Lehrstuhl Prof. Dr. Matthias Bauer

The countdown to December is on, and we are opening the doors to the English Department's Advent Calendar. This year's theme is Christmas Miracles and Mysteries, and we invite you all to join! 

Each day in December, leading up to Christmas, we will upload a small audio recording of a text you would like to share (it can even be your own creation!) on our website: https://www.connotations.de/.

If you are interested in contributing, please sign up by November 23rd with your preferred date and the text you would like to read. We have set up a Google Doc for you to add your name and selection: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nXAX36EXjSixHzEGNsXK9uEmI4lY0hGd1BfkFQBelXc/edit

We will need your audio file (2-3 min) and a royalty-free image roughly two weeks before your chosen date. If you are unsure what to read, just get in touch and we will help you track down something suitably miraculous or mysteriously festive.

With a small contribution from each of us, we can create something wonderful for everyone to enjoy and set the mood for the season.

We are looking forward to your contributions!

For more information see the flyer and pass it along to anyone who might enjoy taking part.

This workshop examines early modern English recipe books as dynamic sites of co-creativity and community formation. Rather than viewing these texts as static repositories of information, we explore them as evolving records of collective knowledge shaped by multiple contributors – family, friends, and professional networks – across time. Often compiled over generations, recipe books not only document knowledge but also reflect the social interactions and collaborative processes that produced it.

The workshop will take place on 28.11.2025 in Room 215 of the Brechtbau. Further details you can find in our flyer. This workshop will be hybrid. To sign up, either in person or through Zoom, please contact our project.

In July 1875 Anthony Trollope's The Way We Lived Now was published. 150 years later, the novel's witty and discerning account of contemporary London society remains relevant. Then as now, people grappled with the deepening commercialization of their lives and with the consequent social discord. To read more about Trollope's novel, follow this link to this month's Discover Literary Anniversaries contribution.

This June marks the 200th birthday of Annie French Hector, better known as Mrs Alexander (1825–1902), a once-celebrated novelist whose works captivated Victorian readers with tales of women navigating love, loss, and legacy. Known for over 40 novels, including Her Dearest Foe and Kitty Costello, Mrs Alexander's writing drew from her own experiences of resilience and reinvention. Take a moment to rediscover her voice through an interview with Helen C. Black on the Connotations website.

On May 14th, 1925, Virginia Woolf published Mrs. Dalloway, a modernist novel that continues to captivate readers 100 years later. Set over the course of a single day in post-war London, the novel explores time, memory, identity, and trauma. A century on, Mrs. Dalloway remains as relevant to the individual experience as ever. To read more, see this month's Discover Literary Anniversaries contribution on the Connotations website.

This February marks the anniversary of the meeting between Robert Louis Stevenson and William Ernest Henley at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary in 1875, a pivotal moment that sparked their literary collaboration. To read more about that encounter and how it later inspired Stevenson's iconic character of Long John Silver in Treasure Island, check out Laurie Atkinson’s contribution on the Connotations website.

For Amanda B. Vernon the 200th birthday of the Scottish writer, theologian and literary scholar George MacDonald (1824-1905) is an invitation to reflect on old age and childlikeness. If you would like to read (and hear) how MacDonald combined these opposites, visit the Connotations website.

Our department's yearly advent calendar will return to the Connotations website with the theme “Festive Music”. If you enjoy reading literary texts aloud and would like to be featured in our calendar, you can submit a recording to capucine-marie.blancspam prevention@uni-tuebingen.de by November 24th. Select your own excerpt on this topic from your favourite piece or ask the team for suggestions! For further information, you can download the flyer.

Project C5 “The Aesthetics of Co-Creativity in Early Modern English Literature” reconstructs an aesthetics of collaborative authorship in early modern English literature that is ‘different’ from concepts influenced by ideas of the author as an individual genius. In the context of our workshop, we would like to integrate a temporal dimension in our analysis of co-creative production processes. When early modern playwrights use sources and revise them in their own textual artefacts, these are not merely instances of intertextuality and imitation; the making of these texts reveals the various stages in their production and the agents involved in them. By moving away from the notion of imitatio towards a shared inventio, we hope and expect to learn more about the aesthetics of co-creativity in early modern English literature.

Further details you can find in our flyer. This workshop will be hybrid. To sign up, either in person or through Zoom, please contact our project.