German Culture Ii

What is a 'Kulturraum'?

These lectures are mainly concerned with the emergence of spatial issues - such as places, landscapes, territories, historical and mnestic stratifications - in cultural practices of the German-speaking countries. The course will begin by asking how the notion of 'Raum' as a collective noun is intertwined with those very practices. Following a threefold path, the main aim of these lectures will be to engage in a close reading of some influential texts. A broader aim will be to provide analytical tools enabling to adequately locate complex cultural practices and to shed light on the interrelations between experience, location and symbolization.

The course is divided into three parts.

Unit 1
Ways home? Unfiltered life landscapes.

How does 'inwardness' relate to external space? Is there a correlation between the two? And what are the links between individual and collective experience? This module concentrates on a set of transitional places where the boundary between inner and outer reality becomes blurred. As a first step, we will consider the idyll and its transformations in the German area up to the 21st century. Imagery, sounds and sensations conjure up visions of natural harmony, reconciliation and consolation. Their apparent stability is undermined by symptoms of an individual and epochal crisis, originated from the wounds of history, the traumas of violence and the eerie fickleness of meanings beyond comprehension. We will tackle different genres, such as the Lied and 20th century historical bio-prose. Special attention will be given to the grammar of motives and their development across the media (literature, visual arts, dance).


Unit 2
Abysses with railings? Visions of the Alps.

This module is concerned with mountain (and especially alpine) imagery. It focuses on its functions in some significant texts of modern German-speaking culture. Alongside some references to the category of the Sublime, we will consider mountain settings as intermediate zones crafted by literature that stage extreme and decisive experiences. Opposites (such as the sense of danger and salvation) appear there as dual patterns that call for interpretation.


Unit 3
Atlases of desire?

By focusing on atlases and maps, this module presents aspects of contemporary cartographic imagery, concentrating on significant German-speaking examples. The exploration and knowledge of spaces in a 'glocal' dimension provides a powerful repertoire in which a nameless yearning impels out into the unbounded world with no thought of a destination. Exoticism, wandering and migration are recurring phenomena in the works presented, along with the image of the (linguistic) island - fleeting metaphors that question the inner and outer topographies of 'Heimat'?