Books by Katrin Berndt
Representations & Reflections Vol. 15 , 2024
The thirteen contributions to this collection all explore or exemplify the ongoing British intere... more The thirteen contributions to this collection all explore or exemplify the ongoing British interest in the socialist world before 1990. In autobiography, fiction, film, history, and lexicography, these chapters show how contemporary Britain is engaging with the past project to build socialism in Europe, and what this means for the present and the future of our continent. Contributions come from a wide range of disciplinary and geographical backgrounds, and the volume is further enriched by a short story especially written for this book and by an in-depth interview with the author of a recent popular history of the GDR. Together, these chapters offer a unique perspective into contemporary British writing on the 'second world' and the enduring fascination with the failures of futures past.
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The handbook offers a comprehensive introduction to the British novel in the long eighteenth cent... more The handbook offers a comprehensive introduction to the British novel in the long eighteenth century, when this genre emerged to develop into the period’s most versatile and popular literary form. Part I features six systematic chapters that discuss literary, intellectual, socio-economic, and political contexts, providing innovative approaches to issues such as sense and sentiment, gender considerations, formal characteristics, economic history, enlightened and radical concepts of citizenship and human rights, ecological ramifications, and Britain’s growing global involvement. Part II presents twenty-five analytical chapters that attend to individual novels, some canonical and others recently recovered. These analyses engage the debates outlined in the systematic chapters, undertaking in-depth readings that both contextualize the works and draw on relevant criticism, literary theory, and cultural perspectives. The handbook’s breadth and depth, clear presentation, and lucid language make it attractive and accessible to scholar and student alike.
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Friendship has always been a universal category of human relationships and an influential motif i... more Friendship has always been a universal category of human relationships and an influential motif in literature, but it is rarely discussed as a theme in its own right. In her study of how friendship gives direction and shape to new ideas and novel strategies of plot, character formation, and style in the British novel from the 1760s to the 1830s, Katrin Berndt argues that friendship functions as a literary expression of philosophical values in a genre that explores the psychology and the interactions of the individual in modern society. In the literary historical period in which the novel became established as a modern genre, Berndt shows that friend characters were omnipresent, reflecting Enlightenment philosophy’s definition of friendship as a bond that civilized public and private interactions and was considered essential for the attainment of happiness. She analyses genre-defining novels by Frances Brooke, Mary Shelley, Sarah Scott, Helen Maria Williams, Charlotte Lennox, Walter Scott, Jane Austen, and Maria Edgeworth, to show that the significance of friendship and the increasing variety of novelistic forms and topics represent an overlooked dynamic in the novel’s literary history. Contributing to our understanding of the complex interplay of philosophical, socio-cultural and literary discourses that shaped British fiction in the later Hanoverian decades, Berndt’s book demonstrates that novels have conceived the modern individual not in opposition to, but in interaction with society, continuing Enlightenment debates about how to share the lives and the experiences of others.
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Taking up the various conceptions of heroism that are conjured in the Harry Potter series, this c... more Taking up the various conceptions of heroism that are conjured in the Harry Potter series, this collection examines the ways fictional heroism in the twenty-first century challenges the idealized forms of a somewhat simplistic masculinity associated with genres like the epic, romance and classic adventure story. The collection's three sections address broad issues related to genre, Harry Potter's development as the central heroic character and the question of who qualifies as a hero in the Harry Potter series. Among the topics are Harry Potter as both epic and postmodern hero; the series as a modern-day example of psychomachia; the heptalogy's indebtedness to the Gothic tradition; Harry's development in the first six film adaptations; Harry Potter and the idea of the English gentleman; Rowling's post-feminist version of female heroism as realized in the character of Hermione; adult role models in the series; and the complex depictions of heroism exhibited by its minor characters. Together, the essays suggest that the Harry Potter novels, while relying on established generic, moral and popular codes, develop genuine and idiosyncratic ways of expressing what a globalized world has applauded as ethically exemplary models of heroism based on responsibility, courage, humility and kindness.
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Western notions of cultural and social developments in African countries are still often fogged b... more Western notions of cultural and social developments in African countries are still often fogged by age-old clichés and stereotypes born in the era of Transatlantic Slave Trade and colonialism. Those who choose to look beyond the myths will discover that literatures from Africa are a treasure; a complex marketplace with its many contradictions – a place of encounters and negotiations between public and private, learning and unlearning, the local and the global, and the ordinary and the exceptional. Writers ruminate about the worlds that move and challenge them. They focus on the details without losing sight of the big picture. Sometimes, writers leave the spaces most familiar to them – the spaces of fiction – and turn to critical writing, which they enrich with their poetic vision. The essays in this volume reflect this vision.
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Zimbabwean literature in English represents a hybrid fictional development encompassing literary ... more Zimbabwean literature in English represents a hybrid fictional development encompassing literary modes from both precolonial oral narratives and written Western tradition. This study discusses a selection of post-independence novels by Zimbabwean writers Yvonne Vera, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Vivienne Ndlovu and Chenjerai Hove, whose fiction addresses the growing up of girls in societies shaped by two patriarchal heritages; problematizes violence against women and children; celebrates female sexuality; and introduces metahistorical perspectives on political and social developments before, during and after the Second Chimurenga. All of these themes are being localized in the identity formation of the texts' female protagonists. Following the argumentation of postcolonial theorists Trinh T. Minh-ha and Homi Bhabha, the study shows female identities – as represented in these novels – to consist of both contextually determined identity layers and individually appropriated subject positions. By deconstructing such compositions, the analysis identifies not only the postcolonial ‘writing back’ attitude in these novels; it also highlights that the texts struggle to overcome the conventional Self / Other dichotomy by relying on sensual and aesthetic value to produce a more coherent vision of what Bhabha termed as the ‘Knowing Subject’.
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Über Yoko Ono wurde viel geschrieben – über ihr Aussehen, ihre Rolle bei der Auflösung der Beatle... more Über Yoko Ono wurde viel geschrieben – über ihr Aussehen, ihre Rolle bei der Auflösung der Beatles, gelegentlich über ihre Kunstausstellungen und –aktionen. Nur ihr musikalisches Schaffen wurde konsequent negiert. Die vorliegende Magisterarbeit behandelt und diskutiert Onos insgesamt acht Soloalben, zeigt ihre musikalischen Einflüsse und ihre Entwicklung von der Avantgardekünstlerin zur Popmusikerin. Im Mittelpunkt stehen hier die Songtexte Yoko Onos, die unter literaturtheoretischen Gesichtspunkten analysiert und im Rahmen ihrer persönlichen, feministischen und gesellschaftspolitischen Implikationen dargestellt werden. Dabei wird deutlich, dass Ono als Musikerin nicht nur grob unterschätzt wurde, sondern darüberhinaus zu den bedeutenden Popmusikerinnen unseres Jahrhunderts gehört.
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Journal Articles and Book Chapters by Katrin Berndt
Leidenschaft Filmmusik. Theorie - Praxis - Vermittlung. , 2024
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Representing Poverty in the Anglophone Postcolonial World. Ed. Verena Jain-Warden and Barbara Schmidt-Haberkamp. Göttingen: V&R unipress / Bonn University Press, 2021. 209-227.
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British Sociability in the European Enlightenment. Edited Sebastian Domsch und Mascha Hansen. Cha... more British Sociability in the European Enlightenment. Edited Sebastian Domsch und Mascha Hansen. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. 165-186.
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Neohelicon. Acta comparationis litterarum universarum, 2020
This article argues that material objects in Canadian writer Alice Munro’s short fiction both ref... more This article argues that material objects in Canadian writer Alice Munro’s short fiction both reflect socio-economic concerns of pre- and post-WWII Canadian society and complicate common conceptions of deprivation and material ambition. The analyses of “Royal Beatings” and “The Beggar Maid” demonstrate how Munro describes economic hardships, class anxieties, and social discrimination and distinction through items of material culture such as clothes, furniture, and paintings. These objects and their symbolic significance draw attention to the conflicts resulting from the interplay of her characters’ upbringings, loyalties, and their longings and aspirations.
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Anglistentag 2017. Eds. A.-J. Zwierlein, J. Petzold, K. Boehm and M. Decker. WVT: Trier, 2018: 28... more Anglistentag 2017. Eds. A.-J. Zwierlein, J. Petzold, K. Boehm and M. Decker. WVT: Trier, 2018: 281-292.
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Studies in Scottish Literature: Vol. 43: Iss. 2 (2017), 211–212.
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Care Home Stories. Aging, Disability, and Long-Term Residential Care. Ed. Sally Chivers and Ulla Kriebernegg. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2017. 203-224. Open Access: https://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-3805-9/care-home-stories/
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Mosaic – A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature, 2017
The essay suggests that Ian McEwan presents science as comedy in Solar in order to debunk the ide... more The essay suggests that Ian McEwan presents science as comedy in Solar in order to debunk the idea of progress as a modern myth. Contextualizing science as an activity tied to socio-economic and individual interests, humour in Solar mocks human hubris and the belief in salvation through technological advancement.
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Zeitschrift für Kanadastudien, 2017
This article investigates representations of citizenship and the community in contemporary black ... more This article investigates representations of citizenship and the community in contemporary black Canadian writing as literary contributions to the discursive negotiation of democratic justice. The analyses focus on two novels whose authors and subject matters have become identified with different cultural-critical traditions within black Canadian literature: George Elliott Clarke’s George & Rue (2005) fictionalizes a “Black Acadian tragedy” from the author’s own family history, drawing attention to racial discrimination and economic deprivation as an aspect of the history and cultural legacy of black citizens in Canada. First-generation Canadian Dionne Brand’s portrayal of multicultural Toronto in What We All Long For (2005) traces the aspirations, attachments and disaffections of urban citizens and stands as an exemplar for the global connections and intertextualities of contemporary immigrant writing. The article looks at how the novels address the question of belonging in reference to cultural citizenship, and how they portray Canadian communities as sites of recognition, participation and exclusion in national and global contexts.
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Anglica. An International Journal of English Studies, 2016
The aim of this article is to examine the influence of Scottish Enlightenment philosophy on Alasd... more The aim of this article is to examine the influence of Scottish Enlightenment philosophy on Alasdair Gray’s novel Poor Things (1992) with a particular focus on its references to the natural and life sciences. The essay argues that the novel allegorizes two central themes of the eighteenth-century Science of Man: it stresses the social nature of human beings, and it aims for a comprehensive portrayal of human nature whose different aspects are depicted in explicit connection with one another. The article shows that Gray employs the emancipatory framework of Scottish Enlightenment philosophy in order to communicate an idealistic belief in the possibility of gradual improvement of society.
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Hard Times 97.1 (2015): 17-21.
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Anglistentag 2014. Eds. Jana Gohrisch and Rainer Emig. WVT: Trier, 2015. 169-180.
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Books by Katrin Berndt
This is an open access publication, which is available at
https://www.vandenhoeck-ruprecht-verlage.com/detail/index/sArticle/59238
Journal Articles and Book Chapters by Katrin Berndt
ISBN 978-3-7410-0453-7
https://www.schueren-verlag.de/programm/titel/leidenschaft-filmmusik.html
This is an open access publication, which is available at
https://www.vandenhoeck-ruprecht-verlage.com/detail/index/sArticle/59238
ISBN 978-3-7410-0453-7
https://www.schueren-verlag.de/programm/titel/leidenschaft-filmmusik.html
Transformationsangst und Nostalgie
Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg
Organisation: Prof. Dr. Stephan Pabst und Dr. Jan Loheit
Die Tagung reagiert auf die anhaltende Konjunktur von Retro- und Nostalgie-Phänomenen, die sich international auf unterschiedlichen kulturellen Feldern beobachten lassen und seit einiger Zeit in unterschiedlichen Disziplinen zum Gegenstand intensiver Forschungsbemühungen wurden. Im Zentrum steht die These, dass die Beschleunigung gesellschaftlicher Transformationsprozesse soziale Ängste entstehen lässt, die zunehmend im imaginären Raum der Nostalgie kompensiert werden. Die aktuelle Forschungstendenz, den Blick auf Nostalgie aus der kulturkritischen Grammatik zu entbinden, die seit den 1970er Jahren den Ton angab, scheint mit der in den vergangenen Jahren zunehmenden Politisierung des Nostalgischen fragwürdig geworden. Zugleich scheinen die Begriffe der traditionellen Kritik angesichts des Reflexivwerdens nostalgischer Ästhetiken nicht mehr zu greifen. Die Tagung soll dem Zweck dienen, den Theoriebedarf angesichts der Vielfältigkeit nostalgischer Phänomene zu diskutieren, indem sie ein breites empirisches Spektrum abschreitet und unterschiedliche Disziplinen zum Austausch einlädt.
Courage and cowardice function as antagonistic principles that characterize endeavours, sentiments, and manners, their understanding traditionally gendered. In the Romantic period, these terms came to exemplify conceptual shifts in philosophical and political thought which, despite fundamentally different approaches to human nature and society, appear surprisingly likeminded in their reliance on gender conventions. They can be traced in Edmund Burke’s disdain for the calculating, rationalist commercialism he believed was superseding the ‘age of chivalry’, whose ‘ennobling’ principles had ‘inspired courage’ and provided social cohesion by rendering men equal in spirit, whereas the new mechanistic age produced ‘a mixed mob of ferocious men’ and ‘women lost to shame’. Contemplating the practicalities of enlightenment, Immanuel Kant proposed that the ‘courage to make use of one’s own understanding’, which allows man to ‘emerge from his self-incurred minority’, would be ‘troublesome’ for the ‘greatest part of humankind (including the entire fair sex)’, more inclined to remain immature under the guardianship of others. Crucially, Mary Wollstonecraft proposed that ‘intellectual cowardice’ prevented the mind from ‘resolutely form[ing] its principles’, while the ‘fear that women will acquire too much courage or fortitude’ only reflected ‘mistaken notions of female excellence’.
The seminar discusses British women writers’ take on the concepts of courage and cowardice and their cultural and philosophical implications in poetry, fiction, and philosophical enquiries that explore the ethical potential of these principles, their political significance, and the aesthetic forms employed to address them.
In suggesting that this transcultural exchange between the sciences and the literary imagination is a feature of Scottish fiction that can be traced back to the intellectual tradition outlined in The Democratic Intellect, the paper will explore Goldschmidt and Crumey’s scientific analogies and rhetorical figures as an epistemological dialogue that investigates the diversity and fragmentation of experience in twenty-first-century culture, creatively using science to re-humanize our understanding of the human.
One of the most distinguished contemporary Canadian writers, Munro is renowned for her insightful portrayals of rural and small-town Ontario, the province where she grew up and has spent most of her life. Born into a Presbyterian family of Scottish and Irish background, Munro left the church as a young woman, but returned to Protestant concepts in her fiction, dealing with notions of predestination, justification through faith, and (the impossibility of) salvation. Moreover, she has represented the cultural impact of Protestant thinking on the customs, conventions and communities in Ontario, a centre of the Canadian Protestant population that is the setting of most of her stories.
Given the significance of Protestantism for Munro’s writing, it is surprising that scholars have hardly explored its influence. My paper will attend to this lacuna by identifying Protestant tenets in her stories, and by investigating Protestant thinking in Munro’s depiction of Ontario life that is defined by the routines of farm work, rigid social conventions, and a culture discouraging intellectual and artistic ambitions. Taking cue from recent critical appraisals of the importance of fiction describing ‘conservative, small-town Protestant communities’ (Ravvin) for the development of a national culture that identifies ‘white civility’ with Protestantism (Coleman), my discussion aims to position Munro within the broader tradition of Protestant Canadian writing.
We welcome abstracts (not more than 250 words) for 20-minute papers from researchers at all career stages. These should be submitted together with a short CV to the seminar convenors by 28 February 2022.
Further information on the 16th conference of the European Society for the Study of English (29 August to 2 September 2022 at Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany) can be found at https://esse2022.uni-mainz.de/.
We welcome abstracts (300 words) for 20-minute papers from researchers at all career stages. Contributions may address, but are not limited to, the following aspects:
Please submit your abstract and a short biographical note (in pdf) to secworld@anglistik.uni-halle.de
by 30 April 2022.