Prof. Dr. Frauke Berndt
Zurich University / Institute for Germanic Studies
Contact
Schönberggasse 9
8001 Zürich
Tel. +44 634 25 30
About Ambiguity
Frauke Berndt understands ambiguity as an analytical category that is influenced by the interest in intellectual-historical synthesis and dialectical reconciliation. She pays attention to the correlation between conceptual vagueness and analytical productivity. Ambiguity, for her, is a matrix that generates antagonistic-simultaneous bivalency under the conditions of literary self-reflexivity.
Biography
| 2017: | Visiting Professor Department of German, Russian and East European Language, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, USA |
| since 2016: | Professor for German Philology & Literature, Institute for Germanic Studies, Zurich University |
| 2014: | Visiting Professor at the Department of German & Scandinavian Literature, University of Oregon, Eugene |
| 2012: | Distinguished Visiting Max Kade Professor at the Department of Germanic Studies, Indiana University Bloomington |
| 2009-2015: | Professor for German Philology & Literature of the 18th and 19th Century, Institute of Germanic Studies, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen |
| 2007-2008: | Visiting Professor at the Department of Germanic Studies, University of Chicago (Feodor Lynen Fellowship; Alexander von Humboldt Foundation) |
Research
Frauke Berndt is academically interested in the modern concept of literature as profiled by the anthropological turn since Enlightenment. In all her projects she is, therefore, concerned with the literary text as a medium of cognition. Taking her basis from theories and modells of cultural memory, she examines autobiographical novels and narrations. A second emphasis is on literary media theories between the interdisciplinary poles of philosophy, rhetorics, aesthetics, and poetics. She puts her focus on symbol theories since the age of Goethe. A third emphasis is concerned with ethical problems of literature.
Publications
For a full list of publications, click here.