Lehrstuhl Prof. Dr. Matthias Bauer

As is a tradition at Connotations, we are once again happy to host the Literary Advent Calendar 2022, this time with the title “Concerning Fireplaces and Other Energy Questions,” for the English department at Eberhard Karls University Tübingen. This year we will bring cosy warmth into our cold homes through stories about small and large fires and fireplaces. 

Starting on 1 December, every day brings a little seasonal cheer in the form of a literary soundbite on the topic of giving, selected and read by students and staff - just go on to the Connotations website, click on the little Santa to the right, and start opening the doors...

On December 12th, within the framework of the crossectional working group "the individual and collective" from the SFB 1391 "Different Aesthetics," Prof. Dr. Wiesenfeldt will give a guest lecture on "Höfe als Ereignisorte kollaborativen Komponierens in der Frühen Neuzeit."

For more information, check out the poster here.

This autumn, given the near-mediterranean temperatures in Tuebingen, it may seem particularly apt to set our minds on Italy - and Francesca Pierini does just that in her retrospective on Elizabeth von Arnim's The Enchanted April. First published one hundred years ago, this novel's Italian setting functions as an imaginative opposite to British cultural values. To learn more, you can read the full anniversary piece on the Connotations website.

The 17th International Connotations Symposium (July 30 – August 2, 2023) will investigate “Textual Reasons for Canonicity.”

Texts become canonical when they are felt to embody the spirit of an age or to voice concerns considered universal at a particular moment. But what about the texts themselves? Can any text become canonical in any way? Or are there specific textual reasons for such an elevated status? This latter question is what the symposium wishes to address. It will focus on areas such as strategies of self-authorization, choice of subject matter, formal, rhetorical, and aesthetic features of a work, as well as methodological concerns: How is it possible to arrive at such reasons by analyzing texts that have been assigned a canonical status? Do we need to compare texts, and/or does it make sense to work with larger corpora to come up with plausible results?

If you are interested in contributing to the symposium, we invite you to read the CfP online or download it as PDF.

On the 13th/14th of October, Prof. Angelika Zirker and Prof. Matthias Bauer will be speaking at the conference "Shakespeare’s First Folio – An International Legacy," as part of the exhibition dubbed "Will's Book," organised by the German Literature Archive Marbach (DLA) in collaboration with Shakespeare’s Globe (based in London). This international conference takes the announcement in Frankfurt of the publication of the ›First Folio‹ 400 years ago as an opportunity to examine the reception of Shakespeare’s plays beyond England’s borders and the impact of Elizabethan theatre. For more information on the conference and the exhibition, see the press release in English by Shakespeare's Globe and in English and German by the DLA. 

This month, our look at a literary anniversary comes from Anna Budziak, who gives us a tour of Walter Pater's "A Prince of Court Painters", highlighting the story's allusions to the author's own life and his interest in painting. As always, you can read the piece on the Connotations website.

While the return to lecture halls might still be a month away, September already sees the return of our Literary Anniversaries series. Sophie Franklin treats us to an insightful retrospective on Jeanette Winterson's Written on the Body (1992). While this radical work of prose was published 30 years ago this month, its interrogation of gender, romantic language, and the limits of narrative remains highly relevant to this day. Click here to read the full piece on the Connotations website.

Prof. Dr. Matthias Bauer and Prof. Dr. Angelika Zirker will be speaking at the "European Society for the Study of English (ESSE)" conference at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, taking place from the 29th of August to the 2nd of September 2022. The panel titled "Dickens and/in Colours" aims to explore Dicken's life and work in relation to the "Victorian colour revolution," celebrating the reopening exhibition “Technicolour Dickens” at the Charles Dickens Museum in London. The panel is inspired by the European Research Council [ERC] project CHROMOTOPE, conducted by the French scholar Charlotte Ribeyrol, which “explores the changes that took place in attitudes to colour in the nineteenth century, and notably how the ‘chromatic turn’ of the 1850s mapped out new ways of thinking about colour in literature, art, science and technology throughout Europe.”

You will find more information here on the panel or by visiting the ESSE website.

We are happy to announce that the exhibition "Co-Creativity in English Literature Throughout Time: From Shakespeare to FanFiction", hosted by project C05 "The aesthetics of co-creativity in early modern English literature" of the CRC 1391: Different Aesthetics, is now ready for your visit. Come and see how diverse the products of co-creativity used to be in Shakespeare's time and still are today. Experience being a co-creator yourself by taking part in the interactive Commonplace Board which is part of the exhibition at the entrance to the Ammerbau. Everyone who cannot make it to the exhibition in person is invited to enjoy photos of it and some additional information online: https://co-kreativitaet-ub.de/.

"While much was made of the 450th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s birth (in 2014), John Donne’s 450th birthday remains a little in the shadows." Angelika Zirker's anniversary contribution sheds light on Donne, "Shakespeare's near-contemporary," who is "one of the most prominent metaphysical poets," and enables the poet to share the spotlight with the world-famous playwright. Find out more about Donne's life on the Connotations website.

Jolly Christmas songs fill the month of December, spreading a joyful holiday spirit…but were you aware that it is also the 100th anniversary of H.P. Lovecraft’s short story "The Music of Erich Zann" and that Erich Zann’s eerie melodies may still be haunting us today? If you dare, click here to read more about this month’s anniversary introduced by Curtis Runstedler.

As the days grow colder and darker in November, one tends to spend more time indoors. Thus, instead of falling into rabbit holes outside, one is more likely to fall through looking glasses at home. This month's contribution to our "Discover Literary Anniversaries" series celebrates the 150th anniversary to Lewis Carroll’s sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There. Angelika Zirker offers a neatly picked introduction to the background that led up to the sequel’s publication. Follow this link if you'd like to read or listen to more about it.

With the beginning of the darker seasons, it may feel appropriate to turn towards reading that is similarly dark in tone – and Watchmen certainly qualifies! Even though its serial publication began only 35 years ago, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ graphic novel has already cemented its reputation as a modern classic, which is why our literary anniversary essay for September highlights some of its most brilliant moments and considers its cultural impact. Click here to read it!

The 16th International Connotations Symposium from July 26 to 28, 2021 will take place online as a collaboration between the Eberhard Karls University Tuebingen and the Ruhr University Bochum. The speakers will look into questions of “Metagenre” and will focus on works that, like A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Good Soldier, reflect on the genre(s) to which they belong; this self-reflection may be either explicit or implicit. You can find more information on the Connotations website.

The programme can be downloaded here.

Even though the summer sun beckons us to the physical outdoors, the intellectually curious (or hay fever-stricken) among us may occasionally prefer to read about a pastoral idyll, rather than frolic in it. Luckily, our literary anniversary for July is the publication of The Countess of Montgomery's Urania. Click here to read Sarah Briest's fascinating history of this 400-year-old romance and its recently rediscovered author, Lady Mary Wroth.

In this joint venture of the RTGs (Research Training Groups) on “Ambiguity: Production and Perception” at Tübingen and on “The Literary and Epistemic History of Small Forms” at Humboldt University Berlin, in collaboration with the Literary Colloquium Berlin, we are interested in the problem or phenomenon of linguistic and poetic economy: how can it be defined? How and to what degree can we measure it?

Linguistic/poetic economy has strong links, so it would seem, to aptness, an in-between of ‘too much’ and ‘too little’, of the boring, super- fluous, the incomprehensible, fragmentary. How short (or how long) is too short? How long (or short) is too long? When is a text ‘just right’ as to its length? Can what is apt be quantified, in the sense of measuring a certain number of signs, the duration of production and perception – in the words of Edgar Allan Poe: “to be read in one sitting”? Or does it describe a particular quality, an ideal as expressed by Sir Philip Sidney: “one word cannot be lost but the whole work fails”

Our symposium aims at the most economic and unequivocal answers possible to the questions outlined here from scholarly perspectives that will be interspersed with artistic interventions. We have invited speakers who are interested in the reflexion, description, production and prevention of ambiguity in small and large(r) forms. The idea is to bring together academic, journalistic, poetic and poetological, rhetorical, political and other perspectives on (linguistic/poetic) economy and ambiguity.

The event will take place digitally, with attendance via Zoom available to all who are interested.

If you would like to attend, please register your attendance by writing an e-mail to Prof. Dr. Angelika Zirker and Dr. Maren Jäger.

The offical programme flyer for the event can be found here in English and in German.

Clink the glasses at home as we also have something to celebrate during lockdown: Henry Vaughan's birthday! Born on the 16th of April 1621, this early modern English poet and countryside doctor incorporated his medical knowledge and experience into his poetic texts. Follow this link to access Matthias Bauer's short podcast on Vaughan's life and work, including his poem "The Showre."

Our series of contributions on memorable literary anniversaries continues, this month with one of the giants of modern English literature: One hundred years ago, Virginia Woolf first published her collection of short stories, Monday or Tuesday. Follow this link to read Vera Yakupova's introduction to the volume and its eight stories - you can even listen to a reading from the collection's titular tale!

The history of literature in English is long and varied, having brought forth a nearly inexhaustible supply of memorable events - from the births and deaths of significant writers or the releases of their iconic works to revolutionary theatre performances or censorship lawsuits. This year, we want to mark some of these anniversaries and honour them with short articles on the events, as well as the people and books involved. We hope you enjoy this playful journey through history and maybe even learn about your new favourite anniversary! 

Corresponding to the wintry February mood, our first contribution is by Sarah Briest on John Taylor's "The Colde Tearme". You can access the article on the website of our journal, Connotations, by following this link. Enjoy the discovery!

This conference by the German Shakespeare Association ("Deutsche Shakespeare-Gesellschaft") will take place between the 20th-22nd of November 2020 in a digital format. Prof. Dr. Angelika Zirker will speak on "The Aesthetics of Collaborative Authorship in Romeo and Juliet."

For more information please go to: https://shakespeare-gesellschaft.de/tagungen/kommende-tagungen/.

This conference by the cross-sectional area „Individual and Collective“ („Individuum und Kollektiv“) of the Tübingen CRC "Different Aesthetics", organized by Angelika Zirker, Stefanie Gropper, Anna Pawlak and Anja Wolkenhauer, will take place between the 12th and 14th of November 2020. It will be held in German and English in the Alte Aula (Münzgasse, Tübingen) and transferred live via Zoom. To obtain the link, please contact: angelika.zirker@uni-tuebingen.de.

For more information and to download the flyer and poster please go to: https://uni-tuebingen.de/forschung/forschungsschwerpunkte/sonderforschungsbereiche/sfb-andere-aesthetik/veranstaltungen/tagungen/.

On the 10th of November 2020 at 6:30 p.m. Prof. Zirker will participate in podium discussion with the secretary of education Theresia Bauer and university president Prof. Bernd Engler about the future of digital teaching.

For more information please go to: https://uni-tuebingen.de/universitaet/campusleben/veranstaltungen/veranstaltungskalender/termindetails/article/digitale-lehre-zukunft-und-herausforderungen/.