cfp.english.upenn.edu

Fiction and Reality. Exploring Positions in a Complex Relationship

2009 Summer School in Munich, Germany

How does fiction relate to the "real world"? Does fiction have the power to interfere with life, and why and how do social institutions interfere with fiction? In which ways does fiction change our view of the world, and how does a changing world alter fiction? Is there a growing tendency to fictionalize the world, and how does it relate to the impulse to make fiction realistic? And which role do literary studies - and literary scholars - play in this dense and often tense web of relationships? Where is our position?

We want to explore this complex relationship in detail in this second international Summer Schools hosted by the PhD programme "Literature" at Munich University.

New Forms of Fiction:
Exploring blendings and transgressions of fiction and reality.
August 9-23, 2009 in Munich, Germany.

"New Forms of Fiction: Exploring blendings and transgressions of fiction and reality" is the second in the three year row of summer schools whose focus is the relationship between fiction and reality. The aim of this second summer school is to offer doctoral students and post-docs an opportunity to explore and discuss in detail different ways in which literary texts and other works of art use, cause or reflect transgressions or blendings of fiction and reality. The summer school is designed so as to allow you maximum time to develop and discuss your own positions and questions; university teachers both from our partner universities and from Munich University will provide some initial input and will guide discussions, but the collaborative work of the students will be at the heart of the summer school.

To focus discussions, we will be concentrating on four subsections:

(1) Defending Fiction
This section focuses on various forms of non-fictional discussions about and fictional explorations into consistency, authenticity, authoring, and ownership of fictional worlds.

(2) Interacting with Fiction
This section concentrates on analyzing and discussing the connection between fiction, interactivity and immersion in the context of video games, massively multiplayer games, improvisational/interactive Performance Art and other 'playable media'.

(3) Indicating the Real
This section focuses on various forms of inclusions of the "real" into fiction.

(4) Realisations of Fiction
Cases in which fictional entities seem to cross the border between fiction and reality may appear funny or disquieting or even threatening; they are in any case noteworthy. This section will look at a broad range of these phenomena and specifically at the descriptions and public debate that accompanies them.

For more information, please go to our website:
www.prolit.lmu.de/summerschool

Contact:
Brigitte Rath
brigitte.rath@lrz.uni-muenchen.de
Academic Coordinator
PhD Programme in Literature, LMU Munich