English Literatures
Sections
English Literatures 

Portrait: Dr. Mandy Beck
Dr. Mandy Beck
  • Phone:
    +49 371 531-34445
  • Email:
  • Address:
    Reichenhainer Straße 39, 09126 Chemnitz
  • Room:
    C46.213 (prev. 2/39/213)
  • Office hours:
    Flexible office hours will be held online after previous registration by e-mail.

Main Areas of Research

  • Brexit and Literature
  • Euroscepticism, Britain and Europe
  • British postmodern and contemporary writing
  • Women's writing of the 20th century
  • Gender Studies
  • Affect Theory

Career/Job History

 

Dates Career Path
Since 2022 Co-Speaker of the Research Group Initiative "Populist Discourses"
Since 2021 Member of the Research Group Initiative
Jun 2020 HDS certificate (university didactics), Leipzig University
Since April 2020 Postdoctoral Project: "Brexit and/in Literature: Origins, Intersections and Implications"
Jan 2020 PhD, Thesis: "Unconsumed Desires: Female Homoerotic Space(s) in Early Twentieth-Century English Women's Writing"

Since 2014

Academic staff member, Chair of English Literature, Chemnitz University of Technology

2013 – 2014

Coordinator Mentoring in Saxony, Chemnitz University of Technology

2005 – 2012

M.A. in English/American Studies and German Studies at Chemnitz University of Technology

2009

Certificate of Proficiency, postgraduate student in English and German Studies, University of Auckland, Auckland/New Zealand

2008 – 2010

Student Research Assistant, Chair of English Literature, Chemnitz University of Technology

2007 – 2008

Student Research Assistant, Chair of English Language and Linguistics, Chemnitz University of Technology

Publications

Monograph

Unconsumed Desires: Female Homoerotic Space(s) in Early Twentieth-Century English Women's Writing. TU Chemnitz, 2020.

Editorial Works

General editor of Turning Pages since 2019.

Narrating Flight and Asylum. Eds. Mandy Beck, Claudia Gualtieri, Roberto Pedretti, and Cecile Sandten. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2022. CHAT: Chemnitzer Anglistik/Amerikanistik Today 11.

Protest: Forms, Dynamics, Functions. Eds. Mandy Beck, Cecile Sandten, and Daniel Ziesche. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2021. CHAT: Chemnitzer Anglistik/Amerikanistik Today 9.

Journal Articles

"The Island Nation and Euroscepticism: Revisiting Europe's Heritage in Brexit Poetry." Cultural Intertexts 12/2022, 22-36.

Book Chapters

"The Contemporary Uncanny after Brexit: Literary Disruptions of the Self." Uncanny Perspectives in Literature and Culture: Texts, Images, Experiences. Eds. Gabriele Biotti, I. Vinitha Chandra, Nacera Haouchine. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2024: 217-232. Book URL.

"Border Anxieties in Brexit Literature: Anthony J. Quinn and the Politics of Crime Fiction." Crisis and the Culture of Fear and Anxiety in Contemporary Europe. Eds. Carmen Zamorano Llena, Jonas Stier and Billy Gray. London; New York: Routledge, 2023: 87-102. Book URL.

"Introduction: Narrating Flight and Asylum." (with Claudia Gualtieri, Roberto Pedretti and Cecile Sandten). Narrating Flight and Asylum. Trier: WVT, 2022: 1-10.

"Writing Against Populism and Post-Truth: Brexit and Literary Protest." Protest: Forms, Dynamics, Functions. Trier: WVT, 2021: 207-220.

"Introduction: Protest: Forms, Dynamics, Functions." (with Cecile Sandten and Daniel Ziesche) Protest: Forms, Dynamics, Functions. Trier: WVT, 2021: 1-10.

"Reading Crisis Through Affect: Sarah Hall's How to Paint a Dead Man (2009)" Crisis, Risks and New Regionalisms in Europe: Emergency Diasporas and Borderlands. Eds. Cecile Sandten, Claudia Gualtieri, Roberto Pedretti, and Eike Kronshage. Trier: WVT, 2017: 273-285.

"'The Landscape Is Destroyed, but the Dream of It Is Everywhere': Supersessions of the Past in Iain Sinclair's Downriver (1991)" Palimpsestraum Stadt. Ed. Cecile Sandten, Winfried Thielmann, and Eike Kronshage. Trier: WVT, 2015: 93-105.

Conference Talks

Feb 2024
(with Antonia Friebel) "Brexit-Metaphors in News Texts and Poetry: A Comparative Analysis of Conceptualization and Creativity." EDL5 (English and Digital Linguistics Conference), Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany.
July 2023
"Volatile Regions and Bordered Tensions: Affective Atmospheres after Brexit." BrexLit: Writing the British Border in Times of Crisis, Facultade de Filoloxía, University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain. (Funded by the DAAD)
June 2023
(with Kai Oppermann) "Satires of Brexit: The Discursive Construction of Political Failures in Contemporary Literature." BISA (British International Studies Association) Annual Conference, Glasgow, Scotland.
April 2023
"Europeanness and the British Case: Britain's non-European identity before Brexit". Before Maastricht: Identity and Place in European Writing before the EU, Institute for English Studies, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg.
June 2021
"Re-writing Brexit: Canonical Texts and the Appeal of Reinvention in an Age of Chaos." Re-writing/Re-imagining the Past, The 22nd Annual International Conference of The English Department, University of Bucharest, Romania.
June 2017
"Rethinking the 'Female Form': Affective Resonances in Anna Seward’s Poetry." Material Transgressions I: Textual Generations: 25th British Women Writers Conference, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA.
April 2017
"Sensuous Bodies: Framing Affective Tension in Sarah Hall’s Short Stories." Literary Bodies Panel: Talking Bodies - An International, Interdisciplinary Conference on Identity, Sexuality and Representation, University of Chester, UK.
Oct 2016
"Boyettes, Cross-Dressers and Sapphists': Vom Deuten und Missdeuten sexueller Identitäten in kulturellen und politischen Diskursen im frühen 20. Jahrhundert." Interdisziplinärer Doktorand_innen, Masterand_innen und Bachelorand_innen Workshop-Tag, University of Technology Chemnitz, Germany.
Dec 2014
"Reading culture through affect: Sarah Hall’s How to paint a dead man (2009)." Cultural Studies Workshop: Crisis, Risks and New Regionalisms in Europe, University of Milan, Italy.

Teaching

Regular teaching since 04/2014: TU Chemnitz, English Department

  • Graphic Novels (BA Seminar; Summer 2025)
  • Experimental Poetry & Creative Writing (MA Seminar; Summer 2025)
  • Imagining Europe in British Literature (MA Seminar; Winter 2024)
  • Introduction to the Study of Literatures in English (Lecture; Winter 2024)
  • Fairy Tales: Now and Then (BA Seminar; Summer 2024)
  • Brexit Literature (BA Seminar; Winter 2023)
  • Introduction to the Study of Literatures in English (Lecture; Winter 2023)
  • Border Narratives (BA Seminar; Summer 2023)
  • Euroscepticism in British Literature (MA Seminar; Winter 2023)
  • Short Stories and Flash Fiction (BA Seminar; Winter 2022)
  • Introduction to the Study of Literatures in English (Lecture; Winter 2022)
  • Contemporary Nature Writing (BA Seminar; Summer 2022)
  • Literature of the 1920s: Beyond Modernism (MA Seminar; Winter 2021)
  • Introduction to the Study of Literatures in English (Lecture; Winter 2021)
  • Romantic Women Poets (BA Seminar; Summer 2021) 
  • New Zealand Literature (MA Seminar; Winter 2020)
  • Introduction to the Study of Literatures in English (Lecture; Winter 2020)
  • Sexual Stories (BA Seminar; Summer 2020)
  • Contemporary Nature Writing (BA Seminar; Summer 2020)
  • Short Stories and Flash Fiction (BA Seminar; Winter 2019)
  • Introduction to the Study of Literatures in English (Lecture; Winter 2019)
  • Experimental Poetry and Creative Writing (BA Seminar; Summer 2019)
  • Narrating Female Identity (BA Seminar; Summer 2019)
  • New Zealand Literature (BA Seminar; Winter 2018)
  • Introduction to the Study of Literatures in English (Lecture; Winter 2018)
  • Romantic Women Poets (BA Seminar; Summer 2018)
  • Short Stories and Flash Fiction (BA Seminar; Summer 2018)
  • Writing Gay in the UK (MA Seminar; Winter 2017)
  • Introduction to the Study of Literatures in English (Lecture; Winter 2017)
  • Schlingel: International Film Festival for Children and Young Adults (MA Seminar; Summer 2017)
  • Reading the Contemporary (BA Seminar; Summer 2017)
  • Introduction to the Study of Literatures in English (Lecture; Winter 2016)
  • Experimental Poetry and Creative Writing (BA Seminar; Summer 2016)
  • Introduction to the Study of Literatures in English (Lecture; Winter 2015)
  • London Narratives (BA Seminar; Summer 2015)
  • Sexual Fluidity in Twentieth-Century Women's Writing (BA Seminar; Winter 2014)
  • Angela Carter and Post-modern Femininity (BA Seminar; Summer 2014)

11/2016: University of Manchester, English Literature, American Studies and Creative Writing

  • Gendered Experiments: Women’s Innovative Writing in the 20th Century (BA Seminar)
  • Reading the Contemporary (with Dr. Kaye Mitchell) (MA Seminar)
  • American Literature and Social Criticism, 1900-Present (BA Seminar)

Teacher's Workshops

  • 10/2021: "Filmanalyse im EFL-Unterricht in Verbindung mit dem SCHLINGEL – Kinder- und Jugendfilmfestival in Chemnitz"
  • 11/2019: "Asylum Accounts"
  • 11/2018: "Complex Stories in a Few Images": Die Graphic Novel/das Comic im EFL-Classroom
  • 10/2017: "Extremely Short and Extremely Flashy": Die kurze Kurzgeschichte im EFL-Classroom
  • 05/2013: "Teaching the Metropolis in the EFL-Classroom" (24th GNEL/ASNEL Annual Conference, TU Chemnitz)

Professional Memberships

German Association for the Study of British Cultures (BritCult)

German Association for the Study of English