Politics of the Pastoral

• Applicant: Dr. Jan Gerstner
• Subject Area: German Literary and Cultural Studies (Modern German Literature) ; General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies
• Term: from 2018 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 406119931

The academic network "Politics of the Pastoral" brings together scholars from cultural studies and literary criticism whose research focuses on the idyll and other pastoral ('idyllic') works. The group has three main objectives: (1) Building on the notion of cultural processing (Verfahren), we hope to develop a concept of the idyll that enables innovative analyses of ‘idyllic processes’ in a broad range of texts and cultural artifacts not always considered as belonging to this genre, while still taking into account the specificity of the different historical traditions of the pastoral. (2) Our research subsequently focuses on the socio-cultural contexts of idylls and idyllic tropes, in particular on their relationship to ecology, economy, communication and community. (3) Finally, and most importantly, we aim to shed light on the political dimension of idyllic forms by demonstrating how the pastoral, as a medium of cultural self-reflection, generates critiques of power. These three objectives also inform the network’s central line of questioning: How do texts or other artifacts ‘idyllize’? How do idyllic texts interact with other systems of knowledge? What is political about processes of idyllization? The network’s findings will be published in two volumes of essays and a handbook. The reference work will serve as a compendium of academic research on idylls to date as well as invite contributors to engage with new research methods and theoretical approaches to better understand how the idyll continues to articulate current issues and developments in various fields.

• DFG Programme: Scientific Networks
• Participating Person: Dr. Christian Schmitt