Staff in German at Exeter pursue a wide range of research interests across the fields of German literature and culture.
Research interests and expertise
- Baroque court culture
- Eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth-century literature
- Twentieth-century urban and museum studies
In recent years, staff have published monographs on:
- E. T. A. Hoffmann (Ricarda Schmidt)
- The history of narrative (Gert Vonhoff)
- Writing for the German Baroque court (Sara Smart)
- Berlin’s post-Wende transition (Ulrike Zitzlsperger)
- Cultural memory of National Socialism (Chloe Paver)
We regularly present new work at UK and international conferences (most recently in New Zealand, California, Hungary, Poland, and Germany). Our research has been funded by the AHRC, British Academy, Humboldt Foundation, Leverhulme Trust, and DAAD.
Kleist, Education and Violence. The Transformation of Ethics and Aesthetics
Prof Ricarda Schmidt is principal investigator of the AHRC-funded project ‘Kleist, Education and Violence. The Transformation of Ethics and Aesthetics’. The project, which will run from 2010-2013, employs a postdoctoral researcher, based in Exeter, based with the co-investigator at the University of Warwick. Together, the project team will investigate Kleist’s transformation of educational models and the surprising interdependencies between education and violence in his writing and thought. The project involves a major conference on Kleist at the University of Exeter, in July 2011.
The Evolution of Bourgeois and Non-bourgeois German Prose Fiction after 1850
Prof Gert Vonhoff is the lead investigator in the Leverhulme-funded project ‘The Evolution of Bourgeois and Non-bourgeois German Prose Fiction after 1850’. He is working on the project with two PhD students, both based at Exeter. The research aims at a remapping of German Realist prose, the history of early working-class prose and the question of whether one can speak of a white-collar workers' prose. Together with Prof Martina Lauster, emeritus professor at Exeter, he also leads an international team of editors who are editing the works of novelist, dramatist and editor Karl Gutzkow (1811-78). Using a new combination of print and online platforms (with editorial commentaries available online only), the Editionsprojekt Karl Gutzkow aims to make Gutzkow’s works available to a much wider audience, in recognition of his significance as a major public figure from the 1830s to the 1870s. The project has been supported by an MHRA research associateship; the MHRA also part-funded an international conference on Gutzkow at Exeter in 2010.
Research degrees
We attach particular importance to the quality of research supervision and training in research methodology and to the integration of our postgraduates into the Department’s academic and research community. Find out more about an MPhil/PhD in German Studies at Exeter.
