Samuel Fischer Guest Professorship forLiterature

Call for Applications for the Seminar

»Writing Against«

w/Constance Debré

SoSe 2025

The French writer and lawyer Constance Debré will be the 51st Samuel Fischer Guest Professor for Literature at the Peter Szondi Institute for General and Comparative Literature at Freie Universität Berlin in the summer semester 2025.

As part of her guest term, Constance Debré will teach the seminar Writing Against. The course is about exploring literature as writing against social guidelines, but also existential challenges. The famous motto “What's wrong with the world? I am” by G. K. Chesterton is transformed into “The world is wrong, therefore I am” and examined using literary texts by various authors from the past (including Dante, Baudelaire, Dostoyevsky and Bernhard) and the present (including Joan Didion, Bret Easton Ellis and Ágota Kritóf). In dealing with these works, the participants also write their own texts and discuss them in the seminar.

The course will take place during the lecture period of the summer semester 2025, starting on 16.04.2025, Wednesdays from 4 to 6 pm. The seminar is open for Comparative Literature students (MA and BA from the 2nd BA year), but students from other disciplines are also welcome to apply. A good knowledge of English is expected (knowledge of other languages is welcome).

It is not possible to register directly for the course via Campus Management. Please send your application by March 10, 2025, including info on your study subjects, academic semesters and language skills and either i) a short letter of motivation or ii) an excerpt from a creative text (in English or French; max. 1 page), in a single PDF file to David Wachter: david.wachter@fu-berlin.de.