Poetics and knowledge cultures
Slavic and Comparative Literature and Cultural Research
In the Department of Slavic Literary and Cultural Studies, we conduct research in individual projects and in the research network of the institute, the faculty or the university as well as in international collaborations on fundamental questions of poetics and Slavic knowledge cultures, from avant-garde art and the representation of age(s) to trauma and transit to zeitgeist and future aesthetics.
The literatures and cultures of Ukraine & Belarus form a young field of work within East Slavic Studies, which is inspired by our young researchers. The development of cross-linguistic fields of research aims to contribute to the consideration of the Slavic languages, literatures and cultures of Eastern Europe in their historical interrelationships and to contribute to a diversification of teaching content.
The research area meets regularly in the Habilkreis to present and discuss planned research projects, current postdoctoral projects and habilitation theses.
The Institute of Slavic Studies Graz conducts interdisciplinary research in the field of cultural and literary aging studies. Dagmar Gramshammer-Hohl conducts research on representations of ageing in Russian and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian literature, not least from the perspective of intersectionality, as well as on current generational discourses in Slavia. She is a member of the Advisory Board of the European Network in Aging Studies, to which she contributes her expertise on Eastern and South Eastern Europe. Together with Ulla Kriebernegg(CIRAC) and Florian Bieber(CSEES) and colleagues from Regensburg, Budapest and Sofia, Dagmar Gramshammer-Hohl and Oana Hergenröther form the research team of the Volkswagen Foundation-funded project Transforming Anxieties of Ageing in Southeastern Europe: Political, Social, and Cultural Narratives of Demographic Change (2023-2027).
There is a long-standing cooperation with Tatjana Petzer's research focus on transformation aesthetics, which examines, among other things, counter-concepts to ageing, above all rejuvenation, immortality, trans- and posthuman existence in IT, art, medicine, natural science and philosophy.
Selected publications:
Gramshammer-Hohl, Dagmar; Hergenröther, Oana (eds.) (2021): Foreign Countries of Old Age: East and Southeast European Perspectives on Aging. Bielefeld: Transcript.
Gramshammer-Hohl, Dagmar (ed.) (2017): Aging in Slavic Literatures: Essays in Literary Gerontology. Bielefeld: Transcript.
Petzer, Tatjana (ed.) (2021): Immortality. Slavic variations. Berlin: Matthes & Seitz.
Contact:
Slavic Studies is participating in Cluster 2 of the focus area"Trans-Mediterranean Entanglements" with research projects on the aesthetics of the Mediterranean, its artistic representations and discursivizations:
- The Mediterranean in the literature of Russian-speaking emigration: An ambivalent place of longing (Dagmar Gramshammer-Hohl)
- Poetics and knowledge of the Adriatic (Tatjana Petzer)
Lisa Haibl is also examining post-Yugoslavian narratives about the Adriatic prison islands of Goli Otok and Sveti Grgur in her doctoral project.
With the help of Patrick Sanio, student assistant in research and teaching at the Slavic Studies Department in Graz and graduate of the summer school Literary Translation Slovenian-German in Premuda, Tatjana Petzer is publishing texts and memoirs by the advocate and author Ljuba Prenner from Slovenia in the interwar and post-war period. The anthology is published under the title "Nicht Mann, nicht Frau" by Klingenberverlag in Graz.