Media and Genre Aesthetics of German-Language Radio Plays, 1950s-1960s
An examination of the German-language discourse on radio broadcasting in the 20th century shows that the meaning of the term blindness has significantly shifted. My network project investigates the medial self-reflection and the aesthetic strategies of radio plays broadcasted after World War II. My leading thesis is that radio plays dealing with blindness often reflect upon the relationship between media and the senses, thus enabling a perspective for sensory modalities lying beneath established practices of seeing and hearing. As the discourse on listening turns away from blindness being understood as a deficiency, the process of listening becomes significant in the radio plays themselves, often as a topic. My analysis focuses on German-language radio plays (acoustic realizations of literary texts) and publications on the theory and aesthetics of radio broadcasting and radio plays as well as medical and psychological contributions.