'Selbstbildung' and history. Ways of studying the humanities and philologies from the 1950s to the 1980s

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Sebastian Susteck
• Subject Area: German Literary and Cultural Studies (Modern German Literature)
• Term: from 2021 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 460382216

„Selbstbildung und Wissenschaftsgeschichte“ analyzes the academic biographies of university students in the humanities. On the one hand it focuses on disciplines and their history after World War II. On the other hand it deals with methods of studying as well as individual university experiences and their contexts. „Selbstbildung und Wissenschaftsgeschichte“ takes into account which disciplines were studied. It asks which disciplinary cultures coined them and which ways of historical development they took. The primary focus is on the philologies and, in particular, German studies. At the heart of the project lie „semester reports“ for the „Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes“, a text genre which is difficult to access. In these reports, which come from the decades between 1950 and 1990, scholarship holders of the Studienstiftung inform about their studies. „Selbstbildung und Wissenschaftsgeschichte“ is supposed to show, how „Bildung“ was created in the humanities, how students entered these disciplines and the philologies in particular and how they reflected upon them. Also, the project analyzes the history of the humanities, their disciplines and institutions before the background of general history. It asks, how these histories shaped individual studies and, vice versa, how individual ways of studying shaped history. The aim is to reach conclusions about university studies in the humanities and philologies after World War II. This is of particular significance since current developments in academia create anxiety about an increasing marginalization of the humanities and philologies, their logic and educational structure. „Selbstbildung und Wissenschaftsgeschichte“ receives impulses from the social sciences and their analyses of autobiographies, from research of disciplinary cultures at universities and from the history of the humanities, individual disciplines and institutions. The project is centered around three working modules. The first one focuses on methods used in studying as displayed in the semester reports. The second one analyzes how the reports reflect developments in the history of the humanities. The third one adds background information that is supposed to complete and validate results from the two other modules. In order to achieve this, it relies on methods of empirical social research such as interviews. A first examination of several hundred semester reports permits a number of hypotheses as well as the expectation of interesting findings. As a result, the working module dealing with methods of studying may be structured around the terms „Studierbarkeit – Selbstkonstruktion – Emotionalität“. The working module on the history of the humanities may center around the terms „Kommunikation – Institutionelle Organisation von Wissenschaft – Methoden und Paradigmen“. Interviews help with better understanding the significance and the meaning of the reports and with retrieving background knowledge.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants