Research

Die anglistische und amerikanistische Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft an der TU Braunschweig ist geprägt durch große Offenheit gegenüber medien- und kulturwissenschaftlichen Transformationen der Literaturwissenschaft. Dies spiegelt sich in Forschungsschwerpunkten in den Bereichen Intermedialität, Adaption, und transmediale Narration. Auch interdisziplinäre Fragestellungen zum Verhältnis von Literatur zu Lebenswissenschaften und Technik, Studien zu Rezeption und Partizipation von Kultur im Alltagsleben (Social Media) sowie Genderforschung, vor allem zu Masculinity, gehören zum Portfolio. Darüber hinaus decken wir auch klassische Forschungsfelder wie Dystopie/Utopie, Shakespeare, Viktorianische und Neoviktorianische Literatur und Kultur sowie zeitgenössisches Drama und Theater ab. Mitglieder der anglistischen und amerikanistischen Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft an der TU Braunschweig sind in entsprechenden internen, externen und internationalen Forschungsverbünden vernetzt, teils in Leitungsfunktion (Association of Adaptation Studies, AAS; Contemporary Theatre and Drama in English, CDE; International Society for the Study of Narrative; Screening European Heritage Network; Centre for Adaptations).

Artificial intelligence and algorithms are increasingly becoming part of everyday life. A project run by the Technische Universität Braunschweig investigates the forms and effects of algorithmic creativity from the perspective of cultural studies and humanities. For their project, Eckart Voigts, Jan Röhnert and Dietmar Elflein from the Faculty of Humanities and Studies in Education have received funding from the Lower Saxony Ministry for Science and Culture (MWK).

Long before digitalisation became a matter of course, musicians and writers had experimented with automated creativity. The research project set up by Professor Eckart Voigts of the Institute of English and American Studies in co-operation with Professors Jan Röhnert of the Institute of German Studies and Dietmar Elflein of the Institute of Music, and funded by the MWK with 470,000 euros, analyses automation in music and literature. The researchers describe how established practices, ethics and concepts are complemented, transformed, or superseded by digital automation.

“We want to see what lies behind the buzzword ‘artificial intelligence’, or, to be more specific, computer programs that are learning on the basis of existing data. We ask what social, cultural and aesthetic changes the use of such neural networks and their precursors has historically brought about in areas of creative work such as music and literature, what they are changing now, and also how we can imagine the future of machine creativity,” says Professor Voigts.

The part of the project devoted to literature will focus on reviewing machine creativity in terms of writing, from its historical and theoretical beginnings with the automata of the 17th and 18th century to the deep learning applications of the 21st century. The musicological part of the project aims to trace changes in the creativity apparatus in various areas of musical creativity in the field of tension between popular music and contemporary serious music.

With the call for proposals “Humanities and Cultural Studies – digital”, the MWK supports innovative projects on new research opportunities that arise through the use of digital methods and reflect about the associated changes. As part of the programme, the MWK is funding a total of 13 research projects at universities and research institutes in Lower Saxony with a total of around six million euros from the Volkswagen funding initiative “Niedersächsisches Vorab”.

Funding is provided for foundational as well as application-oriented projects that involve close interdisciplinary cooperation between the humanities, cultural studies and technical disciplines.

Project Leaders: Prof. Dr. Eckart Voigts (English Literary and Cultural Studies, TU Braunschweig), Prof. Dr. Jan Röhnert (German Literary Studies, TU Braunschweig), and Apl. Prof. Dietmar Elflein (Music Education, TU Braunschweig)
Research Assistants: Robin Auer, Sebastian Kunas, Robert Hain

ZiF-Arbeitsgemeinschaft, Leitung: Merle Tönnies (Paderborn, GER), Eckart Voigts (Braunschweig, GER)

This workshop takes an interdisciplinary approach to reach a comprehensive overview of the various 21st-century British plays which make use of characteristic dystopian and/or utopian elements. These works, hitherto neglected in critical discourse, operate in the specific spatial scenario of theatre and provide new functions, departing significantly from the established genre of dystopia that has for a long time overshadowed utopian scenarios. They can be seen as responding both to the general literary and cultural trend towards dystopian formats and to the increasing disintegration of political discourse in Britain at least from the mid-1990s onwards. Against this background, British dystopian theatre can work as a way of returning to the genuine political issues of power relations, inequality and exclusion that are now often hidden by a smokescreen of rhetoric.

Papers and discussions will bring together perspectives from drama and theatre studies with cultural studies, architecture and political sciences/sociology to study the development of this theatrical form from 2000 to the present day and to define different categories of plays. Dystopia will be analysed in close connection with utopian thought in this process, and a special focus will be on the ways in which the works concerned use fictional spaces and the stage space itself to produce their effects.

International Conference, funded by Fritz Thyssen Foundation, organized by Prof. Dr. Heike Klippel (Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig) and Prof. Dr. Eckart Voigts (Technische Universität Braunschweig)

Digital media have established a remix and mashup machine that has generated a rich range of recombinant appropriations—compiled videos, samplings, remixes, reboots, mashups, short clips, and other material involving text, sound, and image—typically found (and lost) on web-based video databases. These remix practices raise questions about referencing and copyright in academic researching, teaching, and learning environments that have yet to be fully addressed. One of the most fascinating results of this new field of “performative knowledge production” is the collapse between aesthetics and criticism: Many practitioners of videographic criticism, such as Jason Mittell, Christian Keathley, Kevin B. Lee or Catherine Grant, have in effect collapsed the boundary between primary aesthetic practices and secondary criticism, a kind of performative “third space” of knowledge production. This conference will thus address the questions evolving from the increased use of videography in knowledge production, and in particular videographic criticism as described by Jason Mittell and Chris Keathley in 2015: “We define videographic criticism as creating videos that serve an analytic or critical purpose, exploring and presenting ideas about films and moving images via sounds and images themselves.” Inviting key players in the field, we will provide a tentative view of the current situation in the burgeoning, increasingly significant field of videographic criticism, investigating audio-visual forms of knowledge production that have become significant far beyond the confines of film studies alone, but continuing to be inspired by approaches from within film studies as the core field of expertise.

Contributors: Matthias Müller (Cologne), Christian M. Keathley, (Middlebury, Vermont), Kevin B. Lee, (Stuttgart), Jessica McGoff (Glasgow), Florian Krautkrämer (Luzern), Kathrin Rothemund (Bayreuth), Gunter Süss (Mittweida), Kathleen Loock (Flensburg), Miklós Kiss (Groningen)

NMWK/VolkswagenStiftung: Hyphenated Cultures: Contemporary British-Jewish Theatre (2016-2019)

Project funded by the Ministry of Science and Culture of Lower Saxony, Germany (245,000 Euro, 2016-2019). The research team analysed the ways in which British-Jewish theatre artists have influenced and co-created British theatre, opening up an important intercultural dialogue. Although many significant British theatre artists – such as Nobel Prize winner Harold Pinter, Sir Tom Stoppard, or Peter Brook – are of Jewish cultural heritage, and thus ‘differently’ cultured, this study of the ways in which Jewish religious, ethnic, and cultural inscriptions have found their way into mainstream British theatre, is unique. The project provides the first sustained, comprehensive overview of British-Jewish theatre culture. The resulting searchable online repository on Anglo-Jewish theatre is the first of its kind.

Project Leaders: Prof. Dr. Eckart Voigts (English Literary and Cultural Studies, TU Braunschweig) and Dr. Jeanette Malkin (Theater Studies, Hebrew University, Jerusalem)
Research Assistants: Sarah J. Ablett, Ido Telem, Luciana Tamas
Student Assistants: Antonie Huff, Ann-Catherine Sternberg

Contemporary British-Jewish Theatre Symposium (1.-2. Oktober 2018, Neuer Senatssaal TU BS)

Poster Contemporary British-Jewish Theatre Symposium

Participants: Jeremy Solomons (University of Reading), Mark Taylor-Batty (University of Leeds), Peter Lawson (Open University, London), Axel Stähler (University of Kent, Canterbury), Phyllis Lassner (Northwestern University, Chicago), Jeanette Malkin (Hebrew University, Jerusalem), Sue Vice (University of Sheffield), Nathan Abrams (University of Bangor), Cyrielle Garson (Avignon Université), Julia Pascal (King's College, London), Mike Witcombe (University of Bath), Eckart Voigts, Sarah Ablett (TU Braunschweig)

Output

Jeanette R. Malkin, Eckart Voigts and Sarah J. Ablett (Eds.), Companion to British-Jewish Theatre since 1956. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama (under contract for 2020).

Jeanette R. Malkin und Eckart Voigts, “Wrestling with Shylock. Contemporary British Jewish Theatre and Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice”, Shakespeare and the Jews (Ed. Lily Kahn), European Judaism 52.2 (2018). 175–185.

Eckart Voigts, “‘Too Much of a Modern?’ Pinter Staging Jewishness”, In: Harold Pinter: Stages, Networks, Collaborations (Eds. Mark Taylor-Batty, Jonathan Bignell und Graham Saunders). London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama (under contract for 2020).

Jeanette R. Malkin, “Three Ways of Being a British-Jewish Playwright: Stoppard, Marber, Craig” In: Companion to British-Jewish Theatre (Hgg. Jeanette R. Malkin, Eckart Voigts und Sarah J. Ablett). London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama (under contract for 2020)

Eckart Voigts und Sarah J. Ablett, “Obscured? Absorbed? Passing?: Contemporary British-Jewish Women Playwrights” In: Companion to British-Jewish Theatre (Eds. Jeanette R. Malkin, Eckart Voigts and Sarah J. Ablett). London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama (under contract for 2020).

Sarah J. Ablett Rev. “Nathan Abrams (Hg.): Hidden in Plain Sight: Jews and Jewishness in British Film, Television, and Popular Culture”, Medienwissenschaften 1 (2018): 34-37.

Sarah J. Ablett Rev. “Lea Wohl von Haselberg, Und nach dem Holocaust? Jüdische Spielfilmfiguren im (west-)deutschen Film und Fernsehen nach 1945.” Medienwissenschaften 3 (2018): 313-314.

"Hyphenated Cultures: Contemporary British-Jewish Theatre" Website on contemporary British-Jewish theatre is now online! Find resources and biographies of artists and scholars at https://britishjewishtheatre.org/

Im April 2013 wurde das "Literary and Cultural Studies Colloquium" etabliert, bei dem in loser Folge international renommierte Fachleute in den Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaften zu Gastvorträgen eingeladen werden:

2019

Merle Tönnies (Universität Paderborn): "Sara Kane's 4.48 Psychosis in the Context of Postdramatic and In-Yer-Face Theatre" (07.01.2019)

Kara McKechnie (University of Leeds): "Brexit, Postcards from the Edge" (17.05.2019)

2018

Erik Steinskog (Københavns Universitet): "Afrofuturism and Sonic Fiction" (02.02.2018)

Dinter, Sandra (FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg): "Theories of Childhood: From Ariès to Foucault" (12.04.2018)

Milena Virchow (tvision, Köln): "Storytelling in Erklärvideos" (11.05.2018)

Joanna Marshner (Historic Royal Palaces / Kensington Palace, London): "Caroline of Brunswick as Agent in the Feminisation of the British Monarchy" (11.05.2018)

Julia Hart (Bard College, Berlin): "Creating Documentary Performance: How the Personal can be Political" (26.10.2018)

2017

Peter Y. Paik (University of Milwaukee, USA): "The Comedy of Cosmic Horror" (13.06.2017)

Peter Lawson (The Open University, UK): "Poetry and Protest: Reflections on the Plays of Steven Berkoff, Harold Pinter and Arnold Wesker" (06.07.2017)

2016

Ellen Grünkemeier (Universität Hannover): "The Aesthetics and Politics of Post-Apartheid Literature and Culture" (28.01.2016)

Katja Krebs (Bristol University): "It Started with a Dog ... Adaptation as an Act of Reception" (04.02.2016)

Jan Alber (Aarhus University): "Contemporary Indigenous Australian Narratives" (12. Juli 2016)

Marie-Laure Ryan (University of Colorado): "Transmedia Storytelling as Crossroads of Discourses. Industry, Fan and Scholarly" (18.10.2016)

2015

René Dietrich (Universität Mainz): "American Post-Apocalyptic Poetry" (19.01.2015)

Aleida Assmann (Universität Konstanz): "Kulturwissenschaft - grenzenlos" (15.05.2015)

Brian E. Richardson (University of Maryland): "The Use and Abuse of Reading in 20th Century Fiction" (21.05.2015)

2014

Ludmilla Jordanova (Durham University): "Gender and Visual Evidence" (16. Juni 2014)

Michael Meyer (Universität Koblenz-Landau): "The In/visible City and the Space of Other" (7. Juli 2014)

Marcus Stiglegger (Universität Mainz): "Apocalyptic Shivers. David Cronenbergs frühe Dystopien" (21. Juli 2014)

Jochen Petzold (Universität Regensburg): ""I believe in Darwin's theory: we are descended doubtless from gorillas!" Victorian Monkey-Mania and Children's Literature" (17. November 2014)

Susanne Scholz (Universität Frankfurt): "Authorship and Scapegoating: The 'Making of…' Jack the Ripper" (4. Dezember 2014)

2013

Kamilla Elliott (Lancaster University): "Almost Alice: Tie-in Merchandise for Disney's and Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland" (17. April 2013)

Ina Schabert (LMU München): "Shakespeare: Metamorphosen und Apotheosen eines Autors" (6. Mai 2013)

Margarete Rubik (Vienna University): "Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair: How to rescue and restore Jane Eyre" (28. Oktober 2013)

Research

ZiF-Arbeitsgemeinschaft, Leitung: Merle Tönnies (Paderborn, GER), Eckart Voigts (Braunschweig, GER)

NMWK/VolkswagenStiftung: Hyphenated Cultures: Contemporary British-Jewish Theatre (2016-2019)

Contemporary British-Jewish Theatre Symposium (1.-2. Oktober 2018, Neuer Senatssaal TU BS)

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