Pop, Literature and the “New Sensibility”: Theories, Ways of Writing, Aesthetic Experiments (A06)

• Subject Area: German Literary and Cultural Studies (Modern German Literature) ; General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 438577023

The literature of the New Sensibility (ca. 1965–1975) has intensive contact with popular phenomena. However, its positioning towards the popular is fundamentally ambivalent. Only in opposition to the pretensions of high culture does the focus on popular culture remain intact. The sub-project explores the attitudes towards the popular in programmatic writings of the New Sensibility (Research Area I) as well as in newspapers and magazines (RA II); the literary transformation of popular topics in “pop novels” (RA III) and the precarious popularisation of the New Sensibility in the 1970s (RA IV).

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 1472: Transformations of the Popular
• Applicant Institution: Universität Siegen
• Project Heads: Professor Dr. Jörg Döring, since 4/2025; Professor Dr. Thomas Hecken, from 1/2025 until 3/2025; Dr. Jörgen Schäfer; Professor Dr. Georg Stanitzek, until 12/2024