Qualitative Literary and Media Interaction Research

Theory

Innovative Teaching Approaches/Post-graduate Professional Training Program

Innovative Teaching Approaches
Post-graduate Professional Training Program

In that it investigates how literary and media interaction correlates with peoples' attempts to mentally integrate biographical experience and further develop key personality skills, the current EU-project "Narrative media interaction and psycho-trauma therapy" evidently raises a question of high pedagogical relevance. For, teaching literature viewed upon in a psycho-biographical perspective also always implies the question of how to best support the build-up of key personality skills.

The empirical research both on literary and media interaction and on settings of teaching which lend themselves to supporting literary "dialogue" in the sense of "humanistic/aesthetic education", require a solid theoretical foundation of an (inter-) actional and psychologically informed model of literary interaction. Here, synergies are to be expected in which the further development of qualitative methods in media interaction research may also inspire novel methods of teaching cultural issues.

In the Zurich EU-project this synergetic perspective was particularly productive with the 'group-analytic media experience interview'. From this novel method of group-interviewing sprang an innovative tool of literature teaching: the 'group-analytic literature seminar' (GLS). It works analogously to the interview method. But in teaching it is designed to fulfill the function of instigating a more in-depth encounter of the students with "the works" as well as with fellow students' observations and reactions, i.e. "with those who equally strive to comprehend the works".

The target of this novel method of teaching literature and cultural issues is to go beyond the traditional modes of instructing the students about cultural history and rather complement these by an element of psycho-affective skill development which banks on the emotional exchange between person and text and on the group-dynamic interaction in the seminar. The 'group-analytic literature seminar' thus prompts an in-depth encounter with literature, film, and the arts, in order to support the student's build-up of emotional intelligence and interactional key competencies. And by doing so it also increases the level of perceptiveness and precision in text analysis.
[Die Anwendung der Gruppenanalyse in der Kulturvermittlung. Judith Hermann: "Hunter-Tompson-Musik (2002f) Download full text (German) / Download abstract (English)
Übertragungen von Trauer-/Abwehr im Text … Judith Hermann: "Hunter-Tompson-Musik (2002g) Download
Das ‘Gruppenanalytische Literaturseminar’. Heiner Müller: "Vater" (2003d) Download]

Innovative Teaching Approaches Post-graduate Professional Training Program

Innovative Teaching Approaches
Post-graduate Professional Training Program