3.0

credits

Average Course Rating

Unlike “traffic” or “transportation,” “mobility” is a holistic concept from the social sciences that not only refers to the question of how people and things can be moved from one place to another, but also encompasses individual experiences and habits, social aspects, and ecological implications of human motion in space. Since Homer’s Odyssey, literature has intensely participated in reflecting on and shaping our experience of mobility, reporting on travel routes, means of transportation, risks and dangers, as well as on changing perceptions of space, velocity, bodily motion, landscape, and cultural difference. In this seminar, we will examine exemplary scenes of mobility in eighteenth- to twentieth-century German literature, from Klopstock, Moritz, and Goethe, via Heine and Stifter, to Kafka, Uwe Johnson, and W.G. Sebald. Our particular focus will be on the interplay between transportation, spatial perception, and literary form: How do the differences between walking, riding on a stagecoach, or travelling by boat affect the way travelers perceive and describe their environment? How do writers respond to technical innovations of modernity, such as the railway and the airplane? Which techniques of writing are used to record and convey experiences of mobility? Taught in German.