FOR 1091:  Popular Seriality: Aesthetics and Practice

• Subject Area: Humanities
• Term: from 2010 to 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 68338857

The Research Unit brings together 15 researchers from the fields of American Studies, German Philology, Cultural Anthropology/European Ethnology, Empirical Cultural Studies and Media Studies. From 2010 to 2013, six sub-projects will investigate a narrative format that has become a defining feature of popular aesthetics: the series.
The Research Unit addresses questions concerning the wide distribution and broad appeal of series since the 19th century and asks, which new narrative formats have emerged through serialisation. Further questions are: How do series influence the way we perceive and structure social reality? How are serial characters revised when they undergo one or more media shifts? How can we explain the progressively shrinking boundaries between producers and recipients in long running series? Which transformations in the field of cultural distinctions are produced by complex serial narratives, which are increasingly embedded in highbrow lifestyles and canonisation practices? In addition to its base at the University of Göttingen, the Research Unit has sub-projects at the universities of Hannover, Tübingen and Karlsruhe, as well as associated projects at the universities of Bonn and Bern (Switzerland). International fellows are hosted by the Lichtenberg-Kolleg in Göttingen.

• DFG Programme: Research Units

Projects

• Alltagsintegration und soziale Positionierung von Heft- und Fernsehserien (Applicants Bendix, Regina ;  Maase, Kaspar )
• Autorisierungspraktiken seriellen Erzählens am Beispiel der Gattungsgenese von Batman- und Spider-Man-Comics (Applicant Kelleter, Frank )
• Die Dynamik serieller Überbietung: Zeitgenössische amerikanische Fernsehserien und das Konzept des Quality TV (Applicant Kelleter, Frank )
• Digital Seriality: The Serial Aesthetics and Practice of Digital Games (Applicants Denson, Shane ;  Sudmann, Andreas )
• Formen und Verfahren der Serialität in der ARD-Reihe 'Tatort' (Applicant Stockinger, Claudia )
• Real-Life Storytelling: The Threefold Formal Structure of Reality TV as a Procedure of Cumulative Serialization (Applicant Hißnauer, Christian )
• Retrospective Serialization: Remaking as an Operation of cinematic Self-Historicization (Applicant Kelleter, Frank )
• Sammeln: Serienhefte zwischen Populärkultur und Kanon (Applicants Lauer, Gerhard ;  Maase, Kaspar )
• Serial Narration in Popular German-Language Periodicals from 1850 to 1890 (Applicant Stockinger, Claudia )
• Serial Policization: On the cultural Work of American City Mysteries (Applicant Stein, Daniel )
• Serializing Mass Culture: Popular Film Serials and Serial Structures in the United States, 1910-1940 (Applicant Mayer, Ruth )
• Serielle Figuren im Medienwechsel (Applicant Mayer, Ruth )
• Writing series: The Occupational Culture of Present-Day German Televised Entertainment (Applicant Bendix, Regina )
• Zentralprojekt (Applicant Kelleter, Frank )
• Zentralprojekt (Applicant Kelleter, Frank )

• Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Frank Kelleter