The Literary History of the Ruhr Region since 1960

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Werner Jung; Professor Dr. Rolf Parr
• Subject Area: German Literary and Cultural Studies (Modern German Literature)
• Term: from 2014 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 260178465

On the reverse of the preoccupation with phenomena of globalization, regions and their literatures have increasingly become again an object of literary and cultural scientific research as well. In this process the view towards ‚regionality’ as well as towards ‚globality‘ questions the limits of the framework of national literatures and philologies which is such important for the traditional literary historiography. To exceed and to deceed, respectively, the national framework is necessary because concepts of regionality and therefore any regional literary historiography nowadays cannot be developed without reference to processes of globalization. This is especially the case if you deal wih regional agglomerations which show constitutive characteristics of globalization in regionality. Hence, the Ruhr region as a regional space tedentially removes the »classic-asymmetrical binarism of ›metropolis versus province‹« (Parr/Amann/Mein 2008, 7) as well as that of ›globality versus regionality‹.Against this background the project "Literary history of the Ruhr region since 1960" which has been sponsored since February 2015 (and until January 2018) was set the task to develop a theorectic-methodical access and equally a form of representation which accounts for the globality in the regionality as well as for the regional-geographical component in order to finally submit a transferable model of regional literary historiography as well as the specific case study of literature of the Ruhr region. The theoretical-methodological conception has meanwhile been refined, discussed with experts for regional literature during a workshop and successfully tested in the project, the major part of the junction articles notified in the application for the first project stage have been completed. When researching the material, revising selected constituent archives and documents for reception, some aspects of the literature of the Ruhr region became visible which have not yet been covered by the previously pursued junctions and which should finally be worked out for the project in overall six more junction articles with a length of 40 until 60 pages each during the eleven months currently applied for: (a) institutionalisation of the literature of the Ruhr region (publishers, offices of literature, Literaturpreis Ruhr, magazines, publication series, lectureship of poetics); (b) immigrant literature in the Ruhr region; (c) from Tegtmeier to Knebel: comedy, satirical shows & co; (d) political literature inspired by the movement of 1968: Franz Josef Degenhardt, Urs Jaeggi, Jürgen Link; (e) pop literature in the Ruhr region and (f) radiophonic literature of the Ruhr region since the 1960s (audio drama etc.).

• DFG Programme: Research Grants