(1) How literature is made: Literary sociology

The DLA holds 53 publishers’ archives and 23 journal archives that provide information on how literature is made, which actors are involved in its production, and what processes are required for this purpose. Sociological approaches to literature research, which are prominent in French-language scholarship through the work of Pierre Bourdieu and in American scholarship through the discipline of cultural sociology, are underdeveloped in Germany. Yet, when engaging with publishers’ and journal archives, these approaches are particularly useful for describing the emergence of literature. In 2025, a special focus of this research field will lie on the international perspectives to be found in the multilingual holdings of the DLA, through which can be traced the strong international connections and networks of the actors of German-language literature in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries.

The workshop series »Global Literary History« (ongoing since 2021) examines the business of publishing and has produced a working group of university partners dedicated to publishers‘ archives research and to developing research projects on the development of literature, publishing communication, the development of networks, and corporate controlling. 

The international symposium »Literary consecration and the transformation of publishing in the era of globalization«, (21-24 May 2026, Stockholm), a cooperation with the Centre national de la recherche scientifique, the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, the Swedish Academy Stockholm and the Stockholm University, takes a comparative look at the impact of international literary prizes on various national and linguistic book markets, while also examining how changes in the publishing industry are affecting international literary prizes.

Titled »Probing the Archive – Finding Literary Agents«, a cooperation of the University Münster with the Université Aix-en-Provence and the Università degli studi di Pavia, an international conference (23 -25 September 2025) will explore the traces left by literary agents in archives. The focus is therefore on key players in the international book market who are among the great invisible figures of the literary world and who have been receiving increasing attention in recent years, particularly in sociological research on literature. The conference is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).