English Literatures
PhD/Postdoc Research

PhD/Postdoc Research

Mandy Beck

The impact of Brexit is widespread: its intervention in the UK's political climate, international diplomatic relations, economics and trade, society, healthcare, or even personal relationships, is without parallel in present times. But apart from these apparent changes that the British Isles (Ireland as a new EU border state included) face, there is also the question of how culture and specifically literature react to and process Brexit and its consequences. For this reason, this postdoctoral project focuses on the developments leading to the referendum in 2016, its results and subsequent atmosphere of division and "discontent" (Goshal 2020) – particularly regarding the contested supremacy in the lengthy EU-UK negotiations – that shape contemporary anglophone literature. A look into different literary genres, ranging from novels, poetry, drama to short films, cartoons and visual arts, or from speculative fiction, intertextual rewrites, pretended children's books, to political thriller and crime fiction, shall illuminate the characteristics of the so-called "BexLit" (Shaw 2018). Essential to the analysis of the various works that deal with topics surrounding Brexit head-on or allusively are aspects of history, cultural identity, defining national narratives (e.g. the British Empire and its decline), but also more recent phenomena, such as populism and post-truth, which due to their potent rise since 2016 inevitably affect literary discourse as well.

Indrani Karmakar

Feminists’ preoccupation with motherhood, broadly speaking, has experienced a gradual shift from biological to a more contextual understanding. In the context of South Asia, the feminist theorisation of motherhood is a relatively new concern – barring the question of the motherland which is nonetheless integral to the dominant motherhood ideology in India, and has garnered wide critical attention – that has particularly emerged in the last decade. Amongst maternal concerns, the issue of nonbiological mothering is one particular area that has received relative reticence in literary critical scholarship. Intending to fulfil this lacuna in feminist literary criticism, the postdoctoral project concerns itself with an exploration of the representation of mothering beyond biology in the selected works of a number of South Asian women writers based in the subcontinent and its diaspora such as Mahasweta Devi, Arundhati Roy, Mridula Koshy, Bapsi Sidhwa, Moni Mohsin, Meena Alexander, Kirin Narayan and others. The project interrogates different aspects of non-biological mothering and its representation from and against multiple perspectives: namely, the informal care works performed by female kin; emotional care provided by mother surrogates; delegated care work by paid caregivers or ‘ayahs’, as they are commonly known in the region; and adoption. Drawing on feminist theories on maternal performativity, ethics and relationality, and grounding them in a class- and-caste-ridden, postcolonial South Asian context, the project investigates how the diverse literary treatment of nonbiological mothering helps construct an inclusive and eclectic definition of motherhood while responding to and nuancing the fraught relationship between feminism and the maternal.

Rebekka Noetzel

Amongst the relationships humans share with animal species, those concerning horses are likely some of the most controversial. Caught between the historic role of being essential to everyday tasks and their predominant contemporary presence as companion animals in leisure or sports activities, the importance, meaning, and role of horses in human lives has been ambiguous. As with all media, equine-centered productions mirror reality, and, therefore, portray the contradictory nuances of human-horse bonds. However, most analyses regarding equestrian novels or films focus exclusively on the symbolic roles of horses, disregarding the incongruity between positive figurative meaning and material reality, which is often rife with the abuse and exploitation of the animals. This contradiction is especially apparent in United States media, which has popularized not only the heroic cowboy lifestyle, but also horse racing and the girl-and-her-horse narrative. The ambiguity becomes more complex when considering the current plight of feral mustang herds, which continue to roam the Western plains, but are being eradicated at alarming rates by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). This project aims to trace the development of the human-horse relationship in the United States, revealing numerous contradictions and aiming to understand why horses have been represented in certain ways. These portrayals have been heavily influenced by developments in horse welfare, traditional Western horsemanship, the increased association between equestrianism and femininity, and heated debates around the BLM’s actions. This dissertation, therefore, applies the tenets of human-animal studies, critical animal studies, and ecofeminism to address the research gap resulting from the exclusive focus on horses’ symbolic roles.

Lisa-Marie Pöhland

LGBTQ+ people are no exception from the debate around how representations of social groups in media both shape and reflect these groups’ status in real life. However, there has been little research on films targeted at children and young adults in this context. In my dissertation, I will examine the representation of queerness and queer life in films for this specific audience,since it has been found that a young audience is not less influenced by television depictions than adults are. For that purpose, I will closely analyze films from the annual SCHLINGEL Filmfestival in Chemnitz, one of the most important film festivals for children and young adults in Europe. This provides me with an archive of independent and international productions alike. My research will thus further examine a marginalized topic as I will focus on international productions and independent films apart from the Hollywood mainstream, as well as films for an audience that did not get enough attention in that context. I use queer theory and especially queer film studies in combination with studies about youth and children’s films. In this, my focus is on stereotype formation, contrasting normality with normativity, and social identity. Through the framework provided by the SCHLINGEL, I will be able to closely analyze, categorize, and compare relevant films according to their release date and the culture they originate from to get a diachronic view. By doing this research, I seek to find out what the functions of different depictions of queer characters are and how they work for the representation of queerness and queer life. I will show how depictions in films link sexual identity to other traits such as diction, looks, intentions, and experiences and how this practice of linking influences the representation of queerness and queer life. Eventually, I will be able to show whether independent films for children and young adults create queer normality or if they contribute to homonormativity.

Amrei Sander

My research aims to analyze the novels of Pakistani writer Kamila Shamsie in a postcolonial framework. In her novels, Shamsie mainly focuses on the questions of national, cultural and gendered identity formation. Accordingly, her writing is defined by the notions of migration and diaspora, mourning and memory as well as the experience of trauma. However, I argue that Shamsie's protagonists do not suffer from having split identities. Instead, they are able to negotiate their hybridity or 'in-betweenness'. By and large, Shamsie undertakes what Rushdie has termed 'writing back to the centre' as she re-writes the metropolises Karachi and London by subverting the (old) binary power structures 'centre'/'periphery' as well as 'us'/'them', claiming that the once 'peripheral' Karachi has become the new 'centre'.