in research and teaching.
The professorship is a fixed-term position until June 30, 2030, and is part of the second funding phase of the Collaborative Research Centre 1567 “Virtual Lifeworlds”.
The professorship will represent the research field of “Cultural Techniques of Virtual Lifeworlds” in both research and teaching. We are seeking a scholar with a proven track record who combines modern German literary studies with questions from media and cultural studies. The research profile should focus on cultural, media-related, and aesthetic practices through which virtual lifeworlds are created, perceived, mediated, reflected upon, and exert a social impact. Candidates are expected to demonstrate a thorough engagement with literature in its relations to technical media, forms of social communication, institutional structures, and historical bodies of knowledge. The research profile should, in particular, build upon questions in the field of cultural technology studies and focus on practices such as writing, reading, storytelling, documenting, archiving, bearing witness, sharing, commenting, or making visible. Of particular interest are the changes these practices undergo under digital and post-digital conditions. The professorship is intended to contribute to an understanding of virtuality that is not exclusively technology-centered. Research that examines virtual lifeworlds in relation to the possible, the imaginary, the fictional, the speculative, and the ambiguous is encouraged. Historical and contemporary perspectives should be integrated in this process.
The research profile should encompass the following areas in particular:
- Literature and cultural techniques of virtual lifeworlds;
- Media and cultural history of literature;
- Literature and digital or post-digital media;
- Cultural techniques of documentation and testimony;
- Social media, literary publics, and virtual cultures of conflict.
In terms of teaching, the subject of Modern German Literature is to be represented in the relevant Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Master of Education degree programs. The successful candidate is expected to teach courses on literature from the 18th century to the present, as well as on issues related to the history of media, culture, and knowledge. Responsibilities within Collaborative Research Center (CRC) 1567 include active participation in the consortium’s research program and assuming leadership roles in research. Candidates are also expected to be willing to take on responsibilities in the consortium’s committees and cross-disciplinary working groups and to contribute to the CRC’s national and international networking efforts.
