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Artistic Research in Literary Studies

 

What is artistic research in literary studies?

Creative engagement with a literary text requires the production of a different kind of text to an academic essay. It requires writing that foregrounds itself as another creative articulation: writing that is something itself rather than writing that is about something. Acknowledging the varying levels of opacity, duplicity and volatility of the medium of language, artistic research is a co-creation that emerges from working with a literary text and producing a text that is both creative and critical. Artistic research takes an adventurous leap into an unknown territory and articulates something different but somehow related to the text it is studying. It may experiment with the text’s formal components; it may take up elements described in the text and present them in a new way; it may reconfigure the text’s concepts in a new constellation.

 

How do we study this?

We study this by analysing texts in their internal structure and their surrounding environment and context, and then by creative experimentation. We do writing exercises related to the texts we are studying, sometimes by inhabiting the style of a particular writer; sometimes by writing a new version of an established literary form or structure; sometimes by creating a new space for an existing concept or character to exist in.


Our research focus of Genetic Criticism studies early drafts, different versions and rewritings of a literary text, undercovering implicit patterns and developments, illuminating the text  with theories of aesthetic production. This research also highlights the significance of the writing process in the development and meaning-making of a literary text.

The ‘mirror image’ of genetic criticism, our research focus of Xenogenetic Writing Practices begins with an existing literary text, then takes a leap into the unknown through a creative and critical engagement with that text through the production of a new text (see our page Artistic Research in Literary Studies).

In Anglistik IV we consider the many ways in which research, theory, and practice can be interwoven. Our commitment to practice-oriented research also informs our research-oriented teaching. Theories of gender, ecology, new materialism, and posthumanism are used to deepen our understanding of these literary practices. We focus especially on the genesis of literary texts and the study of writing processes. Furthermore, we examine literature as a form of work, and we explore how literature re-invents the concept of working.


Vincent Broqua

Creative Writing Exhibition

Writing practice, Poets' night

Climate Stories: Everyone has a Story to Tell About Climate

Everyone has a story to tell about climate: whether we take a political stance on global warming or whether we wonder about the increasingly unpredictable weather in everyday conversations, whether we are scientists dealing with empirical data and so-called hard facts or whether we are readers and writers imagining the fictional worlds of literary artefacts, we are surrounded by stories, and increasingly by stories about climate and its effects upon the earth and upon our human ways of being in the world.

Stories are more than a fanciful creation of a creative mind. Indeed, it has become commonplace to assume that literary texts appear in immediate and often contested relations with their historical, political, social and cultural contexts; these texts may explain the world-as-is to their readers or they may imagine new worlds yet-to-come; they will draw on lived experience as much as on facts, which they relate through a broad repertoire of poetic and aesthetic devices.

When it comes to climate and climate change, this unique world-making potential of literature has gained new and ever more pertinent relevance. Indeed, the practices of storytelling are currently being re-evaluated for their political and ethical merits: as communicative devices, they open up critical inquiries, firstly, on how to tell stories of climate change that make scientific facts accessible to a wider audience – and, secondly, on how aesthetically meaningful stories may exceed the textual realm and initiate action.

Poet and climate activist Dr Sally Flint (University of Exeter, GB) operates on that very threshold: her forthcoming collection, There is No Planet B, is inspired by her close collaboration with climate scientists and emerges in curious dialogue with their findings. Each piece is prefaced by a snippet of scientific information, from which the poet spins her poetic stories on climate and climate change. This unusual approach results from Dr Flint’s longstanding involvement with the project Climate Stories (http://climatestories.virb.com/the-idea), a collaborative venture between arts practitioners, climate scientists, and members of the community in Exeter and the greater Devon area. Aiming to facilitate storytelling on climate, the project has featured workshops on creative writing, songwriting, and visual arts, encouraging participants to step out of their comfort zone and create their own stories, poems, songs, or images (results have been published with Riptide in a collection titled Climate Stories in 2018).

Dr Flint leads the creative writing strand of the Climate Stories project. Working in dialogue with climate activists from various domains has decisively influenced her own much-acclaimed poetry, which has appeared in numerous anthologies as well as in two collections, titled Pieces of Us (Worple Press) and The Hospital Punch (Maquette Publications).

This winter term, she has joined us to share her outstanding expertise in a two-day workshop on creative writing (29-30 October 2019) at Heinrich Heine University and in a public reading (30 October 2019) at Haus der Universität. The workshop led a group of sixteen committed participants to develop their own climate stories from visual and textual as well as scientific prompts. Composing poetry and prose from these materials, the participants learned how to create poetic images and fictional characters, to imagine setting and atmosphere of their fictional worlds, and to perpetually develop and refine their pieces.

In a public reading on the evening of 30 October 2019 at Haus der Universität, these topics were explored in more detail, when Dr Flint presented some pieces from her forthcoming poetry collection to an audience of students, staff and members of the public. Her work sparked a lively exchange about writing poetry in times of climate change and about the controversial role of literature and storytelling in raising awareness and initiating political change. The evening concluded with some examples from Dr Flint’s earlier poetry collections of nature poetry.

Dr Flint’s visit inaugurated many creative projects among workshop participants, which may be published in the spring 2020 edition of the Riptide Journal, with a focus on climate. Her expertise greatly enriched the focus on Artistic Research launched in 2017 by the Institute for Modern English Literature. Creative writing, as this event has emphasised, is an apt didactic tool for refining an understanding of literary artefacts and for further promoting critical reading practices. The pertinent topics of climate and climate change stress the political and cultural relevance of reading and writing for making sense of our world and our human ways of being in the world. Further to this, and in collaboration with secondary schools in Düsseldorf, workshop participants may themselves be guided to lead small groups of pupils to tell their stories of climate change and to underline the role of literature and storytelling in everyone’s everyday lives.

 

Dr. Sonja Frenzel

JULIAN WOLFREYS

30TH JANUARY 2019 AT 2.30PM
VIRGINIA WOOLF: MEMORY, BEING, AND LOSS 
Guest Lecture
Location: HHU Campus, Building 24.51, Room 01.28 

31TH JANUARY 2019 AT 7PM
IMAGINARY, POLITICAL, AND OTHER LANDSCAPES – AN EVENING OF POETRY AND
MUSIC

Reading + Performance
Location: GOETHEMUSEUM SCHLOß JÄGERHOF, JACOBISTR.2, 40211 DÜSSELDORF 

Professor Julian Wolfreys (University of Portsmouth) is the author and editor of numerous scholarly books on nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature and literary theory, including, most recently, Haunted Selves, Haunting Places in English Literature and Culture: 1800-Present (2018). Among his other publications are two collections of poetry as well as a widely acclaimed novel, Silent Music (2014). Last but not least, Julian is also a musician, working as a solo performer and as part of a duo.

ANDY BROWN

30TH OCTOBER 2018 AT 7PM
BLOODLINES: POETRY AND MEDICINE
Reading: Andy Brown (University of Exeter) 
Location: GOETHEMUSEUM SCHLOß JÄGERHOF, JACOBISTR.2, 40211 DÜSSELDORF

On Tuesday, 30 October 2018, ANDY BROWN (EXETER), a well-known poet, poetry commentator and academic, will read from his latest poetry collection, Bloodlines, and talk about the ideas and images that
underlie his creative work. You are warmly invited to join us!

ROUNDTABLE: KREATIVE WEGE | CREATIVITY AS CAREER

18TH MAY 2018 FROM 6-8PM
KREATIVE WEGE | CREATIVITY AS CAREER
Roundtable with Tom Drury (author), Anja Fröhlich (author), Grit Krüger
(auhtor) and Saxa (word artist). 
Location: HAUS DER UNIVERSITÄT (ROOM 4), SCHADOWPLATZ 14, 40212
DÜSSELDORF

The Roundtable "Kreative Wege | Creativity as Career" will be a part of the newly inaugurated creative writing track of Ang IV. The event gathers the authors Tom Drury, Anja Fröhlich and Grit Krüger as well as the word artist Saxa (Sascha Lehmann), who will share the stories of their - often winding, but always inspirational - paths into creative careers.

Summer 2024

  • Science Fiction, Speculative Fabulation (Artistic Research in Literary Studies / Creative Writing) (BA/MA), Dr. Helen Palmer
  • The Power of Story. Creative Writing Workshop with Giles Abbott (BA/MA), Uni.- Prof. Dr. Lüdeke
  • Techniques of Reading: Theory – Method – Practical Work (BA/MA), Uni.- Prof. Dr. Lüdeke

Winter 2022/2023

  • Writing at Risk + Writing Solarpunk (MA), Dr. Sonja Frenzel
  • Writing Theory:  How Writers Appear in Writing (BA/ MA), Uni.- Prof. Dr. Lüdeke
  • Original Screenwriting: An Introduction (BA), Tobias Bräuer
  • Ecopoetics and the Capitalocene (Creative Writing) (BA/ MA), Katharina Maria Kalinowski
  • Writing Place (Creative Writing) (BA), Katharina Maria Kalinowski

Summer 2022

  • Writing Forward + Creative Writing Workshop (MA), Dr. Sonja Frenzel
  • Scenes of Writing: how writers write (BA/ MA), Univ.- Prof. Dr. Lüdeke
  • Deconstructing the Biopic: Real Life as Fictional Retelling (BA), Tobias Bräuer
  • Reframing Fidelity: Introduction to Film Adaptation (BA), Tobias Bräuer
  • (Creative Writing Seminar) Clans: stories about clan mentality, exclusion, racism, and other -isms (BA), Matthew Lawrence Garcia

Winter 2021/2022

  • Rooms of Whose Own? Androgynous Writing Spaces (MA), Dr. Sonja Frenzel
  • The Art of Original Screenwriting: Creativity, Inspiration, Originality (BA), Tobias Bräuer
  • Writing Authentic Dialogue: Unique Characters, Distinct Voices (BA), Tobias Bräuer
  • Creative Writing Seminar: Altered Consciousness: writing mental illness, substance abuse, and mysticism (BA), Matthew Lawrence Garcia

Summer 2021

  • The Adventure of Writing (With) Literature (MA), Dr. Sonja Frenzel
  • Aesthetics of Film Adaptation: Rewriting Novels for the Screen (BA), Tobias Bräuer
  • Fidelity, Originality, Freeplay: Writing Film Adaptation (BA), Tobias Bräuer
  • Master Poetry Workshop: Voice and Conflict (MA), Dr. Ellen Elder
  • Creative Writing Seminar: Transgression: invading/crossing lines, personal, racial, social (BA), Matthew Lawrence Garcia
  • The Adventure of Writing (about) Literature (MA), Univ. -Prof. Dr. Roger Lüdeke

Winter 2020/2021

  • Fox Stories: HumAnimal Perspectives in Storytelling (MA), Dr. Sonja Frenzel
  • Narrative Film, Visual Storytelling, Cinematic Techniques: An Introduction to Film Analysis (BA), Tobias Bräuer
  • Master Poetry Workshop: Locating the Lyric/al (MA), Dr. Ellen Elder
  • Creative Writing Workshop: Mystery Fiction and the Mysterious (BA), Matthew Lawrence Garcia

Summer 2020

  • Writers’ Lives: Memories of Becoming a Writer (MA), Dr. Sonja Frenzel
  • Writing Believable Characters: Psychology, Personality, Transformations (BA), Tobias Bräuer
  • Creative Writing Seminar: The Writer and the Story (BA), Matthew Lawrence Garcia
  • Master Poetry Workshop: Locating the Lyric/al (MA),  Dr. Ellen Elder

Winter 2019/2020

  • Queer Modernities: Retelling the Story (MA), Dr. Sonja Frenzel
  • Originality Through Imitation: Writing the Original Screenplay (BA), Tobias Bräuer
  • Creative Writing Workshop: Genre and Hybridization in the Literary Short Story (BA), Matthew Lawrence Garcia

Summer 2019

  • Storytelling Revisited: Orality and Literality  + Project Module (MA), Dr. Sonja Frenzel
  • Writing the Feature Film (BA), Tobias Bräuer
  • Fiction Intensive: Raising Tension (BA), Rebecca Rukeyser
  • Poetry (BA), Dr. Ellen Elder
  • Point of View and Voice in the Modern North American Short Story (BA), Matthew Lawrence Garcia

Winter 2018/19

  • The Art of Verbal Action: Writing Dialogue (BA), Tobias Bräuer
  • Story-Telling in posthumanist perspectives (MA), Dr. Sonja Frenzel
  • Writing Character Fiction (BA), Rebecca Rukeyser

Summer 2018

  • Originality Through Imitation - (Re)writing the Genre Film (BA), Tobias Bräuer
  • Words and Worlds: Telling Stories of Dwellling (MA), Dr. Sonja Frenzel
  • Writing The Short Story (BA), Rebecca Rukeyser

Winter 2017/18

  • Narrative Identity Meets Genre: Writing the Feature Film (BA), Tobias Bräuer
  • Speaking (of) Matter: New Materialism Meets Creative Writing (MA), Dr. Sonja Frenzel

Summer 2017

  • Free Play, Palimpsest, Intertextual Bricolage: Writing Postmodern Adaptation (BA), Tobias Bräuer

Winter 2016/17

  • Writing Film Adaptation: Raymond Carver on Film (BA), Tobias Bräuer

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