Gießener Graduiertenzentrum Kulturwissenschaften (GGK) / International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC)

Course sessions constitute units of learning that have to be carefully designed. When planning a session, it is essential to adapt the teaching methods and modes of working to the teaching aims and learning objectives. In the workshop you will learn key skills such as defining teaching aims and learning objectives and learn how to structure the single sessions of your courses meaningfully. Also, you will get the chance to discuss your own session syllabi.
In particular we will address the following questions:
• How do I structure a course session? How do I design the initial and concluding phase?
• Which teaching methods and working forms are useful and to which ends?
• Which possibilities to react do I have if the course of a session does not meet my expectations?
The workshop has two phases. It starts with an introduction, thematic input and a general discussion of the topic. In the second phase, we will work on your session syllabi. Please bring them to the event or upload them to StudIP in advance!

This course focuses on the writing and publishing of academic articles. Topics covered are tone and style of Academic English, structure and argument, topic and scope, composing titles and abstracts, formatting, when and where to submit, and more. Participants are asked to bring abstracts (preferably works in progress) of articles, conference papers, or their dissertations. This is interactive and open for all, whether you already have gathered experience in the field of academic writing/publishing, or find yourself at the very beginning of this journey.

This workshop prepares doctoral candidates for one of the most significant transitions in an academic career: transforming a dissertation into a published monograph. Drawing on successful examples from across the humanities, participants will gain a clear understanding of the structural and stylistic differences between a dissertation manuscript and a publishable book.

Topics covered include: navigating the doctoral title requirements under the Promotionsordnung der geisteswissenschaftlichen Fachbereiche at JLU; identifying the right publishing house for your work; crafting a compelling book proposal; responding to peer review; and negotiating publication contracts. The workshop combines expert input with a hands-on component, giving participants the opportunity to begin mapping out their own publication pathway — ideally before or shortly after their defense.

Whether you are approaching the end of your doctorate or have recently submitted, this workshop offers the practical tools and insider knowledge to help you take your research from thesis to published book.

From working with your supervisor’s comments to responding to a peer’s suggestions on a draft, there are plenty of opportunities to receive valuable feedback as a PhD. You might also find yourself on the other side, being asked to give feedback to your peers. How do you best provide comments and questions for them? What are important aspects to give feedback on? What kinds of language can you use to communicate feedback effectively? What specific questions can you ask to guide your readers feedback? These are the questions that will be answered during this workshop. Drawing on participants’ own experiences, we will explore what constitutes constructive feedback and how to decide on which suggestions to incorporate. This workshop is open to all IPP and GCSC members.

Course sessions constitute units of learning that have to be carefully designed. When planning a session, it is essential to adapt the teaching methods and modes of working to the teaching aims and learning objectives. In the workshop you will learn key skills such as defining teaching aims and learning objectives and learn how to structure the single sessions of your courses meaningfully. Also, you will get the chance to discuss your own session syllabi.
In particular we will address the following questions:
• How do I structure a course session? How do I design the initial and concluding phase?
• Which teaching methods and working forms are useful and to which ends?
• Which possibilities to react do I have if the course of a session does not meet my expectations?
The workshop has two phases. It starts with an introduction, thematic input and a general discussion of the topic. In the second phase, we will work on your session syllabi. Please bring them to the event or upload them to StudIP in advance!

Writing in the Humanities is typically thought of as a solitary activity, yet it is in many ways inherently social. From showing messy drafts to colleagues to presenting early work at conferences and responding to peer-reviewers’ feedback, practicing scholars rarely do much writing without involving others in the process. Because this form of sociality is not generally recognized as such, however, it is rarely taught to graduate students and other emerging scholars—arguably those who are most in need of support and community as they develop the skills and habits of a professional scholar. In this master class, I hope we can discuss the sociality of scholarly writing in general and, more specifically, the reasons why such sociality ought to be part of graduate writing pedagogy and professional development. To get the conversation going, I ask attendees to read the brief introduction to Writing Together, which I co-edited with Rachael Cayley and Fiona Coll. The discussion will be informal and, I hope, candid and supportive. At least half the master class will be devoted to silent writing—but though we’ll each be working alone on our own documents, we will be writing alone… together—another important form of social writing.

As the first generation in your family to study at university and now continue on the path to academia, you bring special perspectives with you - and often face specific challenges: Experiencing uncertainty and doubt due to feelings of foreignness, navigating the academic environment and the feeling of having to figure a lot of things out for yourself. The mentoring programme “First Generation Doctorate” is aimed at doctoral students who come from a non-academic family background and are looking for exchange, orientation and support beyond academic questions. Together with a mentor who has travelled this path themselves, we create space for your questions - and strengthen your individual path in academia.

Abstract:

The discipline of Science Fiction Studies is typically regarded as beginning with Darko Suvin’s 1972 article “On the Poetics of the Science Fiction Genre”, in which he defined science fiction (SF) as the literature of cognitive estrangement. By this definition, SF is theorized as formally suited to estranging its readers from the norms of their reality: the work of interpretation, relying on the reader’s comparison of the textual world to their lived reality, makes the real world seem strange, new and, critical to Suvin, changeable.

SF Studies thus began with a focus on assessing the affective suitability of the genre’s formal and narrative features to foment political change. The history of the discipline since this point can be read as an unfinished attempt to grapple with the implications of this. Cognitive estrangement, in particular, has remained contentious, with criticisms including: the exact contours of ’cognitive’; the explicit political embedding in Marxism; and the fact that cognitive estrangement defines the genre by its potential effect on the reader, while paying almost no attention to real or conceptual readers.

This paper first establishes the state of the field with regards to cognitive estrangement, and then plots coordinates for expansion. It takes a step toward bridging the above gap by attending to a key variable in the experiencing of SF. It starts with a question: if symbols of the real adorn Realism in order to create a reality effect, what can we say of the nova, the unreal, that not only adorn, but enable, SF?

While all fiction introduces unreal elements to the reader, fantastic fictions hinge on the introduction of an entire ‘unreality’. The reading process in these genres is thus formally defined by a demand not only as to the localised unknowns of plot and character that define near every literary text, but by macrocosmic, ontological unknowns, which determine the possible lines of the text’s possibles and plausibles.

However, if the experience of reading SF is partially defined by the formal distancing of reality, it is likewise defined by genre’s ability to close this distance. Genre knowledge can, for example, act as a kind of ontological encyclopaedia that fills the gaps left by reality’s distancing. This paper thus lays out a new formal direction for SF: the unreality effect, which emerges from the generative tension between SF’s formal and generic capabilities.

This workshop prepares doctoral candidates for one of the most significant transitions in an academic career: transforming a dissertation into a published monograph. Drawing on successful examples from across the humanities, participants will gain a clear understanding of the structural and stylistic differences between a dissertation manuscript and a publishable book.

Topics covered include: navigating the doctoral title requirements under the Promotionsordnung der geisteswissenschaftlichen Fachbereiche at JLU; identifying the right publishing house for your work; crafting a compelling book proposal; responding to peer review; and negotiating publication contracts. The workshop combines expert input with a hands-on component, giving participants the opportunity to begin mapping out their own publication pathway — ideally before or shortly after their defense.

Whether you are approaching the end of your doctorate or have recently submitted, this workshop offers the practical tools and insider knowledge to help you take your research from thesis to published book.