Course Syllabus

Ralph Gibson, M.J. in Little Mirror

Course description

In this course, we will explore the complex and dynamic relationship between place and text in European literature. Through close reading and discussion of works by both classical and modern authors, we will examine how geographies – both real and imagined – are represented and used to convey meaning about memory, identity, and belonging. Key concepts will include atmosphere, heterotopia, non-place, liminality, as we consider how literature shapes, reflects, and reimagines the spaces we inhabit.

A central part of the course is reading on site. During study tours and field trips, you will engage directly with places that bring the literature to life, encouraging reflection on how environments shape – and are shaped by – storytelling.

Through discussions and reflective writing, students are encouraged to include their own perspectives, experiences, and observations, fostering a deeper and more personal appreciation of how literature and place interact.

 

Course requirements 

This course is discussion‐based and requires your active participation and engagement in class. This also includes small prepatory written assignments. Course assignments are generally designed to support close reading, independent thinking, and the development of your own interpretive voice, which is highly valued in this course. You are also required to complete the following to pass the course:

Paper I: Reading Berlin
A literary analysis of Berlin text

Leading Class Discussion in Berlin incl. Reflection
Student-led discussion of text and place on site (as a part of our stury tour to Berlin) with a subsequent written reflection on your experience

Paper II: Independent Literary Analysis
An independent analysis of a literary work and its sense of place

Use of AI

All submitted work must reflect your own original writing and engagement with the course material. The use of AI-generated text, whether in whole or in part, is not permitted. I may conduct spot checks on assignments, and if I suspect that submitted work does not reflect the student’s own understanding or authorship, I reserve the right to require an oral examination or follow-up discussion of the work. Students should therefore be prepared to explain and discuss their submissions in person.

Core Course Week: Copenhagen and Short Study Tour to the Island of Møn

The focus of the week will be poetry, nature and contemplation. We retreat from the city to go on a three-day study tour to the island of Møn, Southern Zealand. Staying at Villa Gress, former home to author Elsa Gress now turned writers' residency, we will use the site-specificity to explore the deep connections to literature, past and present, manifest in the place. Eco-criticism and eco-poetry will be key concepts that will help us ponder over the relationship between nature and culture, language and perception. 

Six days Long Study Tour to Berlin, Germany

During the trip to Berlin, we will explore one of the most complex, lively and literary cities in Europe. We will read and discuss selected Berlin texts on site and explore how the city influences our reading and vice versa.   

Berlin is a city of grand modernist experiments as well as a city with a recent past of horrific atrocities and suppression. Throughout the 20^th century, Berlin has undergone tremendous transformations and abrupt changes. The aftermaths of The Third Reich, WWII and The Cold War are still very visible in Berlin’s urban landscape and the historical wounds and cultural voids present in the minds of the Berliners. From our theoretical perspectives of place, text and memory, we will study how artists and writers have responded to the changing political situations. We will see how authors of Berlin have helped shape the city’s imaginaries and how the city has been a driving force for the creation of literary text throughout the changing times.

After the fall of the wall and the reunification of Germany, the controversies of how to remember such a recent and troubled past have thrived in the capital. We will study how Berlin tries to come to terms with its past and how place is still contested and negotiated in relation to the reunited city’s memorial culture. We will see how these controversies are reflected in both the urban landscape, political debates and in the literature. 

Instructor 

Birgitte Duelund Pallesen, Cand. mag. (Comparative Literature, University of Copenhagen).

Email: birgitte.pallesen@dis.dk 

Course Objectives

• Examine the interrelation between place and text in literature  
• Learn the methodology of literary geography  
• Identify significant themes and narration strategies in the works read
• Improve your skills in textual analysis
  
  

Grade Components   

Active Participation	25%
Paper I	25%
Leading Group Discussion in Berlin: Outline & Reflection	20%
Paper II	30%

 

Required Readings 

Theoretical texts 

Alaimo, Stacey. Bodily Natures.

Bachelard, G. The Poetics of Place.

Casey, Edward S. “How to get from Space to Place in a fairly short stretch of time”. 

Cresswell, Tim. “Introduction: Defining Place.”  Place – an introduction. 2nd ed., John Wiley & Sons, 2015. 

Foucault, Michel. "Of Other Spaces".

Grosz, Elizabeth. "Bodies-Cities"

Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space

Le Guin, Ursula. The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction.

Massey, Doreen. “A Global Sense of Place”. Space, Place and Gender, U of Minnesota Press, 1994. 

Miller, J.H. Topographies.

Moretti, Franco. Atlas of the European Novel, 1800‐1900, Verso, 1998. 

Morton, Timothy. Dark Ecology

Neimanis, Astrida. “Hydrofeminism: Or, On Becoming a Body of Water”

Relph, E. Place and Placelessness. 

 

Literature 

Aridjis, Chloe. Book of Clouds. Black Cat, 2009.

Balle, Solvej. On the Calculation of Volume.

Baudelaire, Charles. "Crowds".

Benjamin, Walter. Berlin Childhood.

Calle, Sophie. Detachment. Actes Sud, 2013. 

Celan, Paul. Selected  Poems and Prose of Paul Celan. W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 2001

Christensen, Inger. Alphabet.

Ditlevsen, Tove. "Childhood". Childhood, Youth, Dependency.

Gråbøl, Fine. What Kingdom.

Gogol, Nikolai. "Nevsky Prospect". Plays and Petersburg Tales. Oxford University Press, New York, 1995 

Hensel, Jana. After the Wall. Public Affairs, 2004.

Hermann, Judith. We Would Have Told Each Other Everything.

Jensen, Johannes V. The Fall of The King.

Mann, Thomas. The Magic Mountain.

Lorde, Audre. The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde. W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 2000 

Poe, Edgar Allen. "Man of the Crowd".  

Schalansky, Judith. Pocket Atlas of Remote Islands, Fifty Islands I have not visited and never will. Penguin Books, 2012.

Tokarczuk, Olga. Empusium.

Woolf, Virginia. Mrs Dalloway

Ørntoft, Theis. Poems 2014.

 

Secondary Literature 

A selection of relevant secondary readings will be available under ‘Recommended Readings’ on Canvas.