Qualitative Literary and Media Interaction Research

University’s profile of excellence/Media societies' challenges

An academic program which pursues (inter-) action theoretical and interdisciplinary research on aesthetic interaction and on teaching culture in novel, psychologically informed methods is capable of significantly enhancing the profile – and the "institutional excellence" – of a university's humanities department. It also increases the humanities' capacities to provide guidance and applicable solutions for topical social questions of contemporary media and information societies. Thus, what is generally experienced as a difficult and conflictual question about the meaning, purpose, and future of the humanities may thus find a path-breaking and forward-looking answer.

The concept of interdisciplinary literature and media interaction research also holds the possibility to inaugurate a post-graduate and/or professional training program in culture teaching which aims to convey cultural items in a way which supports the build-up not only of aesthetic and (inter-) cultural skills but also of general key competencies and so-called soft skills. These are increasingly demanded both by fields of pedagogic/cultural work and by more profit-oriented organizations. Such a post-graduate training program is going to be inaugurated during the EU-ERG-project (2009-2011). (more ...)

Such enhancement of the academic humanities' profile may truly be called progressive. And yet, it only means to live up to what a truly conservative literary scholar's voice propagates in reference to Friedrich Schiller when speaking about studying "literature and hemeneutics": to engage in "the dialogue with the works" and also in "the conversation with those who equally strive to comprehend the works", and – by doing so – to enhance "aesthetic education" and "humanistic personality formation".
[Das ‚Gruppenanalytische Literatur- und Medien-Seminar’ (2007c)]