Writing the Cosmopolitan Imagination: Genre Transactions in World-Literary Space is a bilateral research and exchange network involving the Departments of English and German at the University of Potsdam and at the University of Delhi. The program is funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the University Grants Commission (UGC) for a period of four years from 2016 to 2020.
Writing the Cosmopolitan Imagination: Genre Transactions in World-Literary Space conjoins three research themes that are crucially relevant in current literary and cultural studies: It links the discussion of an emergent transnational ‘world literature’ with contemporary debates over cosmopolitanism, planetarity and global citizenship as well as with the recent turn towards genre as an inherently social dimension of literature. By bringing these three dimensions together, the collaboration project aims to reassess and productively investigate in a sustained bilateral dialogue the ways in which literature contributes to the articulation of identities in the globalization process.
Writing the Cosmopolitan Imagination: Genre Transactions in World-Literary Space comprises the following measures:
- individual research projects by PhD and postdoctoral researchers in English or German Studies;
- reciprocal faculty members’ exchange including the teaching of seminars at the host university;
- reciprocal students’ exchange;
- extensive reciprocal students’ seminar excursions to Delhi and Potsdam/Berlin;
- summer and winter schools at both partner institutions;
- international conferences with publication of proceedings;
- guided students’ project work/students’ excursions (three weeks) at both locations;
- development of a joint module with an e-learning component;
- joint PhD supervision where applicable
dirk wiemann 