Ausserordentliche Professorin für Englische Literaturwissenschaft
Portrait
My professorship focuses on English Literature since 1800. In my research and teaching, I place a special emphasis on the long nineteenth century, including its cultural afterlife. Further research and teaching foci include (inter)mediality, film, visual culture, gender, psychoanalysis as well as literary and cultural theory.
I received my PhD in 2004 for a comparative study of Alfred Hitchcock and Vladimir Nabokov. My “cross-mapping” of the two authors takes as its point of departure the conditions of exile they found themselves in and goes on to show how their relentless playfulness and irony points to the creation of a new home in the world of signs. In 2014 I completed my Habilitation thesis on female performers in British and American narratives of the long nineteenth century. My study argues that the tension between the public voice of fictional female performers – singers, actresses, preachers and speakers – and other textual voices can be seen to refigure the cultural debate over the ‘voice’ of women in aesthetically complex ways.
One of my current research projects looks at the emergence of modern celebrity culture in the long nineteenth century. I also take a keen interest in debt (especially in the Victorian novel), gender and money as well as economic criticism more generally. I am a member of the DFG network Methodologies of Economic Criticism. I also actively contribute to the “Women, Money and Markets” network. In 2021 I co-organized the fourth annual “Women, Money and Markets” conference on Female Economies. I am currently planning a symposium on debt studies, which will take place in 2023. I also continue to work on queenship and female political power.
While much of my current research and teaching looks at British literature and culture, I am also strongly invested in American Studies, serving as President of SANAS (Swiss Association for North American Studies). Together with Michael C. Frank, I am currently organizing the 2022 SANAS Symposium on The Politics of Emotion.
Personal Information
Institutions:
Countries:
Switzerland
Locations:
Universität Zürich
Disciplines:
Subjects:
Literature