Course Schedule

Veranstaltungen von Prof. Dr. Emer O'Sullivan


Lehrveranstaltungen

Children's literature (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Emer O'Sullivan

Termin:
 wöchentlich | Dienstag | 08:15 - 09:45 | 07.04.2025 - 11.07.2025 | C 5.325 Seminarraum | C 5.325

Inhalt: Children's literature has, since its beginnings in the 18th century, been a source both of entertainment and instruction for child readers as well as a product which reflects adults' perceptions of children and the choices that they make regarding what literature is suitable for the young. It is addressed to a wide range of readers from pre-literate toddlers to young adults and encompasses an equally wide range of genres including picturebooks, traditional folk and fairy tales, novels, poetry, and informational books. In this seminar, you will become familiar with a selection of literature in the English-speaking cultures across time, and learn to appreciate this branch of literature through close reading and work with different critical approaches. You will examine the distinctive qualities of children’s literature, explore the relation of didacticism and entertainment in texts for children at different historical periods, and consider the changing concepts of the child and its influence on the production of children's literature.

Translating literature, translating culture (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Emer O'Sullivan

Termin:
 wöchentlich | Dienstag | 14:15 - 15:45 | 07.04.2025 - 11.07.2025 | C 5.325 Seminarraum

Inhalt: The act of translation is regarded as being at the centre of most acts of cultural transfer, and the study of translation – especially literary translation – has developed in many countries since the 1970s to become a separate and specialised field of research. The idea of "cultural translation", introduced by Homi Bhaba in the 1990s to denote a set of discourses that enact hybridity by crossing cultural borders, with a focus on the intermediary positions of translators, can be understood as a process in which there is no source text and often no fixed target text. The focus is on cultural processes rather than products, on the movement of people rather than the movement of texts. The new, wider forms of translation studies draws, for instance, on ideas of translation from social anthropology, where it is the job of the ethnographer to describe the foreign culture, to notions from postcolonial theory on dominance and resistance. In this seminar, we will look at and analyse different examples of translated texts, and examine the theories and methodology of (text based) translation studies. We will move beyond the text to look at issues such as gender and translation, book translation as a cultural word system, identity and survival of minority cultures, or how language mediates experience across cultures with regard to travel. Most, but not all, of the translations we will be examining in the text-based part of the seminar will be from German into English or vice versa. Students who wish to give a presentation or write a term paper on translations from or into other languages are very welcome.

Gatsby 100 - a project seminar (FSL) (Projekt)

Dozent/in: Emer O'Sullivan

Termin:
 wöchentlich | Montag | 14:15 - 17:30 | 07.04.2025 - 02.06.2025 | C 5.325 Seminarraum

Inhalt: 2025 sees the 100th anniversary of the publication of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Published in 1925 at the height of the ‘Roaring Twenties’, this story about one man’s version of the American Dream has been voted the best American novel of the 20th century, and Jay Gatsby himself nominated the best fictional character since 1900. This seminar will mark the 100th anniversary with an event in the Heinrich-Heine-Haus in Lüneburg on June 3rd. The building has a large number of different spaces which allow a variety of activities - exhibitions, dramatic performances, concerts, installations etc. (Previous 'project seminars' of mine which occupied the entire building were 'bLümsday' - celebrating James Joyce's Ulysses -, 'Alice 150', on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Alice in Wonderland, and 'Harry Potter 21' on its 21st anniversary). The activities and exhibition items should be attractive and imaginative to entertain the visitors. As the event is based on a literary work and film adaptations, it should, in addition to the entertainment factor, also reflect an intellectual engagement with The Great Gatsby - the novel, film versions and their critical reception - as well as Gatsby in popular culture, to inform visitors about elements they are unfamiliar with or hadn't thought about before. Before designing the event, we will engage closely with the novel "The Great Gatsby", paying special attention to Fitzgerald’s narrative strategies and exploring its connections to a wide range of relevant historical and cultural issues, such as the rags to riches success stories of that era, sports, gangsters and Prohibition, consumer society, and changes in gender roles in the USA of the 1920s. We will also briefly look at the German translations (of which there are 8) as well as different film versions. All this is to give us a solid basis upon which to design the event.

Promotionskolloquium PLG (Kolloquium)

Dozent/in: Steffi Hobuß, Sven Kramer, Roberto Nigro, Emer O'Sullivan, Ulrike Steierwald, Heiko Stubenrauch

Termin:
 Einzeltermin | Di, 03.06.2025, 18:00 - Di, 03.06.2025, 20:00 | C 5.124 Seminarraum | Diese Veranstaltung wird hybrid durchgeführt für die DoktorandInnen, die nicht vor Ort sein können.
Einzeltermin | Mi, 18.06.2025, 18:00 - Mi, 18.06.2025, 20:00 | C 5.124 Seminarraum

Inhalt: Promovierende des Forschungskollegs für Philosophie, Literatur und Geschichte präsentieren ihre Projekte und erläutern sie in der folgenden Diskussion mit den Teilnehmenden des Kollegs. Darüber hinaus diskutiert das Kolleg relevante Forschungsliteratur und richtet Workshops mit geladenen Gästen aus.