Announcements

CFP: Shifting Grounds: Cultural Tectonics along the Pacific Rim

Starting from the dynamically rich metaphor of ‘shifting grounds,’ the aim of the interdisciplinary conference is, on the one hand, to investigate the concept of the Pacific Rim theoretically in the context of spatial reconfigurations and with reference to ideas of translation, amalgamation or globalization, and, on the other hand, to historicize and concretize the Pacific Rim via empirical case studies. The conference is jointly organized by the universities Göttingen and Mainz. To download the cfp, please click here.



Lecture by Prof. David Punter: What is Gothic?

The Department of English Literature and Culture is pleased to announce Professor David Punter's lecture “What is Gothic?", which takes place on Wednesday, 8th May, 12 pm, ZHG 101. He is Professor of English at Bristol University and one of the leading scholars in Gothic studies. His major publications include The Literature of Terror, Gothic Pathologies: The Text, the Body and the Law, and Rapture: Literature, Addiction, Secrecy. Also, he is the editor of the Blackwell Companion to the Gothic. To download the flyer, please click here







2 neue Erasmusplätze für das WS 2013/14 in Cork, Irland!


Kurzfristig haben wir einen neuen Erasmus-Austausch ins Leben rufen können: Schon im kommenden Wintersemester 2013/14 können zwei Studierende aus unserem Seminar für 6-12 Monate am University College Cork in Irland studieren - und zwar im Bereich 'Foreign Languages', mit einem Schwerpunkt auf Vermittlungsmethoden. Die mit Dr. Manfred Schewe vorgesehene Kooperation sieht insbesondere vor, Studierenden Einblicke in Drama- und Theater-Methoden beim Lehren und Lernen fremder Sprachen zu gewähren. Aber auch andere thematische Kurse im Bereich 'Foreign Languages', auch innerhalb der Literatur- und Sprachwissenschaft, können belegt werden. Dr. Manfred Schewe ist zwar am German Department tätig, die bei ihm belegten Kurse können aber bei uns im Master of Education auch für das Fach Englisch angerechnet werden, da es eben um diesen bestimmten methodischen Schwerpunkt ('Applied Drama and Theatre' bzw. 'Drama and Theatre Pedagogy') geht.

Interessierte wenden sich bitte an Dr. Gordon Ross, der im SEP für die Koordination der Erasmus-Programme zuständig ist.

Bewerbungsschluss ist Freitag, der 3. Mai.





New publication, co-edited by Kirsten Sandrock


Locating Italy: East and West in British-Italian Transactions (Rodopi: 2013) 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. For further information, please click here.





Habilitation Ralf Haekel


It is our great pleasure to announce that on February 6, Ralf Haekel successfully completed his Habilitation. The Department of British Literature and Culture would like to take this opportunity to congratulate him once again!









Banned Books Exhibition


This exhibition is organized by students of British Literature and Culture. It will be on display from 14 January to 04 February in the library of the English Department. Come by and join us on the opening night and reception on Monday, 14 January, 6-8 pm!
To download the poster, please click here.





Reading by John Burnside


John Burnside is a Scottish writer and poet. His novels include The Dumb House (1997), The Devil's Footprints (2007), and Glister (2008). He will read from his two most recent publications: A Summer of Drowning (2012) and Black Cat Bone (2011), a volume of poetry for which he was awarded both the T.S. Eliot prize and the Forward Poetry Prize. Please click here to download the poster.




Lecture by Professor Vevaina: “‘Canadian’ Women Writers of Colour and the Anguish of English”


Professor Vevaina is head of the Department of English at the University of Mumbai. She was awarded the Shastri Faculty Research Fellowship for post-doctoral work on Afro-Caribbean writers in Canada and has taught at the Universities of Osnabrück, Bremen, Greifswald and Barcelona. Her areas of research include Gender Studies, Poststructural Theory, Children's Literature and Cultural Studies. Please click here for details.




Conference: The Institution of Literature: 250 Years of English Studies and Cultural Transfer


Keynote speakers: Susan Bassnett, Terry Eagleton and Konrad Schröder.
2012 marks the 250^th anniversary of the election of John Tompson as the world's first full professor of English at Göttingen in 1762, and the 275^th anniversary of his English Miscellanies, published by the Göttingen publisher Abraham Vandenhoeck. The department of British Literature and Culture and the department of English Didactics will celebrate this anniversary with a jointly organised conference, investigating the history of cultural transfer and exchange between Britain and Germany and the development of English Studies in an international context. Based on the premise that a history of English Studies is not only always already the history of its institutions and its institutionalisation but also a key factor in all discursive modes of transfer that shape and structure a given culture in the first place, the conference will address questions about the settings of norms and processes of exclusion and inclusion in the field of literary and linguistic mediations. For the programme and registration, please visit the Conference Website