Publications
These new books written and/or edited by members of staff of the English Department have just been published:
Barbara Schaff (ed.), Handbook of British Travel Writing. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020.
This handbook offers a systematic exploration of current key topics in travelwriting studies. It addresses the history, impact, and unique discursive varietyof British travel writing by covering some of the most celebrated andcanonical authors of the genre as well as lesser known ones in more thanthirty close-reading chapters. Combining theoretically informed, astuteliterary criticism of single texts with the analysis of the circumstances of theirproduction and reception, these chapters offer excellent possibilities forunderstanding the complexity and cultural relevance of British travel writing.
Official publication website
Barbara Schaff, Johannes Schlegel, Carola Surkamp (eds.), The Institution of English Literature. Göttingen: Vandenhoek&Ruprecht, 2017.
The contributions investigate the ways in which numerous institutions of English literature shape the literary field. While they cover an extensive historical field, ranging from the Early Modern period to the 18th century to the contemporary, they focus not only on literary texts, but also on extra-literary ones, including literary prizes, literary histories and anthologies, and highlight the various ways in which these negotiate the processes that constitute the literary field. All contributions assert that there is no such thing as literature outside of institutions. Great emphasis is therefore put on different acts of mediation.
Official publication website
Barbara Schaff, Sarah Alam (eds.), Shakespeare im Spigelkabinett. Göttingen: Universitätsverlag, 2016.
Die Jahre 2014 und 2016 sind die beiden großen Shakespeare-Jahre des noch jungen 21. Jahrhunderts. Mit Lesungen, Inszenierungen, Ausstellungen, Filmen und akademischen Veranstaltungen zum 450. Geburtstag beziehungsweise dem 400. Todestag gedenkt die Welt in diesen Jahren ihres größten Dichters. Durch seine Werke bleibt William Shakespeare in der kulturellen Erinnerung der Welt nicht nur präsent, sondern lebendig. Die Ringvorlesung, mit der das Englische Seminar der Universität Göttingen einen Beitrag zu den weltweit stattfindenden Shakespeare-Feiern geleistet hat, hat die andauernde Faszination William Shakespeares als Herausforderung begriffen und sich die Frage nach der produktiven Vielfalt der Rezeptionsweisen seines Werks gestellt. Shakespeares Werk und Leben haben in den vergangenen Jahrhunderten immer wieder die literarische, künstlerische und musikalische Imagination inspiriert und sind weltweit zum Ausgangspunkt ästhetischer Neuschöpfungen geworden: in Form von Theateraufführungen und Filmadaptionen, von literarischen Bezugnahmen, von musikalischen oder bildlichen Umsetzungen Shakespeare'scher Szenen. So hat eine jede Zeit 'ihren' Shakespeare hervorgebracht und spiegelt die ihr eigenen Ideen, Identitäten, Konflikte und Probleme in der produktiven Aneignung seiner Dramen.Official publication website
Frauke Reitemeier, Kirsten Sandrock (eds.), Crimelights: Scottish Crime Writing Then and Now. Trier: WVT, 2015.
Scotland's literary and cultural heritage is infused with narratives of crime. Both real and imagined criminals have shaped the image of Scotland's supposed dual soul. The tension between good and evil, salvation and redemption as well as beauty and repulsiveness lies at the heart of the Scottish Tartan Noir tradition, which has been thriving ever since Robert Louis Stevenson published his novella Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Critics have frequently used Gregory Smith's term "Caledonian antisyzygy" in order to express what has been perceived as the duality of the Scottish character, yet up to this day neither the production nor the reception of Scotland's alleged split soul has been properly analyzed or understood.This volume seeks to explore the wide field of Scottish crime narratives from a variety of perspectives and with a focus on a variety of themes. Crimes in Scottish history and their treatment in literature and film are discussed in the collected papers, as are questions of spatiality and gender and genre in Scottish crime writing. The book also features a special section on Ian Rankin's Rebus novels and two "Crimelight" articles that yield insight into both the historical and the current literary scene of Scottish crime writers.
Official publication website
Brigitte Johanna Glaser, Barbara Puschmann-Nalenz (eds.), Narrating Loss. Representations of Mourning, Nostalgia und Melancholia in Contemporary Anglophone Fictions. Trier: WVT, 2014.
This collection of critical essays investigates various forms of loss portrayed in late 20th- and early 21st-century Anglophone fiction. Loss of individuals, places, identity, values, treasured objects and moments frequently causes a reconsideration of life among literary characters and narrators.Making use of theoretical approaches from the areas of psychology, postcolonial studies, narratology or gender studies, the essays analyse contemporary fiction with regard to its multi-layered representational capacities of rendering loss. They examine various forms of fictionalisation, among them also memoirs, semi-historical fiction and graphic narratives. Concepts and keywords which are used in exploring the subject matter are the following: assessing the connection of loss and mourning; dealing with loss through the process of aestheticisation; recovering lost objects through memory; and representing nostalgically the absent.
Official publication website
Katerina Kroucheva, Barbara Schaff (eds.), Kafkas Gabel. Überlegungen zum Ausstellen von Literatur. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2013.
Wie kann man Literatur ausstellen? Welchen wissenschaftlichen, pädagogischen oder ästhetischen Anspruch erhebt eine Literaturausstellung? Dieser Band zeigt: In Zeiten, in denen sich literaturwissenschaftliche Konzepte die Verräumlichung literarischer Strukturen auf die Fahnen schreiben, ist die »Aura« ein wichtiger Terminus technicus auf dem Gebiet der Literaturvermittlung. Welche Orte, Gegenstände oder Persönlichkeiten kommen als Aura-Träger in Frage? Welche Bedeutungszuschreibungen erfährt die Authentizität? Zu welchem Zweck und mit welchen Folgen wird »auratisiert«? Diesen Fragen widmen sich die Beiträger aus der Literaturwissenschaft und der Ausstellungspraxis, die Formen der Literaturvermittlung im Spannungsfeld zwischen Autor, Text und Rezipienten reflektieren. Ralf Haekel, Sabine Blackmore (eds.), Discovering the Human. Life Science and the Arts in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries. Göttingen: VR unipress, 2013.
Discovering the Human investigates the emergence of the modern human sciences and their impact on literature, art and other media in the 18th and the 19th centuries. Up until the 1830s, science and culture were part of a joint endeavour to discover and explore the secret of life. The question 'What is life?' unites science and the arts during the Ages of Enlightenment and Romanticism, and at the end of the Romantic period, a shift of focus from the human as an organic whole to the specialized disciplines signals the dawning of modernity. The emphasis of the edited collection is threefold: the first part sheds light on the human in art and science in the Age of Enlightenment, the second part is concerned with the transitions taking place at the turn of the 19th century. The chapters forming the third part investigate the impact of different media on the concept of the human in science, literature and film. Kirsten Sandrock, Owen Wright (eds.), Locating Italy. East and West in British-Italian Transactions. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2013.
Locating Italy: East and West in British-Italian Transactions is part of a series of books that examines cross-cultural processes between Britain and Italy. The volume explores for the first time British-Italian exchanges in terms of East-West, rather than North-South. In so doing, it reveals that Italy has long been a meeting point of East and West as much as one of North and South. Comprising essays from the fields of history, politics, the philosophy of language, linguistics, literature, and the arts, the collection illustrates that the dynamics of British–Italian transactions have long been shaped by a fascinating process of location and relocation. Locating Italy is pathbreaking in questioning the traditional categories of North, South, East, and West in interactions between these two countries and their respective cultures.Schaff, Barbara (ed.), Exiles, Emigrés and Intermediaries. Anglo-Italian Cultural Transactions, Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2010
This volume explores the dynamic and productive cultural forces engendered by exiles, wanderers, and diasporic communities in Britain and Italy over more than five centuries. It investigates the historic resonance of transnational encounters and movements between two European cultures that look back on a long history of cross-fertilisation. Drawn from a range of academic disciplines including literary studies, history, musicology, art history and bibliography, it presents the ways in which exiles, émigrés, intermediaries and their attendant cultural perspectives interact with the sometimes repressive, sometimes productive religious or political systems and ideologies that they encounter. This volume pays tribute to the stimulating exchange, circulation, and appropriation that has occurred between Britain and Italy, showing that the condition of displacement can lead not only to the articulation of loss and grief, but also to fruitful forms of interaction.Jutta Ernst, Brigitte Glaser (eds.), The Canadian Mosaic in the Age of Transnationalism, Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag WINTER, 2010
Canada's ideological concept of the mosaic has considerably changed over the years. Whereas, until the 1980s, it was predominantly white and European in origin, it has since become much more colourful with Asian, African, Caribbean, First Nations, and other facets being added. Moreover, there is the at times seemingly contradictory tendency towards border crossings and the dissolution of boundaries. Many recent Canadian cultural products are by artists who work from a sense of belonging to more than one location, space, or culture. This collection of essays brings together scholars from various disciplines who investigate the geographical, sociological, political, economic, literary, and cultural implications attached to the concept of the Canadian mosaic in an age of mobility and globalization. Cutting across nationally framed area studies, the contributors address both theoretical questions and practical examples that range from the applicability of the terms "postcolonial" and "imperial" to Canada over ethnic and post-ethnic forms of literary expression to Canadian popular culture.Eugen Banauch, Elisabeth Damböck, Anca-Raluca Radu, Nora Tunkel, Daniel Winkler (eds.), Apropos Canada / À propos du Canada, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaft, 2010
The first graduate conference of the Young Scholars' Network of the Association for Canadian Studies in German-speaking countries took place in Berlin in 2004. The conference has been an integral part of the academic year in Canadian Studies ever since. It offers an opportunity for young scholars to present their B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. projects and receive feedback and helpful suggestions from peers and experts. This type of academic exchange is particularly important in Canadian Studies as they often occupy a marginal position at universities. Beside graduate students from Canada, Germany and Austria, prominent Canadian scholars have also been invited to speak at the conference every year. This volume contains selected contributions (in English, German and French) presented at the first five graduate conferences and demonstrates the large scope of Canadian studies in German-speaking countries.Johannes Schlegel and Brita Hansen (eds.), Challenging Evil: Time, Society and Changing Concepts of the Meaning of Evil, Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2010
In contemporary discourses, evil is evoked constantly in order to describe criminal cases, to explain the violence and ruthless brutality with which infants are abused, people tortured, and lives snuffed out. Hence, it does not only become obvious how present evil as current, ordinary phenomenon seems to be, but also how it is employed as an approach to explain the supposedly inexplicable. At the same time, this ultimately implies that evil itself is challenged, since such explanations serve as a means to organize and to interpret the world as a whole, that is, to bestow meaning upon it and evil, thus, can be regarded a mere cipher. The friction resulting out of these seemingly contradictory notions is what continuously renders evil problematic, yet highly fascinating. The papers collected in this volume were first presented at the 11th Global Conference Perspectives on Evil and Human Wickedness, which took place in Salzburg (Austria) in March 2010 and is a part of the research network Inter-Disciplinary.Net.Kirsten Sandrock, Gender and Region, Augsburg: Wißner, 2009
Maritime fiction by women writers constitutes an important focal point for the interaction between gender and regionalist discourses. It heralds the naissance of a new, dialogic tradition that includes the works of Canadian authors studied in this book: Susan Kerslake's Middlewatch (1976), Donna E. Smyth's Subversive Elements (1986), Carol Bruneau's After the Angel Mill (1995), Ann-Marie MacDonald's Fall On Your Knees (1996), and Joan Clark's An Audience of Chairs (2005).These works ascertain how diversely contemporary women have become involved in the literary representation of the Canadian Maritimes and how their works reconfigure established topics, motifs, and generic conventions of regional writing.
Ralf Haekel and Markus Dauss (eds.), Leib/Seele - Geist/Buchstabe. Dualismen in der Ästhetik und den Künsten um 1800 und 1900, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2009
Die beiden Begriffpaare, die Gegenständ der Aufsätze des von Ralf Haekel und Markus Dauss herausgegebenen Bandes Leib/Seele - Geist/Buchstabe sind, haben unterschiedliche Ursprünge und Traditionslinien - und stehen doch zueinander in einem engen, beziehungs- und spannungsreichen Verhältnis. Auf der einen Seite das Paar Leib und Seele, dessen Ausgangspunkt in der platonischen Philosophie liegt und dessen Verhältnis seit Descartes als ein Grundproblem der neuzeitlichen Philosophie verhandelt wird. Auf der anderen Seite das Begriffspaar Geist und Buchstabe, das auf den zweiten Korintherbrief zurückgeht ("Denn der Buchstabe tötet, aber der Geist macht lebendig") und das in der hermeneutischen, anthropologischen und poetologischen Diskussion der Neuzeit aktualisiert wird. Zueinander in Beziehung gesetzt werden somit eine dualistische Anthropologie und eine dualistische Zeichentheorie. Mit dem Menschen und dem Zeichen stehen mithin zwei Paradigmen der ästhetischen Erfindung der Moderne im Zentrum des Bandes.