Tutorium Reading Theories of Europe Tutorial for Inscriptions of Europe Blockseminar

Europe is a fluid entity. Comprising a heterogeneous set of religious, political and economic systems as well as seemingly incompatible traditions of knowledge emerging in the course of its often belligerent history, the concept of Europe needs to be constantly re-negotiated and re-inscribed. In this seminar, we study literary and theoretical interventions constitutive of this on-going process of inscription. We will read texts which cover a time-span from the Middle Ages (including the Anglo-Saxon epic Andreas or the late Medieval Mandeville's Travels) and the Renaissance (Shakespeare's Tempest, Marlowe's Tamburlaine) up to more recent literary works (Hanif Kureishi's Black Album). In a block seminar on June 10/11, attendance of which is mandatory, we will discuss contemporary theoretical approaches to Europe from the field of contemporary philosophy including authors such as Alain Badiou, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Jacques Derrida as well as the more recent work of the Undercommons project. Both workshop and seminar are meant to provide students with the expertise to participate in, and intellectually enjoy, the forthcoming MLA conference on Other Europes (hosted by our department, June 23-25 2016) and to take a critical and scholarly informed stance towards the current political discussions in relation to the current situation in Europe today. Texts to be read before term start: 1) The Travels of Sir John Mandeville (Penguin): Prologue; Chpts. 8-10; 14-16; 20-21; 30-31; 34 Middle English Version: http://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/kohanski-and-benson-the-book-of-john-mandeville#1 2) Novalis: -Christendom or Europe” http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/13_Class.Romanticism_Doc.3_English.pdf Original German Version: http://www.deutschestextarchiv.de/book/show/novalis_christenheit_1826 3) Christopher Marlowe: Tamburlaine the Great. Part I (Penguin) 4) Hanif Kureishi: The Black Album (Faber) Lüdeke, Roger , Univ.-Prof. Dr. Universität Düsseldorf SoSe 2016 Long Katie