The Heroic in 21st Century British Television Series: Discourses and Aesthetic Strategies in a Popular Medium (D15 [C04])

• Subject Area: European and American Literary and Cultural Studies
• Term: from 2016 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 181750155

The project will be broken into two subprojects: a) A corpus of popular 21st-century British television series will be used to bring to light and analyse the heterogeneity of current figurations and semantics of heroism in British society. b) The project will use the example of the series Doctor Who to study changes in such figurations since the 1960s. The accent in both subprojects will be placed on interpretation of the televisual text, which will be examined with cultural discourses and formal aesthetic aspects of heroism in mind.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 948: Heroes - Heroisations - Heroisms. Transformations and Conjunctures from Antiquity to the Modern Age
• Applicant Institution: Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg
• Project Heads: Privatdozentin Dr. Nicole Falkenhayner; Professorin Dr. Barbara Korte