Unit information: Writing Home: Heimat in contemporary literature in 2018/19

Unit name	Writing Home: Heimat in contemporary literature
Unit code	GERM30071
Credit points	20
Level of study	H/6
Teaching block(s)	Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24)
Unit director	Dr. Debbie Pinfold
Open unit status	Not open
Pre-requisites	None
Co-requisites	none
School/department	Department of German
Faculty	Faculty of Arts

Description including Unit Aims

This unit will be taught by Dr Richard McClellend

An influential concept in German-speaking culture, Heimat has no direct equivalent in English. Often translated as ‘homeland’, Heimat is rather an emotional and psychological connection to a defined geographical space that is intoned at times of disruption and upheaval. It also necessitates the existence of the Other: a foil against which Heimat and its traditions can be measured and, potentially, from which it should be protected. In the present, Heimat is called upon in response to varied political, social and environmental issues. Such usage results in highly-charged and often competing notions of what Heimat means and to whom it is open.

In this unit, students will explore a number of contemporary literary responses to the notion of Heimat: Jenny Erpenbeck, Heimsuchung (2008); Melinda Nadj Abonji, Tauben fliegen auf (2010); Irena Breźná’s Die undankbare Fremde (2012); and Angelika Overath, Alle Farben des Schnees (2010). These texts question what it means to belong, and centre on discussions of otherness/being strange, the family, the individual, language and the connection between individuals and the landscape in the negotiation of Heimat. These will be studied alongside a number of shorter essays, political speeches and secondary sources (to be provided in a reader at the start of the unit) to consider how Heimat is understood in contemporary society and how the concept features in literature as part of a wider debate in the German-speaking world.

The Unit Aims:

- To give students a grounding in the concept of Heimat in an historical and contemporary context. - To debate how literature might enable individuals to interpret the world around them. - To develop and consolidate German language skills through the close reading of a range of literary and non-literary texts. - To develop skills relating to the interpretation of cultural texts. - To develop students’ own critical voices in relation to wider debates in German Studies.

Intended Learning Outcomes

By the end of the unit, successful students will be able to:

1. Demonstrate knowledge of a significant cultural subject related to the German language to a standard appropriate to level H.
2. Respond critically to a wide range of materials that centre on the question of Heimat.
3. Evaluate and analyse relevant material from a large body of source materials, often in the German language, to a standard appropriate to level H.
4. Demonstrate an ability to work independently.
5. Demonstrate an aptitude for responding to questions by presenting their independent judgements in an academic style.

Teaching Information

2 Weekly seminars, to consist of informal lectures and seminar presentations and discussions.

Assessment Information

1,500-word essay (25%), testing ILOs 1-5

An ongoing reading-diary recording responses to individual texts (25%) – detailed guidance on this exercise and a sample entry will be provided to students at the start of the unit testing ILOs 1

3,000-word essay (50%) testing ILOs 1-5

Reading and References

Introductory Texts:

Mary Cosgrove, ‘Heimat as nonplace and terrain vague in Jenny Erpenbeck’s Heimsuchung and Julia Schoch’s Mit der Geschwindigkeit des Sommers‘, New German Critique, 39: 2 116, (2012) 63-86.

Friedrike Eigler and Jens Kugele, Heimat (Berlin, 2012)

Jonny Johnston, ‘Critical of Swissness, or Critically Swiss? Recent Autobiographical Fictions by Irena Brezna,’ German Life and Letters, 68:2 (2015), 171-189

Linda Shortt, German Narratives of Belonging: Writing Generation and Place in the Twenty-First Century (London, 2015)