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Dr Rebecca Braun

Rebecca Braun

Lecturer in German Studies

Department: European Languages and Cultures

Degree: BA Hons, MA, D.Phil Oxon

Associated research centres and groups: Culture, Theory, Context, Dynamics of Memories

Current Teaching

GERM 100/101: German Part I

GERM 201: German Language: written and reading skills

GERM 233: Becoming German: identity-formation in modern German society and culture

DELC 211: Understanding Culture

GERM 301: German Language: written skills

DELC 351: Literature and Fame in Contemporary Germany

Research Interests

I have published a number of articles on issues of authorship, autobiography, and self-presentation in the work of contemporary German writers. My monograph on Günter Grass and authorship and a co-edited volume of essays examining international dimensions in Günter Grass's work were both published in 2008. My current research project, entitled 'Writing Life: The Making of the Author in Germany's Media Age', widens the approach taken in respect of Grass to look at a range of authors, from his politically-committed generation, through the more introspective authors of the 1970s and 1980s, to today's media-savvy young writers. Focusing on the literary strategies devised by a representative selection of well-known authors from these groups for negotiating their own publicly constructed identity, it aims to offer an alternative literary history that examines the development of German authorship less in political than in cultural and textual terms. Furthermore, a number of essays dealing with the idea of literary celebrity (both as a concept and in respect of specific case studies) are currently in preparation.

I am also interested in broader questions surrounding the production, transmission and reception of cultural products in the contemporary Western world. Over the last two years I have been working on conceptualizing processes of cultural production and reception, and co-organized the 20th anniversary conference of Women in German Studies at the University of Liverpool in 2008, 'Impact: German-language Culture and its Reception'. A significantly expanded volume of essays based on this conference was published in November 2010: Cultural Impact in the German Context: Studies in Transmission, Reception, and Influence (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2010).

Potential Doctoral Proposals

I welcome proposals in all areas of 20th and 21st century German literature and culture, and am also interested in supervising comparative projects that deal with issues of authorship and celebrity, the relationship between the media and the culture industry, and questions surrounding the transmission and reception of culture in the contemporary world.

Research Grants Awarded

2010-2012: Lancaster Early Career Grant, tosupport a series of research trips to literary and media archives in Germany to complete work on my second monograph, Writing Life: The Making of the Author in Germany's Media Age, and associated peer-reviewed articles and chapters in edited volumes.

2007-2009: Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship, held at the University of Liverpool, to begin work on my second monograph, provisionally entitled Writing Life: The Making of the Author in Germany's Media Age.

2002-2005: University of Oxford Scatcherd Scholarship to provide fees andlivingexpensesfor my doctorate, since published with Oxford University Press as Constructing Authorship in the Work of Günter Grass.

2001-2002: Alexander von Humboldt scholarship, extraordinarily granted by the University of Oxford Theodor Heuss selection committee, to allow me to begin work on my doctorate, attached to the Freie Universität, Berlin.

Membership of Associations

Association for German Studies in Great Britain and Ireland

British Comparative Literature Association

Women in German Studies (UK and Ireland)

Modern Languages Association of America

German Studies Association of America

Publications

Monographs

Constructing Authorship in the Work of Günter Grass (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

Edited volumes

Cultural Impact in the German Context: Studies in Transmission, Reception and Influence, ed. by R. Braun and L. Marven (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2010).
Changing the Nation: Günter Grass in International Perspective, ed. by R. Braun and F. Brunssen (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2008).
Shelving Translation, ed. by R. Beard & B. Garvey, a special issue of the peer-reviewed online journal EnterText 4.3 (2004/05): http://www.brunel.ac.uk/about/acad/sa/artresearch/entertext/issues/ entertext43sup/

Articles

'1967-2007: The Gruppe 47 as a Cultural Heimat', German Quarterly, 83/2 (2010), 212-29.
'"Mich in Variationen erzählen": Günter Grass and the Ethics of Autobiogaphy', The Modern Language Review, 103 (2008), 1056-71.
'The art of self-construction: Günter Grass's use of Camus and Orwell in Headbirths or The Germans are Dying Out', in Peter Davies & Lucia Boldrini (eds), 'Autobiografictions', special issue of Comparative Critical Studies 1 (2004), 323-36.

Chapters in books

'Daniel Kehlmann, Die Vermessung der Welt: Measuring Celebrity through the Ages', in L. Marven and S. Taberner, eds, EmergingGerman-Language Novelists of the Twenty-First Century (Rochester, NY: Camden House, forthcoming 2011), pp.75-88.
'Günter Grass's Ein weites Feld: Ageing, Lateness, and Literary Celebrity', in S. Taberner, ed., The German-Language Novel since 1990 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2011).
'"Mich in Variationen erzählen": Günter Grass and the Ethics of Autobiography', in German Life Writing in the Twentieth Century, ed. by Birgit Dahlke, Dennis Tate, and Roger Woods (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2010), pp.121-36- a shortened version of the article published in MLR in 2008.
'Introduction: Cultural Impact in Theory and Practice', in Cultural Impact in the German Context: Studies in Transmission, Reception and Influence, ed. by R. Braun and L. Marven (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2010), pp.1-15.
'Cultural Impact and the Power of Myth in Public Constructions of Authorship', in Cultural Impact in the German Context: Studies in Transmission, Reception and Influence, ed. by R. Braun and L. Marven (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2010), pp.78-96.
'Authorial Construction in From the Diary of a Sail and The Meeting at Telgte', in S. Taberner, ed., Cambridge Companion to Günter Grass (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp.96-110.
'Der alte Fuchs und die Medien: Autorschaft und Öffentlichkeit in Grass' neueren Werken', in H. Kesting, ed., Die Medien und Günter Grass (Cologne: SH-Verlag, 2008), pp.29-39.
'Günter Grass as a World Author', in Changing the Nation: Günter Grass in International Perspective, ed. by R. Braun and F. Brunssen (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2008), pp.194-209.
'"Sticks and stones may break my bones..." The aesthetic enactment of violence in the work of Elfriede Jelinek', in H. Chambers, ed., Violence, Culture and Identity in Germany and Austria (Oxford: Lang, 2006), 343-58.
(with B. Garvey)'Introduction: The Role of the Translated Text in Britain Today', in Shelving Translation, ed. by R. Beard and B. Garvey, special issue of EnterText, 4.3 (2004/05), 1-12.
'Speaking the Language of Culture: Elfriede Jelinek and James Joyce Writing the Homeland', in G. Holfter, M. Karjenbrink & E. Moxon-Browne, eds, Beziehungen & Identitäten: Österreich, Irland und die Schweiz, (Bern: Lang, 2004), pp.191-202.

Translations (from the German)

Manfred Wekwerth, Daring to Play: A Brecht Companion, ed. A. Hozier, trans. R. Braun (London: Routledge, forthcoming 2011) [231pp].
Damaris Kofmehl, Shannon, trans. by R. Beard (London: Hodder & Stoughton 2002) [280pp].
Claudia Parmann, 'Midday Mania', trans. by R. Braun for Re-Berth: Stories from Cities on the Edge, ed. by Jim Hinks (Manchester: Comma Press, 2008), pp.13-16.
Artur Becker, 'Everyone has a skeleton in the cupboard', trans. by R. Braun for Re-Berth, ed. by Jim Hinks, pp.17-27.

Associated Keywords: Comparative literature, Contemporary literature, Culture and media, German language, culture and society, Literature, Literature and politics, Literature and power, Media, Postmodern literature, Twentieth-century culture, Twentieth-century literature, Twentieth-century popular culture