Interdisciplinary German studies

Research Projects:

Literature and the media

Description: The project focus on the analysis of narrative structures in different media and events of the sort, such as cinema, painting, dance, photography, among others, taking into account, above all, their dialogue with literature. It also includes intersemiotic translation.

Professor: Claudia Sibylle Dornbusch (claudia.dornbusch@gmail.com) - in charge

 

Fictional aspects in German literature

Description: The project focuses on the fictional and factual settings in German literature (especially novel, autobiography, but also other text genres). The most relevant aspects of our field of study are the author-narrator-reader relationship, the formal structure (narrative structure/gestures), and the cognitive function of texts.

Professors: Helmut Paul Erich Galle - in charge - (hgalle@usp.br), Celeste Ribeiro de Sousa (celeste@usp.br), Juliana Pasquarelli Perez (julianaperez@usp.br), and Luciana Villas-Bôas

 

Literature and society

Description: This project approaches the historical and social settings in German and Brazilian literature with emphasis on realism.

Professors: Tercio Redondo Loureiro - in charge - (tercioredondo@terra.com.br), Stefan Wilhelm Bolle (willibole@usp.br) and Helmut Paul Erich Galle (hgalle@usp.br)

 

Literature and knowledge

Description: The project researches texts of German and Brazilian literatures that reflect the relationship among literature, beauty, and knowledge, with a special focus on the cognitive aspects of literature.

Professors: Juliana Pasquarelli Perez - in charge - (julianaperez@usp.br) and Helmut Paul Erich Galle (hgalle@usp.br

 

Literature, subjectivity, and culture

Description: The project approaches literature as a means of articulating knowledge of subjects and their cultural belonging, studying the boundaries among (auto)biographical, historical, and fictional narratives, as well as literature and its association with disciplines bearing on ‘subjectivity and culture’, such as psychoanalysis, philosophy, and humanities.

Professors: Pedro Heliodoro Tavares - in charge - (pht@usp.br) and Luciana Villas-Bôas (l.villasboas@uol.com.br)

 

Working with documents in German in libraries and historical archives

Description: The project aims to develop and adapt methods of research and processing of historical documents and literary works in German stored not only in local archives (such as the Brasiliana Library and the Martius-Staden Institute in São Paulo) but also in other literary archives located in Brazil or abroad. We give special emphasis to the study of the image of Brazil in German literary works. Among our methods of handling documents are cataloguing, description, editing, assessment, translation, and dissemination.

Professors: José da Silva Simões - in charge - (jssimoes@uol.com.br) and Celeste Ribeiro de Souza (celeste@usp.br

 

Literature and Political Imagination

Description: This project investigates the specific role played by literature in shaping our political imagination, inasmuch as it sets the boundaries of imaginary communities such as the nation and the public sphere, or posits political actors and concepts such as the State, sovereignty, and humanity. The relationship among literature, political philosophy, and social sciences, with special emphasis on the boundaries between public and private spheres (besides the codification of intimacy and emotions) are all topics of interest to this project.

Professors: Luciana Villas-Bôas - in charge - (l.villasboas@uol.com.br) and Stefan Wilhelm Bolle (willibolle@usp.br)

 

Literature and Historiography

Description: The proposal consists in studying aspects of modernity in the context of Brazilian and German cultures via literary works and historiography. It deals with topics such as the social and political function of literature and of historiography, concepts of culture and civilisation, relations between aesthetical and documental factors, fiction and factuality, poetry of the genres, travel reports and cultural transfers.

Professor: Stefan Wilhelm Bolle (willibolle@usp.br) - in charge