We are excited to publish a post from Domenic DeSocio, who is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan. He is currently completing a dissertation on the intersection of temporality and queer and female sexualities in German-language modernist literature. He has recently received funding to set up … Continue reading Remaking the German Studies Curriculum: A Diversifying Approach
Is this the first poem written by a Black German writer?
Dr Nicola Thomas is Lecturer in German at the University of Bristol. Here, she talks about stumbling across a lesser-known landmark in Black German history. I’ve just started a new job at the University of Bristol, and I was asked to update the first-year poetry reader over the summer. Over the years, colleagues at Bristol (past … Continue reading Is this the first poem written by a Black German writer?
Race and Revolution in German Literature around 1800
Joanna Raisbeck is a Stipendiary Lecturer in German at Wadham College and The Queen's College, University of Oxford, with research interests in German Romanticism and the so-called 'Sattelzeit'. The question of race in German literature before the late twentieth century is in general overlooked on undergraduate syllabuses. There are excellent resources that help readers explore … Continue reading Race and Revolution in German Literature around 1800
Gaunt, Simon. “Can the Middle Ages Be Postcolonial?”
Mentioned in Aysha Strachan's blog post. Full reference: Simon Gaunt, “Can the Middle Ages Be Postcolonial?” Comparative Literature, vol. 61, no. 2, 2009, pp. 160–176
Modern Theories, Medieval Worlds: Teaching Gender and Identity in Medieval Literary Studies
In this month’s blogpost, Aysha Strachan, a PhD candidate at KCL/HU Berlin, suggests that teaching modern theory alongside medieval literature gives us better access to the challenges that these texts issue to modern norms and assumptions. As a new Graduate Teaching Assistant teaching second-year seminars on Gender and Identity in German Arthurian literature, I was … Continue reading Modern Theories, Medieval Worlds: Teaching Gender and Identity in Medieval Literary Studies
Hartmann von Aue. Erec and Iwein
Mentioned in Aysha Strachan's blog post on teaching gender in Medieval literature. Editions: Hartmann von Aue, German Romance V: Erec, ed. and trans. Cyril Edwards (Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer, 2014). Hartmann von Aue, German Romance: Vol. 3., ed. and trans. Cyril Edwards (Boydell & Brewer, 2007).
Storm, Theodor. ‘Von Jenseit des Meeres’ (1865)
Alfred narrates the story of his relationship with Jenni, the mixed-race daughter of a plantation owner and a local woman who was brought from her native St Croix to Germany and lived with Alfred’s family when they were children. Alfred in love with his former playmate, and claims to be blind to her race, but … Continue reading Storm, Theodor. ‘Von Jenseit des Meeres’ (1865)
Germany and Eastern Europe
In our first blog post of 2020, Karolina Wątroba discusses the "spectral presence" of Poland in German literature and suggests that attention to this presence, central to much of our undergraduate teaching yet often unremarked, can help us consider intercultural entanglements more generally. Studying and then teaching German at Oxford as a Polish immigrant, I … Continue reading Germany and Eastern Europe
Fontane, Theodor. Effi Briest (1895)
Useful for discussing German expansionism in Eastern Europe and the figure of the Slav as other. Discussed in Karolina Wątroba’s blog post.
EGS 