This chapter seeks to reflect on the concepts of entertainment, engagement, and poetics applied to cinematic art and it inscribes this set of reflections within the scope of aesthetic authenticity in cinema. The discussion is structured around the question of the autonomy of art, understood as a kind of characterization or requirement, a topic…[Read more]

This paper presents some of the ideas central to my current developing research into the modes of historical television drama, particularly the Gothic mode. In focusing on the 2018 television adaptation of Picnic at Hanging Rock, the paper illustrates the idea of the Gothic mode in operation, considering its relationship to notions of historical…[Read more]

This article explores the co-constitution of networks and infrastructure in the context of late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century culture. We consider Maria Edgeworth’s conceptualization of the term network with and alongside infrastructure in her Harry and Lucy stories (1801–25) and offer an analysis of a manuscript tour by Mary Anne Eade fro…[Read more]

From 40 years of experience it is clear that spirituality has become entangled in abstractions: powers, perfection, supernatural, unreal, limitless knowledge, crystal ball perceptions, etc.
Dr Stephen Farra agreed with that – and went one better. Dr Farra stated “Our models are out reality. But our models are not reality. That coincides with the…[Read more]

Seminarprogramm und Literaturliste der Veranstaltung:

Verschwörungserzählungen im Spätmittelalter und heute

Master Hauptseminar
Institut für Germanistische und Allgemeine Literaturwissenschaft
RWTH Aachen University
Marco Heiles

This chapter examines the relationship between American Westerns and Brazilian Nordesterns, films set in the arid northeastern region known as the sertão. US cultural and economic imperialism, in Brazil and throughout Latin America, is both cause and effect of persistent underdevelopment. The northward flow of natural resources has long been…[Read more]

Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 police procedural is, as its title suggests, intensely interested in the socioeconomic valences of spatial relationships, literalized in Yokohama’s affluent hills and its low-lying slums. The central conflict between inhabitants of these two spaces articulates this local topography into a global framework, in which con…[Read more]

Als Sprachstadienwörterbuch erfasst und beschreibt das Mittelhochdeutsche Wörterbuch (MWB) den mittelhochdeutschen Wortschatz. Das gesamte Spektrum deutscher Textsorten aus dem Zeitraum 1050 bis 1350 dient als Grundlage, um die Wörter und ihren Gebrauch zu dokumentieren. 1994 startete das Projekt mit einer DFG-finanzierten Vorbereitungsphase, be…[Read more]

This article explores the consequences of the environmental transformations of the Laurentian Valley on the timber trade uniting the Province of Canada and the industrialization of Great Britain during the nineteenth century. The notion of ghost acres used to describe the ecological footprint of resource consumption from abroad is extended to…[Read more]

Desde que el hispanista francés Félix Lecoy llamase en 1938 la atención sobre las
peculiaridades de los papeles atribuidos a las mujeres en la obra de Juan Ruiz, numerosos
trabajos académicos se han dedicado a esclarecer en lo posible las coordenadas históricas
y literarias de esta presencia femenina en el Libro de buen amor, sobre todo en lo r…[Read more]

Although a plethora of ancient South Asian sources refer to situations that would be considered crises by modern standards, the early Sanskrit vocabulary lacks a word that we could understand as a distinct equivalent of the term “crisis” and its Greek and Latin predecessors. Nevertheless, the descriptions and discussions of personal and col…[Read more]

This article shows how English supporters of Jewish immigration in the 1650s articulated a universal model of Christian hospitality for all foreigners fleeing religious persecution, regardless of whether they adhered to the Protestant faith of their English hosts. It thus urges a reconsideration of the widespread assumption that European…[Read more]

This article shows how English supporters of Jewish immigration in the 1650s articulated a universal model of Christian hospitality for all foreigners fleeing religious persecution, regardless of whether they adhered to the Protestant faith of their English hosts. It thus urges a reconsideration of the widespread assumption that European…[Read more]

The story of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet is adapted and revised by James Ijames in his play Fat Ham, which ran from 12 May to 31 July 2022 at The Public Theater, coproduced by the National Black Theatre. Ijames’s play, which won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for drama, plays with and departs from the plot of Hamlet to explore Black manhood, the fam…[Read more]

The incidence of diseases in the Gold Coast (now Ghana) shaped encounters between colonial officials and indigenous people, yet this subject has merited minimum attention in the Ghanaian historiography. This paper examines the colonial healthcare interventions to combat the outbreak of cerebrospinal meningitis (CSM) in Asante and
how the presence…[Read more]

The Covid-19 pandemic, though less prominent in the headlines than in 2020 and 2021, is still with us today and has become part of our cultural memory. This essay looks at the loftily titled Decameron Project (2020), an international volume of what may be called ‘lockdown fiction’, commissioned by The New York Times Magazine. Special attention is…[Read more]

The role of Japanese manga as a site for intercultural understanding and engagement is worth further investigation, and research in this area is
still growing. This article explores intercultural dialogue through a case study of the Japanese manga Satoko and Nada Volume 1 by Yupechika, which narrates the friendship between Satoko, a young…[Read more]