The sub-programme German-language-literature-and-culture is committed to preparing doctoral students for an academic career and helps students to become competent and highly qualified germanists. The courses of the proramme are based on the long-term and current research programmes of the Department of German Literature and the Department of Austrian Literature and Culture within the Institute of German Filology. Students pursuing German-language-literature PhD are offered supervised topics linked to the research projects of the departments such as literary and cultural and media studies and theoretical and historical pespectives in research. These are first of all the theory of „possible worlds” and structuralist and post-structuralist and cognitive approaches as well as history of knowledge and media history. Postgraduates enrolling in this programme are given the opportunity to get acqauinted with and use current research methods just as with approaches and methods of historical relevance. Besides a strong foundation in philology the emphasis will be laid on interdisciplinary research fields. Concerning the epochs and periods of literature the program offers a wide spectrum from the early modern period and 18th and 19th century literary modernism including the research on Germans in the Carpathian-basin, to the literature of Modernism and the present with special emphasis on Central-European and Austrian literature and culture.
