Humanities

The Faculty of Humanities encompasses the teaching units and academic disciplines of Anglophone Studies, German as a Second Language / German as a Foreign Language, German Studies, Communication Science, Modern Japanese Studies, Dutch Language and Culture, Philosophy, Romance Studies, Protestant Theology and Catholic Theology, Turkish Studies and, since October 2008, Art and Art History. Research covers literature, language, media, communication, art, religion and culture of the past and present. Among the highlights of 2008 were two conferences of international renown. In August, the World Congress of the Association Internationale de Linguistique Appliquée (AILA), organised by Prof. Bernd Rüschoff (Anglophone Studies), Prof. Ulrich Schmitz (German Studies) and their team, attracted more than 2,000 participants from all over the world to Essen and proved to be a successful and fruitful research forum. At the Congress – regarded worldwide as the key academic event in linguistics of 2008 – some 100 symposia, over 800 lectures and 80 poster presentations dealt with “Multilingualism: Challenges and Opportunities”.
In September, the XXI German Congress for Philosophy was hosted on the Essen campus by Prof. Carl Friedrich Gethmann (Philosophy). Under the patronage of the Minister Presidentof North Rhine-Westphalia, scientists ofnational and international standing (among them Jürgen Habermas and Julian Nida-Rümelin) deliberated on the theme of “Lifeworld andScience”.