Transformations of the popular

In recent years, education policy and schools have come under increasing pressure to integrate digital media into the classroom—particularly due to the popularity of digital media as learning tools and objects. In the B08 project “Popular Culture in Schools,” we explore the question of how digital media (should) find their way into schools as popular objects.

Dr. Anna R. Hoffmann has been a professor of German language and literature didactics at TU Dresden since 2026. Previously, she served as an assistant professor of German literature and its didactics at the University of Siegen. Her research focuses on classroom, professional, and reception studies, as well as media didactics. 

In his input, Prof. Dr. Lars Koch will use the comparison between Milo Rau and the ZPS as an example to highlight how popular branding works in the field of contemporary activist art. Central to this are questions regarding specific calculations of resonance within the attention economy, media profiling techniques, and strategies for managing participatory emotions.

Prof. Dr. Lars Koch is a professor of Modern German Literature and Media Culture Studies at TU Dresden. His research focuses on the literary and media cultural history of fear and the interplay between affect and popular culture. Another central focus of his work is the cultural-diagnostic category of disruption. Recent publications: Writing Angst. Horror Literature, the Gothic Novel, and Literary Horror from 1800 to the Present (ed. together with Jakob Baur/Barbara Schaff, Bielefeld 2025); The Great Disruptor. Trump, the Media, and the Politics of Degradation (ed. together with Tobias Nanz/Christina Rogers, Berlin/Heidelberg 2025). 

Popularity is a drug that tempts and compels one to gamble with opportunities for attention. In her input, Maren Lehmenn explores this idea using the example of sociological concepts of staging.  

Maren Lehmann is a professor of sociological theory at Zeppelin University in Friedrichshafen on Lake Constance. Her research interests include the problematic history of individuality and the social theory of formal organizations. Within the SFB “Transformations of the Popular,” she leads the subproject “Precarious Popularity: Political Populism as the Delegitimization of Procedures.” 

This input explores the currently popular phenomenon of vulnerability regulation. It focuses on the framing texts of artistic productions—such as content notes and trigger warnings—as well as on related artistic practices. The discussion will thus address the potentials and challenges of a shifting attitude toward reception, and specifically the question of just how (self-)harmful artistic criticism actually needs to be.

Julia Prager is the director of the DFG project “Theater of Trans-lation: Dynamics and Constellations of Translation and Demeaning in 21st-Century Theater and Performance” (co-directed with Lars Koch) at TU Dresden. Her research interests include otherness of language in literature and theater, vulnerability studies (particularly in relation to self-help media and spatial dispositives), media constellations in the work of Elfriede Jelinek, and discourses on the connections between bodies and technologies. Her postdoctoral thesis, “Theater of Otherness of Language,” will be published by Nomos in 2026. 

“What Difference Does Popularity Make? On the Social Distribution of Attention” 

The distribution of attention is always controversial: even a theater with an empty audience feels the consequences of a lack of attention and must justify itself for the lack of interest. This presents a twofold problem: a bad play can still sell out, while a great one might fail in front of empty seats. In modern societies, attention is distributed through rankings, recommendation algorithms, and bestseller lists—and what doesn’t appear there simply doesn’t exist for many people. A self-reinforcing effect is at work here: what already receives attention attracts further attention, while what is overlooked continues to be overlooked. One cultural consequence of this is that this scaling of popularity (high/low) can flip into (dis)valuation (good/bad, legitimate/illegitimate).

Niels Werber, born in 1965, has been a professor of modern German literature at the University of Siegen since 2009 (nielswerber.de) and has served as the spokesperson for SFB 1472 “Transformations of the Popular” since 2021. Current research focuses: The social distribution of attention, evaluative communication, social insects, self-descriptions of society. His book publications include: Das Populäre als Passion, Heidelberg: Winter Verlag 2024; Geopolitik, Hamburg: Junius Verlag 2023; Handbuch Erster Weltkrieg (with Stefan Kaufmann and Lars Koch), Stuttgart: Metzler Verlag 2014; Ameisengesellschaften. Eine Faszinationsgeschichte, Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Verlag 2013).