With the rise of the digital humanities, a variety of new approaches to literary texts has emerged. These suggest new questions concerning the possible transformations of the objects, methods, and self-understanding of literary studies – questions to be discussed on our panel:
What is the object of literary studies today? Are we dealing with texts or media, with alphanumeric character sets or with works of art, with big data or unique three-dimensional books? Which methodological parallels, interferences, and differences can be found between these different approaches? How does our field position itself within the larger context of other historically orientated humanities? Which forms of chaos and order, of canon vs. The Big Unread, do the new approaches provide and generate? And which fundamental and imminent restructurings and reorientations of the disciplines can already be discerned today?

With
Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht (Stanford)
Christine Ivanovic (Wien)
Sybille Krämer (Berlin)
Thomas Weitin (Darmstadt)

The panel will be chaired by Irmela Krüger-Fürhoff and Bernard Metz