Wolters-Str. 5, Room -1029
Organization: Johanna Kahlmeyer and Annegret Montag