Annotating Literature

Peer-learning Project Annotating Literature

Welcome to our peer-learning project Annotating Literature! The project was initiated by Prof. Dr. Matthias Bauer and Prof. Dr. Angelika Zirker in 2011 with the aim to write annotations, i.e. explanations and interpretations like the ones you can find in scholarly editions (such as the Shakespeare Arden Edition or Oxford World Classics). In our groups, you will learn how to tackle difficult or puzzling passages from literary texts of all genres and from all periods. As we all work on the texts together in our all-student, pressure-free workgroups, there will be plenty of opportunities to ask questions and get to know the text you are annotating really well! The Annotating Literature Project therefore is the perfect opportunity to practice your academic writing skills as well as your English in general. As a bonus, the annotations are published under your name on our website as soon as they are finished and reviewed! Apart from all these great benefits you can even be awarded for your scholarly fun.

You can gain ECTS for your BA or MA:

BA students have to write 6 annotations in order to get 4 ECTS or 10+ annotations in order to get 6 ECTS (e.g. for their Schlüsselqualifikationen).
MA students have to write 6 annotations in order to gain 3 ECTS for their work groups (in the focus module).

The Groups

In a major change from last year, we have decided to bring all members of the project together in one single group!
So, whether you love poetry or prose, whether you are struggling with an enigmatic poem or unravelling a narrative’s intertextual links, you are welcome to join us!

If you enjoy poetry and the challenges it poses, you can work with other students and your mentors to make sense of unknown words, challenging lines, and seemingly encrypted stanzas, in order to write explanatory annotations that will enable everyone to enjoy poetry to its fullest.
Bring along any poem you think would benefit from annotations or choose one from our extensive poetry collections. You are also welcome to bring your friends and annotate in pairs or small groups, or team up with another member of the group.

Our main goal in terms of prose texts is to finish our annotations for Charles Dickens’ Christmas story The Chimes. Despite being relegated to the shadow of A Christmas Carol in popular culture, Dickens himself preferred The Chimes, and the text very much remains worth reading. It combines themes of modernisation and industrialisation with goblins haunting a bell-tower and becomes all the more intriguing when read closely, which is exactly what we do when we annotate.
Should you prefer non-Dickensian prose, you are also very welcome to bring your own older or more recent text, or to work on a thematic anthology of shorter prose fragments. Collaboration with other students is encouraged!

The group is mentored by Ilea Rahn & Alexander Wiemers.

In-person meetings take place:

Weekly Meetings:
Tuesdays, 2-4 pm (c.t.)
Starting November 3^rd 2026
Room 465 (Brechtbau)

Block Sessions:
tba

If you cannot attend our in-person meetings, you can still join the group and participate asynchronously. To receive more information on the project or our meetings, just send an email to annotating-literaturespam prevention@es.uni-tuebingen.de.

The group is looking forward to meeting you!