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MC: Erik Born: Literature and Technology (GCSC)

When

Jun 28, 2017 from 10:00 to 02:00 (Europe/Berlin / UTC200)

Where

Phil I, Building B, R.029

Contact Name

Contact Phone

+49 641 / 99-30 053

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Is there anything more for literature to say about technology, in an age of modern electronic devices, other than, as Alfred Döblin once provocatively asserted, “It functions, and that’s all”? Even if modern technology lacks an explicit symbolic dimension, many writers and poets have been eager to address the question of technology in literary form, whether in images of engines or songs for engineers. At the same time, modern technologies have also given rise to new literary forms, from the telegraphic style through the radio drama to the “Flarf” poem. In this seminar, we will approach the complex configuration of literature and technology, as different ways of making and knowing, through readings of poetry and short-form prose. Our guiding questions will include: What does it mean for poets to address technology in modernity? To what extent is the lyric form compatible with the machine rhythms of industrial society? And how might cultural studies of these topics enrich our understanding of class, gender, and the body; discourses of nature and environment; and processes of industrialization, urbanization, and globalization?

 

// Erik Born

(Mellon Fellow, Department of German, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York)

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