Seminar für Englische Philologie

Dr. Emily Petermann

Current Position
Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin (junior faculty) at the chair for North American Literature, Department of Literature, University of Konstanz.

Research Interests


  • Word and Music Studies
  • Intermediality
  • Canadian literature of the 20th century
  • The contemporary North American novel
  • The North American short story of the 19th and 20th centuries
  • The Hollywood film musical



Current Project

American Children's Poetry (Habilitation)


Dissertation

"The Musical Novel: Imitation of Musical Structure in Contemporary Fiction" (PhD Thesis, Universität Konstanz, 2012)


Publications

Monograph

  • The Musical Novel: Imitation of Musical Structure, Performance, and Reception in Contemporary Fiction. Rochester, NY: Camden House. Forthcoming 2014.



Edited Books and Journal Issues


  • with Mario Dunkel and Burkhard Sauerwald. Time and Space in Words and Music: Proceedings of the 1st Conference of the Word and Music Association Forum, Dortmund, November 4-6, 2010. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2012.

    Publisher's website
  • with Julia Breitbach, Florian Freitag, and Anja Krüger. Crossroads: Canadian Cultural Intersections. Special Issue of Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 59.2 (2011).



Articles


  • "The Film Musical as a Subject for Word and Music Studies." Essays on Silence, Absence, and Ellipsis and on Surveying the Field. Ed. Walter Bernhart and Werner Wolf. Word and Music Studies. Amsterdam: Rodopi. In preparation.
  • “Monster Mash-Ups: Features of the Horror Musical.” The Gothic Compass. Ed. Lorna Piatti-Farnell and Donna Lee Brien. In preparation.
  • "The Concept of Time Implied by the Theme-and-Variations Form: Novels Based on Bach's Goldberg Variations." Time and Space in Words and Music: Proceedings of the 1st Conference of the Word and Music Association Forum, Dortmund, November 4-6, 2010. Ed. Mario Dunkel, Emily Petermann, and Burkhard Sauerwald. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2012. 61-71.
    Academia.edu
  • with Mario Dunkel and Burkhard Sauerwald. Introduction. Time and Space in Words and Music: Proceedings of the 1st Conference of the Word and Music Association Forum, Dortmund, November 4-6, 2010. Ed. Mario Dunkel, Emily Petermann, and Burkhard Sauerwald. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2012. 9-13.
    Academia.edu
  • "Jazz Novels and the Textualization of Musical Performance." Essays on Performance and on Surveying the Field. Ed. Walter Bernhart and Gerold Gruber. Word and Music Studies 12. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2011.
    Academia.edu
  • "'These are not a whit like nature': Lucy Snowe's Art Criticism in Villette." Bronte Studies, 36.3 (Sept. 2011): 277-288.
    Academia.edu
  • "Introduction: Crossroads – Canadian Cultural Intersections." With Julia Breitbach, Florian Freitag, and Anja Krüger. Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 59.2 (2011): 105-108.
  • "Unheard Jazz: Music and History in Michael Ondaatje's Coming Through Slaughter." Ed. Eugen Banauch, Elisabeth Damböck, Anca-Raluca Radu, Nora Tunkel, and Daniel Winkler. Apropos Canada / À propos du Canada: Fünf Jahre Graduiertentagungen der Kanada-Studien. Canadiana 8. Wien: Peter Lang, 2010. 223-233.
    Academia.edu
  • "Re-Painting the Painting: Margaret Atwood and the Bildgedicht." Margaret Atwood Studies 1(2); Dec 2007, 10-19.
    (received "Honorable Mention" for the 2008 Best Article Prize of the Margaret Atwood Society)
    Academia.edu



Review


  • McWilliams, Ellen. Margaret Atwood and the Female Bildungsroman. Farnham, Burlington (VT): Ashgate, 2009. Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 58.4 (2010): 405-06.



Invited Talks


  • "Framing Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale as Speculative Fiction." Guest lecture in the seminar "Science Fiction of the Postmodern Age" at the University of Göttingen, June 22, 2013.
  • "Blues and Trains: Albert Murray’s Train Whistle Guitar.” Invited talk at the Johannes-Gutenberg Universität Mainz (Fachbereich 06, Translations-, Sprach- und Kulturwissenschaft in Germersheim) on Jan. 25, 2012.



Conference Papers


  • "The Film Musical as a Subject for Word and Music Studies." Presented at the 9th International Conference of the International Association for Word and Music Studies (WMA) in the section "Surveying the Field" in London, England, Aug. 8, 2013.
  • “Monster Mash-Ups: Features of the Horror Musical.” Presented at the inaugural conference of the Gothic Association of New Zealand and Australia (GANZA) in Auckland, NZ, Jan. 23, 2013.
  • “Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire: Text, Paratext, and the Openness of the Text.” Presented at the annual conference of the British Association for American Studies (BAAS) in Manchester, UK, April 14, 2012.
  • “‘I once more tasked my understanding and my senses’: Sensual Stimuli in Charles Brockden Brown’s Novels.” Presented at the 43rd annual conference of the Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) in Rochester, NY, USA, March 15, 2012.
  • "Creating an Individual Voice: Jazz Rhythm and Timbre in Xam Wilson Cartiér's Novels." Presented at the 8th International Conference of the International Association for Words and Music Studies (WMA), Santa Fe, NM, Aug. 4, 2011.
  • Response to Hayden White’s "The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality" and "Storytelling: Historical and Ideological." Featured Thinker Workshop hosted by the Center for Theory and Methods of Cultural Studies (ZTMK) at the Georg-August University of Göttingen, June 7, 2011.
  • "'Not Like Windows But Like Doors': The Picture Frame as Border in 'Death by Landscape.'" Presented at the 11th International Conference on the Short Story in English, "The Border as Fiction," Toronto, Canada, June 17, 2010.
  • "Life Calls, the Text Responds: The Fictional Jazz Biography as Greatest Hits Album." Presented at the annual conference of the British Association for American Studies (BAAS), Norwich, England, April 11, 2010.
  • "'The most fluid of Brahms's intermezzos flows on and on': Music and Time in Anne Michaels's Fugitive Pieces." Invited talk for the Doktorandenkolleg "Zeitkulturen" of the Cluster of Excellence 16 at the University of Konstanz, November 4, 2009.
  • "Jazz Novels and the Textualization of Musical Performance." Presented at the seventh International Conference of the International Association for Word and Music Studies (WMA) in Vienna, Austria, June 12, 2009.
  • "Musical Ekphrasis: Re-Creating the Origins of Jazz in Michael Ondaatje's Coming Through Slaughter." Presented at the Graduate Conference held by the Nachwuchsforum (Young Scholar's Forum) of the Gesellschaft für Kanada Studien (GKS) in Marburg, Germany, July 9, 2008.
  • "Unheard Jazz: Music and History in Michael Ondaatje's Coming Through Slaughter." Presented at the Congrès national des sociétés historiques et scientifiques, Québec, Canada, June 5, 2008.
  • "Towards a New Typology of Intermediality." With Lauren Holmes and Carolyn Sinsky. Presented at the Twentieth Century Colloquium Graduate Student Conference at Yale University, New Haven CT, USA, May 1, 2008
  • "Musical Ekphrasis: Re-Creating the Origins of Jazz in Michael Ondaatje's Coming Through Slaughter." Presented at "Origins: 8th Annual Graduate Humanities Forum Conference," Penn Humanities Forum, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia PA, USA, Feb 29, 2008.
  • "Re-Painting the Painting: Margaret Atwood and the Bildgedicht." Presented at the Graduate Conference held by the Nachwuchsforum of the Gesellschaft für Kanada Studien (GKS) in Vienna, Austria, May 26, 2007.



Teaching


  • Proseminar "Representations of the Salem Witchcraft Trials in American Literature and Culture" (WS 2013-14; Konstanz)
  • Proseminar "Charles Brockden Brown" (WS 2013-14; Konstanz)
  • Hauptseminar "Jazz and Blues Literature" (SS 2013; Göttingen)
  • Proseminar "Margaret Atwood" (SS 2013; Göttingen)
  • "Introduction to Film and Media Analysis" (WS 2012-13; Göttingen)
  • Proseminar "The American Film Musical" (SS 2012; Göttingen)
  • Proseminar "The Early American Short Story" (WS 2011-12; Göttingen)
  • Proseminar "Charles Brockden Brown" (SS 2011; Göttingen)
  • Proseminar "'Aspiring to the Condition of Music': Texts Imitating Music" (WS 2009-10; Konstanz)
  • Proseminar "North American Jazz Novels" (SS 2007; Konstanz)
  • Proseminar "The American Renaissance" (SS 2007; Konstanz)
  • Proseminar "The Early American Short Story 1820-1920" (SS 2007; Konstanz)
  • Proseminar "Shakespeare's Late Plays" (SS 2007; Konstanz)
  • Proseminar "Music in Literature" (WS 2006-07; Konstanz)



Conference Organization, Chairs


  • "Word and Music Studies - Ninth International Conference: Silence, Absence, and Ellipsis in Words and Music." London, Aug. 7-10, 2013. Chair of the panel "Working Papers I," Aug. 9, 2013.
  • "Cultures of Obsolescence in North America: Aesthetics, Materiality, History" (with Bärbel Tischleder). University of Göttingen, June 27-29, 2013. Chair of the panel "Images of the Obsolete: Painting, Photography, and the Modern Text," June 28, 2013.
  • "Ideology in Words and Music" (Part of the non-local organizing committee). 2nd biennial conference of the Word and Music Association Forum. Stockholm University, Nov. 8-10, 2013. Greeting and Introduction to the keynote lecture by Lawrence Kramer, Nov. 8, 2013. Chair of the panel "Adorno, Modernism, and Jazz," Nov. 9, 2012. Moderation of the concluding panel discussion, Nov. 10, 2013.
  • "Time and Space in Words and Music" (Co-organizer with Mario Dunkel, Burkhard Sauerwald). 1st conference of the Word and Music Association Forum. Technical University Dortmund, Nov. 4-6, 2013.
  • "Crossroads: Canadian Cultural Intersections" (Co-organizer with Julia Breitbach, Florian Freitag, and Anja Krüger). 7th annual conference of the Young Scholars' Forum of the Association for Canadian Studies in German-Speaking Countries. University of Konstanz, June 10-13, 2010.