Unit 2: Literature and Anthropological Knowledge
Prof. Dr. Dr. Yvonne Wübben
Transfer of anthropological knowledge between literature and science
Professor Wübben’s research unit covers literary anthropology and recent trends in the study of semantic spaces. The main focus of her work is the cultural transfer of anthropological knowledge between literature and science. Particular emphasis will be paid on the production and conveyance of knowledge through textbooks in the 19th and early 20th century. The research unit analyzes the spatial context, the strategies of visualization, semantics, narrations and typographic codes (Cahn). It scrutinizes the function of the medium to form “collective thinking” (Fleck) in a differentiated information society, to organize systems of opinions and to prepare scientific initiation processes through paratextual structures. The textbook is considered to be an archive of knowledge and a material workspace that contains epistemic traces of writing (Rheinberger) and as a mobile medium also contributes to the distribution of knowledge (Latour). The unit also concentrates on literary features (Goody) of textbook-knowledge as central aspects for its resonance and interference with literature and non-literary fields.
