Major projects since 2009

2020ff.
Literature from Kassel for Kassel: Online Readings

On 13.10.2020 a reading project initiated by me went online: The project was created in collaboration with the Kassel City Library. Over 40 readings or 13 hours of reading time, presented by 24 readers*, unfold the broad spectrum of Kassel literature from the 16th to the 21st century: Narratives, autobiographical texts, poems, letters, tracts, essays, novel excerpts, travelogues, etc. Readings are accessible for free via streaming and download.

2019ff.
The Kassel List - A Database of Censored Books (with Dr. Florian Gassner).

The Kassel List is an interactive online tool based on the project work for "The Parthenon of Books" (documente 14). To date, the database includes approximately 120,000 banned books; it integrates various historical indexes, research databases on censorship, and results of individual research.

The "Kassel List" documents censorship as a global phenomenon: book bans exist on all continents, to varying degrees and at different levels, depending on the political system and form of society. We make here the first, experimental attempt to map censorship globally and thus to put censorship research on a new footing - a systematization and expansion of the list within the framework of a funded research project is in planning.

2016/17
documenta project "The Parthenon of Books" by Marta Minujín (head of the cooperating scientific working group, together with Visiting Professor Dr. Florian Gassner).

At documenta 14, a huge temple of forbidden books was created on Friedrichsplatz in Kassel: a work of art by the Argentine artist Marta Minujin, which everyone could contribute to by donating books. Florian Gassner, myself and a project group provided scientific support for the project, which included the scientifically supported compilation of lists of forbidden books and the validation and vacuuming of the books sent in.

- long list of banned books
- short list particularly well-known, mainly German-language titles
    banned books

2015-2017
Small Kassel literature encyclopedia. Authors. A project for the development and preservation of Hessian literary, cultural and intellectual history (project management)

The Kasseler Literatur-Lexikon presents Kassel as a literary city or shows literary achievements of Kassel of the past centuries. It includes about 500 personal articles of world-famous and unknown authors. Literature and culture of a region testify to its density and diversity of interaction. The city of Kassel proves to be the starting point or destination, intermediate station or climax of manifold literary and cultural manifestations from the late Middle Ages to the present. Crucial for Kassel's significance as a city of literature is the continuously observed intensive interweaving of local-regional with supra-regional-general dimensions of literary, cultural and intellectual history. Approximately 100 contributors from various academic disciplines (philologies, history, art history, musicology, theology, law, philosophy, biology, sociology, history of education) are involved, as well as other experts from museums, the city, the church, schools, academies, archives, literature offices, etc. The encyclopedia was published in January 2018 by Wehrhahn Verlag, Hannover.

The project is sponsored by the City of Kassel, the Kassel University Society, the Verein für Hessische Geschichte und Landeskunde 1834 e.V., Zweigverein Kassel, and the Lions Club Kassel.

Publication: Kleines Kasseler Literatur-Lexikon. Authors. Hannover: Wehrhahn 2018.

2014-
Italy Network of the University of Kassel (co-founder, since 2016 spokesperson of the network with Prof. Dr. Angela Schrott).

In 2014, a network of researchers and teachers from the disciplines of philosophy, history and art history, Germanic and Romance literary studies was founded at the University of Kassel. After the Kassel Italian Studies ended more than five years ago, it is not only Romance scholars who miss the scientific study of the language, culture, philosophy, art and literature of the southern neighboring country.

The task of the network includes the conception and organization of an annual Italy Day as well as the introduction and organization of a certificate for interdisciplinary Italian competence (Italicum). The Italicum started very successfully in WiSe 2016/17 and is now funded by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

2011-2015
Literature in Kassel - more than just GRIMMig. Teaching project (project management).

On the occasion of the anniversary 1100 years Kassel' (2013) the project presented writers from Kassel of the 18th-20th century: It was about 45 literary rediscoveries and new discoveries. The contribution of the city of Kassel to literary art and culture was madevisiblein itself   andaudible   . Visible by "inscribing" literature in the city: An excerpt from each literary work can be read on 45 signs throughout the city. Audible, in that literary voices were heard in the city - during a three-hour reading marathon (June 2013). On June 25, 2015, the last two signs opposite Kassel's GRIMMWELT were inaugurated.

The project was accompanied and supported by the City of Kassel, the Kassel University Society, the Sparkasse Kassel and the Wesertor district office.

2011-2016
Dynamics of Space and Gender: discover - conquer - invent - narrate. DFG-Graduiertenkolleg (project management).

The Research Training Group focuses on interdisciplinary research into the reciprocal shaping of space and gender. In doing so, the Research Training Group takes up two of the most important developments of the last decades and places them in a context: the change in the gender order on the one hand and the change in the spatial order, which is often considered under the catchword globalization, on the other. The starting point is the finding that much recent research on space takes less account of the category of gender the more global the level of consideration. For this reason, the interdisciplinary research training group aims to examine the reciprocal relationships between the constitution of space and gender in current and historical societies within and outside Europe from the perspectives of sociology, ethnology, history, and literary studies.

The subjects involved in the Research Training Group are English/Canadian Studies, Arabic Studies/Islamic Studies, Ethnology, Ethics and History of Medicine, History, German Studies, Sociology and Theology.

The project was funded by the DFG.

2009-2012
World and Knowledge on Stage. The Theatrum Literature of the Early Modern Period. DFG Research Project (Project Director).

The (world) theater is familiar as a key metaphor of the early modern period. However, the books of the era were also often considered as theater. These textual stages constituted a weighty publishing phenomenon: between 1500 and 1800, hundreds of works appeared in Europe, with an emphasis on the Old Empire, emblazoned with the metaphorical Theatrum or vernacular equivalents(Schaubühne, Schauplatz , etc.) on their titles. Much of the book theater was dedicated to the collection and representation of knowledge; it thus forms a segment of the broad encyclopedic literature of the early modern period.

Digitization projects on the Internet usually provide only the textual material without commentary. The permanent preservation of the cultural tradition in the context of mass digitization projects appears to be largely decoupled from scholarly indexing. Our project goes beyond this through the cooperation of library and university. It combines classical elements of a repertory - indexing and annotated description of a text corpus - with a comprehensive database. By linking digitized source material and research results, the digital added value of hypertext is used and made visible.

The project was funded by the DFG.

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