Chair of Slavic Literatures

At the Chair of Slavic Literatures, we teach and research Slavic literature and cultures in all their geographical and chronological breadth. There is a special focus on Russian, Polish, Czech, and Ukrainian culture, as well as on the cultures of Eastern European minorities.

Focal areas of research and teaching:

• Alternative and dissenting art and literature: The project 'Alternative Aesthetic Cultures in Eastern Europe since 2000' examines the critical tendencies and artefacts against oppressive politics or the mainstream influenced by politics. Within the framework of the projects carried out and envisaged, the late communist period (1960-80s) - the period of the 'classical' dissent - will be compared with the recent past and its partly authoritarian and populist tendencies. In the same way as general tendencies and developments similar between 'West' and 'East', regional peculiarities and partial diachronies of Eastern European countercultures such as in the metropolises of Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Warsaw and Kiev are of equal relevance.
• Boundary phenomena and transfer processes in literature, culture and science: 

  The emphasis here is on problems of trans- and interculturality in the Slavia, translation cultures between East and West, minority cultures between tradition and modernity, as well as cultural research on space and topography. The project 'Ethnic narratives since the late Soviet period' focuses on peripheral cultures of the former Soviet Union that are historically not (only) located in the Slavic-Orthodox context, but in the Islamic, Jewish or polytheistic context. There is a particular focus on Eastern European Jewish cultures and literatures, but also on the Siberian region as an area that since the beginning of the Soviet era has moved between tradition and modernity.