Department of History and Cultural Studies

The Department of History and Cultural Studies offers a research profile found nowhere else in Germany. It covers a wide range of different eras, from antiquity to the modern period, and a vast physical area, stretching from Europe and the Middle East to Asia and the Americas. This results in a diverse and inspiring range of activities both within and across individual disciplines.

The outstanding quality of the research performed here is also evident in the department’s status as the host of the collaborative research center “Aesthetic Experience and the Dissolution of Artistic Limits” and its participation in three other collaborative research centers and two German Research Foundation (DFG) Research Units. Under the Excellence Initiative by the German federal and state governments, the department also plays a leading role in the “Topoi” cluster of excellence and the graduate school “Muslim Cultures and Societies.” Researchers from the department are also heavily represented in the “Languages of Emotion” cluster of excellence and the Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies and the Graduate School of North American Studies.