Previous Excursions

From 2012 to 2016 the chair for English Literature offered each winter term a master-level seminar at Burg Feuerstein, Shakespeare on Film. These seminars not only served to study Shakespeare adaptations in depth, but also allowed new, mostly international MA students to get to know each other and bond over a core topic of English Literature, the works of William Shakespeare. From Othello, Macbeth and Hamlet to The Merchant of Venice and Henry V, various works of Shakespeare as well as his influence was analysed during these weekend seminars.

In 2013, with the premier of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug looming, Kerstin-Anja Münderlein and Barbara Kehler organised a two-part lecture focusing on both the filming of The Hobbit and the power structures within both the original work by J.R.R. Tolkien and the adaptation by Peter Jackson. Just a few weeks later, a cinema visit was organised to watch The Desolation of Smaug together. In 2014 another field trip to the cinema saw the culmination of the Hobbit movies with The Battle of the Five Armies.

A group of students travelled to Buxton in 2013 to spend seven days exploring the inspirations and - in some cases - hometowns of authors like Elizabeth Gaskell and Charlotte Bronte. From Buxton, Manchester, and Knutsford to Eyam, no village (or city) was left behind in a literary journey through the English countryside.

In 2013, as part of the undergraduate seminar "Writing India and the Indian Diaspora" Dr. Susan Brähler took a group of students to Würzburg on a visit to the Gurdwara Sagar Gobing, where they were allowed to join the sunday prayer and in turn taught about Sikhism and Sikh traditions.

On January 19, 2013, a group of 25 students and their lecturers went on a trip to the "Dark Romanticism" exhibition at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt am Main. Highly praised in German feuilletons, the art exhibition was the first one to exclusively focus on the dark aspect of Romanticism in the visual arts and its legacy. It comprised over 200 paintings, sculptures, graphic works, photographs and films, but negotiated the influence of (Gothic) literature on these visual art works, too.

A Celebration of the Absurd: On May 7 (2012), a group of students from the Virginia Woolf and the Banned Books seminars went on a daytrip to Weimar to witness and participate in the Dada-Decade to get a feeling for surrealist art under the tutelage of Susan Brähler. The event "Konzertierte Aktion" was an exhibition on the market square that not only included a pub dedicated to the absurd but also a dada-esque performance of various musicians, a choir and a conductor as well as the reading of a manifesto.

From February 29 to March 5, 2012, a group of 30 students and professors flew to Edinburgh, the capital city of Scotland for a study visit. From Edinburgh castle to the theatre scene, from the Gothic to the contemporary Scotland, the group explored Edinburgh and Glasgow in various ways.

On Friday July 22, 2011, a group of students under the tutorage of Susan Brähler ventured on a Romantic excursion to the Felsengarten Luisenburg near Wunsiedel. In addition to discussing Romantic concepts and poetry in the Proseminar “Romantic Poetry: The Real Language of Men”, they followed William Wordsworth’s advice and went forth into the light of things to let nature be their teacher for the day.

Theatre Excursion 2011: In the span of four days (January 19 to 23) a group of 25 students and their teachers from five different courses ventured to London for an in-depth experience of English theatre. Aside from attending four different plays (Hamlet [National Theatre], The Rivals [Haymarket Theatre], Small Hours [Hampstead Theatre], Black Watch [National Theatre of Scotland at the Barbican Centre]), they group explored the 18th-century London (Old Spitalfields Market, Foundling Hospital, Sir John Soane's House) and some of them - the participants of the "Robin Hood" seminar - even travelled to Cambridge to see original manuscripts.

Theatre Excursion 2010: A group of students and their lecturers went to London to experience the British theatre scene up close in the span of four days (January 20 to 24). Four plays in four theatres were on the menu which ranged from Pains of Youth (Cottesloe Theatre, National Theatre), Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (Olivier, National Theatre), Trilogy (Barbican Theatre) to The Whisky Taster (Bush Theatre).