Priorities and Projects
In addition to this overview of our research interests, you will find detailed information on the main research areas and research projects on the pages of the respective employees.
Professor Dr. Thomas Bein, Older German Literature
Book Project
Introduction to German Medieval Studies - Textbook
My first introduction to the Older German Literature (1st edition 1998, 2nd edition 2005, published by Erich Schmidt, Berlin) is now more than 20 years old. The study conditions have changed a lot since then, which also makes changes in the field of teaching necessary. This affects teaching concepts as well as (printed) teaching media. The completely redesigned introduction is based on an inductive approach in order to introduce the systematics and history of the sub-subject to new students.
Essay project
Walther von der Vogelweide: Quo vadis?
In 2013 the 'Aachener Walther-Ausgabe' published by me was published after about ten years of work. It is a scientific text edition of the songs and slogans of Walther von der Vogelweide, which has taken new editorial paths.
Find out more about these projects and the research focus of Professor Thomas Bein.
Professor Dr. Stephan Braese, Modern German Literature
German-Language Jewish Literature from the Enlightenment to the Present
New Approaches to Research in Paradigms
In Cooperation with Professor Alfred Bodenheimer and Professor Primus-Heinz Kucher.
The project aims at a fundamental and systematic reappraisal and presentation of German-Jewish literature since the Enlightenment, based on an understanding of texts in cultural studies, expanded by approaches from reception aesthetics, semiotics, spatial and media theory as well as the history of science.
Cool. Jazz as a counterculture in post-war Germany
The project aims to determine the specifically oppositional, antagonistic, conflicting potential of a social and habitual milieu and its forms of expression, particularly in literature and the media, which began with the (re-)introduction of African American music culture into German-speaking Central Europe by the US occupying forces immediately after the military suppression of Nazi Germany.
Find out more about these projects and the current research focus of Professor Stephan Braese.
Dr. Katharina Böhnert, Didactics German
Language reflective processes in inclusive learning groups
The aim of the research project is to collect in the form of videographies how pupils in inclusive learning groups reflect on language. Reflection processes and linguistic knowledge structures are explored by content analysis and from this conditions for successful inclusive teaching are derived.
Find out more about Dr. Katharina Böhnert.
Dr. Katharina Böhnert/Benedikt Schneider, Didactics German
Student activation through digital media? A videography study in grammar class with tablets
The research project aims to develop didactic concepts for a cognitively activating design of grammar teaching with tablets and to evaluate them empirically in the form of a videography study.
Find out more about Dr. Katharina Böhnert and Benedikt Schneider.
Professor Dr. Monika Fick, Modern German Literature
Enlightenment Research
The question of the revaluation of sensuality in the context of the "anthropocentric turn" (Charles Taylor), the reflection of the body-mind problem and the determination of the role of the aesthetic for the model of the "whole human being" form the red thread of the Lessing Manual.
Literature and Aesthetics
The book "The Appearance of Things: Introduction to Aesthetics" signals and documents my interest in - old and new - theoretical concepts as well as my reflection on the difficult relationship between aesthetic theory and artistic practice.
Literature and Knowledge (forms)
This research direction - it is related to the topic "literature and anthropology" - is documented above all by my habilitation thesis "Sinnenwelt und Weltseele" from 1993 and a number of recent essays. It deals with the question of interrelations between aesthetic forms of expression and the construction of (natural) scientific knowledge.
Find out more about these research focus and projects of Professor Monika Fick.
Professor Dr. Jürgen Egyptien, Modern German Literature
Edition of the Conversations with Stefan George
Since 1994 the edition of the conversations with Stefan George has been created.
It will contain all the surviving conversations in chronological order and with detailed commentary.
Monograph on Ernst Fischer
Since 1986 a monograph has been published on the Austrian writer, publicist, politician, art and literary theorist Ernst Fischer (1899-1972). Using the representative figure of Ernst Fischer as an example, a kind of history of the left intellectual milieu of the 20th century is to be told.
Find out more about these research projects of Professor Jürgen Egyptien.
Professor Dr. Hans-Joachim Jürgens, Didactics German
Münstersche children's mystery novels online. Systematic reading promotion in the digital world
The research project aims at the development and testing of digital and analogue concepts and settings for the systematic promotion of reading literacy in children aged 8 to 12 years both in and out of school. In 2018 it was awarded the second German reading prize in the category "Outstanding reading promotion with digital media"; it is sponsored by the Sparkasse Münsterland Ost Foundation.
Find out more about Professor Hans-Joachim Jürgens.
Professor Dr. Caroline Torra-Mattenklott, Modern German Literature
Critique and Self-Criticism of the Aesthetic. Idolatry and Iconoclasm in the Literature of the 18th to 20th Centuries
Following on from current discussions in the visual sciences and Thing Studies, the project examines literary reflection and criticism of phenomena of idolatry, pictorial magic, and pictorial fear or iconoclasm from Rousseau, Hamann, and Eichendorff to Pater, Hofmannsthal, and Proust.
"Wissenschaften des Konkreten - Ästhetische Abstraktion"
In continuation of my habilitation project on the poetics of the figure, the project deals with the complementary principles of abstraction and concretion as poetic and epistemic procedures.
Find out more about these projects and the current research focus of Professor Caroline Torra-Mattenklott.