Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School Of Literary Studies

Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies promotes and supervises theoretically and conceptually outstanding PhD projects in the field of Literary Studies analyzing texts of European and Non-European origin. The Graduate School strives for the advancement of genuine research perspectives of Literary Studies which cross single-language borders and challenge the technologies of globalization, last but not least by locating past and present phenomena of cultural practice within a broad historic horizon.

Research areas include the relationship between literary texts, the links between literary texts and processes of linguistic reflection, rhetoric and poetics, the correlations between literature and other aesthetic media and the interdependency between literature and discourses of knowledge. The literary objects of research are neither restricted by the period of time (from ancient to the present world) nor by language (World Literatures).

FSGS promotes research in the field of Literary Studies which is methodologically innovative and sets international benchmarks through its comparative method applied to text, media and culture. Focal points are the philological focus on textual and linguistic phenomena, the method of diachronic and synchronic comparison of languages, literatures, cultures and media, an awareness of the historicity of texts that provides insights into the interrelations between literature and such cultural processes as the generation of meaning, the formation of societies and the constitution of knowledge as well as a theoretical orientation in terms of a critical examination of the practice of Literary Studies and its central terms respective framework.

The choice of Friedrich Schlegel as patron of the Graduate School derives from the awareness that Friedrich Schlegel's work established important requirements of theoretically challenging, methodically innovative Literary Studies as it has been being represented successfully at Freie Universität Berlin for many years now.