GRK 2021:  European Dream-Cultures

• Subject Area: Literary Studies
• Term: from 2015 to 2024
• Website: Homepage
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 245837858

The Research Training Group’s (RTG) central objects of research are aesthetic representations of dreams as well as the literary, media and cultural histories of the dream. The RTG focuses on the dream-specific aesthetics and poetics of European post-antiquity cultures. Based on literary representations of dreams, the main research interest focuses on the interdependencies of dream aesthetics and the dream’s histories of culture and knowledge. For intermedial comparisons, dream representations in painting, photography, film, theatre, music, computer games, and other media will be discussed. Theoretically and methodologically, the RTG foregrounds cultural constructivism, media aesthetics, and the poetics of knowledge. The second funding period will extend the field of study to include the systematic exploration of a poetics of experience of dreams; a term we have coined in analogy to the poetics of knowledge and by which we seek to address the complex connections between experience and dream in artistic representations. The dream will be considered as a product of ‘cultural activity’ and of aesthetic construction. Thus, the objective of our combined efforts is an innovative exploration of the poetics of knowledge and experience of aesthetic dream representations, which transcends eras, media, languages, and cultures. The qualification concept aims towards the formation of academic skills as well as the preparation for a professional career outside academia, in the fields of culture and media. We will continue to pursue a concept of joint research and learning which is essentially stimulated by the explicit thematic focus of the RTG. The mentor-based supervision in accordance with the Oxford Viva model will continue to guarantee the swift completion of excellent doctoral theses. As before, the PhD candidates will be offered unique scholarly, creative, and organisational opportunities through an early systematic involvement in international academia, special forms of peer-to-peer learning, independent contributions to the online encyclopaedia Traumkultur, the joint conception and organisation of two academic conferences as well as elective activities in the successful mandatory module “cultural practice”. In the latter, they will organise, on their own authority, cultural events that will continue to make the work of the RTG accessible to a wider public.

• DFG Programme: Research Training Groups
• Applicant Institution: Universität des Saarlandes
• Spokesperson: Professorin Dr. Christiane Solte-Gresser
• Participating Researchers: Professorin Dr. Stephanie Catani; Professor Dr. Joachim Frenk; Professorin Dr. Nine Miedema; Dr. Jonas Nesselhauf; Professorin Dr. Patricia Oster-Stierle; Professor Dr. Joachim Rees; Professorin Dr. Janett Reinstädler; Professorin Dr. Henrieke Stahl; Professorin Dr. Romana Weiershausen