Reading Beyond the Human: Literature, Theory, Aesthetics

Course goals

By the end of the course, students will be able to:

• Critically engage contemporary theoretical debates that question the category of the human and its role within literary and cultural analysis.

• Develop advanced close-reading skills for analysing literary and aesthetic texts in dialogue with complex theoretical concepts.

• Situate posthumanist and related approaches within broader intellectual traditions and ongoing debates across the humanities.

• Reflect on the relationship between theory and form, particularly how aesthetic and poetic strategies shape—and are shaped by—conceptual frameworks.

• Communicate complex ideas effectively, both orally and in writing, using appropriate academic terminology and critical argumentation.

• Conduct independent research that integrates theoretical insight with sustained textual or case-study analysis.

Content

This course explores how literature and other aesthetic forms imagine, negotiate, and challenge the boundaries of the human. Focusing on “reading beyond the human” as an interpretive practice, the seminar investigates how texts give form to nonhuman perspectives, multispecies relations, material agencies, and alternative conceptions of life, subjectivity, and community.

Students engage in close readings of literary and artistic works in dialogue with key theoretical texts drawn from posthumanism and adjacent fields, including environmental humanities, feminist and queer theory, decolonial and Indigenous studies, Black studies, disability studies, and animal studies. Rather than treating theory as a framework to be applied, the course emphasises the reciprocal relation between aesthetic form and conceptual thinking.

While the concrete selection of texts and themes may change from year to year, the course consistently centres questions of aesthetics and poetics: how do shifting ideas about the human and the nonhuman reshape narrative form, genre, voice, and modes of representation? The course is designed for students seeking to develop advanced interpretive skills at the intersection of literary analysis and contemporary theory.

Additional information

Please note: the time slot shown here is not yet final and is subject to change until the 3rd Wednesday in September.

This course is equivalent to Aesthetics of the Posthuman (TLRMV16210).

This seminar is offered as an elective by Comparative Literary Studies. It is open to RMA students in the following programmes: Comparative Literary Studies, Gender Studies; Media, Art, and Performance Studies, Religious Studies. It is also open to exchange students at MA level in these or related humanities fields. The seminar is taught in English.

Career orientation
This course prepares students for PhD research in the humanities by developing advanced skills in theoretical analysis, interdisciplinary research, and conceptually informed textual interpretation. It also supports non-academic career paths by strengthening students’ ability to work with complex ideas, connect abstract concepts to concrete cases, communicate clearly in speech and writing, collaborate in discussion-based settings, and design independent research projects—competencies valued in fields such as education, cultural institutions, policy, media, publishing, and the creative sector.