Anglistik V: Anglophone Literatures / Literary Translation

The section is dedicated to Anglophone literatures in our transculturally entangled world. Tracing exchange, interrelations and differences across diverse literatures written in English, we draw on world literature theory, postcolonial and transcultural studies as well as theories of translation. While we are committed to tracing the uneven travels of literary traditions, creative practices and texts across the world, we also put emphasis on the transformative power of locality. Foregrounding the aesthetics and politics of fiction, we seek to examine the role of Anglophone literatures in the negotiation, reflection and translation of social configurations and cultural concepts across the globe. We firmly believe that literature can offer new ways of ‘worlding’ and does therefore make a difference – not in spite of but because of its distinct characteristics.

In our teaching and research, we aim to identify and retrieve the marginalised and neglected voices of postcolonial and transcultural writers within a wide spectrum of cultures, genres and periods. The literary and cultural topics we study therefore vary widely: for example, memory and transculturality, cosmopolitanism and gender, postcolonial justice and ethics, visuality and visibility in postcolonial cultures, nature and the environment, queerness and sexuality, nation and state, memory and trauma, English as a language of imperialism and English as a world language. We are committed to “unforgetting” English (Rebecca Walkowitz) and to showing what it means to represent specific experiences in English.

Theories, concepts and practices of linguistic and cultural translation also figure prominently in our MA programme 'Literary Translation'. We understand translation as a key academic and cultural practice that enables complex processes of negotiation and transformation between different languages, groups, media and disciplines. We are committed to making the creative and transformative work of translators and translation more visible. The Centre for Translation Studies (CTS) offers an interdisciplinary forum for the study of interlingual and cultural translation.