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Research projects in the field of Europe (selection)
The projects listed are only a selection of the projects in Saarland University's European focus. Further projects are compiled in the Europe portal of the CEUS | Cluster for European Research.
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
Graduiertenkolleg 2021
Der Traum fasziniert Menschen aller Zeiten und Kulturen. Er konfrontiert uns mit einer Erlebensweise, die offensichtlich anders ist als die unseres wachen Lebens. Die Fremdheit des Traums begründet das jahrtausendealte Interesse an diesem universellen Phänomen. Auch die (Kultur-)Wissenschaften sind durch die Alterität der Traumerfahrung theoretisch und methodisch auf besondere Weise herausgefordert. Den gemeinsamen Forschungsgegenstand des Graduiertenkollegs bildet der Traum als Kulturphänomen: Er ist ein Produkt kultureller Arbeit und konzeptueller wie ästhetischer Konstruktionen. Indem Träume als kulturelle Konstrukte verstanden werden, nimmt das Graduiertenkolleg die Vielfalt an Traumtheorien in den Blick, die als Wissensobjekte in den Traumdiskurs hineinwirken. Ziel ist die systematische, großräumige Erschließung der Geschichte, Ästhetik, Poetik und Medialität ästhetischer Traumdarstellungen sowie die Ausbildung exzellent qualifizierter und international vernetzter Nachwuchswissenschaftlerinnen und Nachwuchswissenschaftler.
DFG: GRK 2021
Projektleiterin: Christiane Solte-Gresser, Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft
Förderzeitraum: seit 2015
Forschungsgruppe 2475
Der transnationale Ansatz der Forschergruppe, der mehrere Länder, Kulturen und Gesellschaften miteinander in Bezug setzt, macht Ähnlichkeiten und Unterschiede, wechselseitige Abhängigkeiten und enge Bezüge europäischer Populärkultur sichtbar. Die Teilprojekte zu Musik und Radio, Jugendkultur und Jugendmedien, Comics und Amateurfilme, Quizshows und Kinderserien erlauben es, ein weites Spektrum populärkultureller Phänomene in Westeuropa zu erschließen. Bei aller Relevanz transatlantischer Verflechtungen für die Nachkriegsjahrzehnte zielt das Projekt darauf, gängige Auffassungen einer einseitigen Amerikanisierung westeuropäischer Gesellschaften mit einem Europäisierungsparadigma zu konfrontieren. Europäisierung mittels Populärkultur wird dabei als komplexe Geschichte asymmetrischer Interdependenzen beschrieben, die Austausch und Verflechtung betonen, zugleich aber Abgrenzungen, Ungleichzeitigkeiten und Fragmentierung mitdenken. Die Forschergruppe wird so erstmals ein thematisch breites, konzeptionell innovatives und empirisch fundiertes Panorama europäischer "Populärkultur transnational" zur Debatte stellen.
DFG: FOR 2475
Projektleiter: Dietmar Hüser, Geschichte
Förderzeitraum: seit 2018
European Union
ERC Consolidator Grant
Project leader: Markus Messling, Romanistik
Funding period: seit 2019
In an extensive interview to the New York Times, within the last days of his presidency, Barack Obama made an argument for narrations creating a solidarising humanity: “When so much of our politics is trying to manage the clash of cultures brought about by globalisation, technology and migration, the role of stories to unify is more important than ever.”
Minor Universality aims to make a substantial contribution to the actual debate on the problem of universality after Western universalism. Indeed, the question of how universality can be produced is crucial in times characterised by a double relativistic signature: the necessary political and epistemic critique of Occidental universalism, and worldwide identitarian assertions ranging from cultural othering to neonationalist movements. “Is there anything that relates us to others so that we can say that WE are?”, asks Achille Mbembe.
Here general narratology provides a crucial twist: if it is a genuine, anthropological potential of the narration to make a claim about the world as a whole starting from a singular setting, narrations create ways of extending concrete contexts towards experiences of a shared humanity. This can be analyzed in literature, in an epistemic field beyond the book and in social practices being part of global migrations. In contrast to conceptual debates such as on World Literature, which address the question through canons and legitimacies, this project shifts the debate to cultural practices producing universality in ways that inform the knowledge of our contemporary world: how and with which means do contemporary cultural productions such as literatures, films and social media, literary and cultural festivals and events, architectures and museums, open up local settings so as to produce a new sensuous, embodied or intellectual awareness of a shared humanity?
In her famous TED Talk, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie asserted that a single story leads to simplifications in the understanding of others. Talking of the Western universalism’s impact on cultures, whose concept considered Western ideas and concepts as being universal, the writer underlined the underrepresentation of many cultures in the universalistic narrative. This also reminds us of the fact that a new world consciousness is often prepared at the margins of dominant discourses: It needs to be inquired for the necessary debates on reparation, our living together and shared commons.
Based on close readings and qualitative case studies the project re-expands the material and medial turns in cultural analysis to processes of consciousness and agency. It also seeks to explore new literacies about the role of narration for civil imaginaries of our world and to provide ways to address universality in public debates about justice and legitimacy within world society.
The ERC Minor Universality project cooperates with colleagues from all over the world. Four partner centres in Hong Kong, Mexico, Tunis and Berlin (HKW) have shaped the project and work closely with the hub based in Saarbrücken.
- Horizon Europe
- Project lead: Prof. Dr. Georg Wenzelburger (Komparative Europaforschung)
- Funding period: 2024-2026
PROTEMO investigates the emotional connection between the state and individuals. The focus is on protective policies and their consequences for individuals, groups of citizens and non-citizens as well as for democracy, political participation, and mobilisation. Such policies, and the emotional dynamics related to them, increasingly dominate politics in the current age of insecurity. Fear, anger, pride and hope are only some of the emotions that are often involved in political interactions and sometimes with important consequences, as events such as the Yellow Vest protests illustrate.
PROTEMO asks: (1) How do political actors perceive and influence the emotional needs of citizens (and non-citizens) and how does this play out in the policy process? (2) What emotional reactions, judgements and actions elicit protective policies among individuals and publics in society? (3) How do citizens’ emotional reactions feed back on the policy process? Answering these questions allows us to study emotional responsiveness - a crucial yet neglected aspect of representative democracy.
To do so, we will field a representative survey of 11 countries, design experiments, make focused comparisons of a smaller range of specific policies (e.g. pandemic responses, climate change) and conduct several “deep dives” where, we investigate how underprivileged citizens, migrant women of color, and refugees from Ukraine form emotional needs towards protection and build discursive spaces to articulate them in the public sphere. Bringing together perceptions of emotions by political actors and emotional reactions of citizens and non-citizens to protective policies with an analysis of the emotionality of the policy process toward protective policies allows us to contribute to a broader debate on the future of representative democracy and affective citizenship. PROTEMO’s results will lead to improved EU policy-making and enhanced communication of evidence-based policies.
Interreg VA Großregion
Project leader: Prof. Dr. Astrid M. Fellner, Chair of American Studies
Funding period: seit 2018
Based on the premise that (territorial) borders are neither essentialist nor given, the research field of Border Studies has developed to study processes of bordering (de-/re-bordering), border-shaping practices and discourses, and related phenomena. Funded by the INTERREG VA Greater-Region, the project “UniGR-Center for Border Studies” aims at fostering and connecting border-related research within and across various scientific disciplines. 80 scientists affiliated with the universities of the University of the Greater-Region (UniGR) network conduct research from the point of view of their respective disciplines.
In order to foster a long-lasting and productive dialogue between researchers and socio-economic and institutional actors, the UniGR-Center for Border Studies organizes numerous networking conferences and promotes academic mobility within the UniGR network. Besides a series of publications, the trilingual online glossary UniGR-CBS Online-Glossary Border Studies (coordination: Saarland University) constitutes a comprehensive and interdisciplinary research database of definitions and explanations of key concepts relating to the field of Border Studies, thus making it the centrepiece of border research in the Greater Region.