Sarah Link

Sarah Link, M.A.

Former position at the English Department:
Research Associate & Doctoral Candidate | Lists in Literature and Culture

CV

Sarah Link studied English Literature and Literary Theory and Italian at the University of Freiburg and at Trent University in Peterborough (Canada). She wrote her MA thesis on representations of Byronic Heroes in popular culture and currently pursues her PhD on Lists in Detective Fiction as a member of the ERC-funded project "Lists in Literature and Culture".

PHD PROJECT

Lists in Police Work and Detective Fiction in Nineteenth-Century England – a Reception-Theoretical Analysis

My research project examines lists as narrative elements through which strategies of categorization and sense-making can be illustrated. The project considers the emergence of forensics as a scientific practice alongside the formation of the literary genre of (British) detective fiction in order to trace parallel developments in believes about order, logic, and the objectivity of science in literary and socio-cultural contexts. I read lists as cognitive tools which establish connections between disparate objects or conditions and thus serve as a crucial ordering principle and structuring device for both nineteenth-century literary texts and newly emerging scientific and professional practices. The aim of my project is to demonstrate how lists can serve to either affirm or renegotiate established and emerging structures of order in both literary and cultural contexts.

RESEARCH INTERESTS

• Representations of identity and alterity in popular culture

• Sensation and detective fiction

• Cognitive literary studies

• Narratology

PUBLICATIONS

• "'The Camera Never Lies': Photography and Objectivity in Warren Ellis and Ben Templesmith's Fell: Feral City." Forms at Work: New Formalist Approaches in Literary, Cultural and Media Studies. Eds. Elizabeth Kovach, Ansgar Nünning, and Imke Polland. Trier: WVT. Forthcoming.
• "Detective Facts – Detective Fiction: Listing the Tools of the Trade." a/ b Auto/biography Studies 36.1 Winter 2021. Forthcoming.
• "Detecting Liminalilty: The List as Symbolic Form." Narrative Liminality. Eds. Katja Kanzler et al. Bielefeld: Transcript. Forthcoming

TEACHING

• Summer term 2018
  PS Detective Fiction
• Winter term 2018/19
  PS Realism and Norm Deviation in the Long 19^th Century (with Sarah Ruppe)
• Summer term 2019
  PS New Materialism (with Julia Böckling)
• Summer term 2020
  PS Let's Play with Narrative Theory – Books, Bandersnatch, and the Butterfly Effect (with Julia Böckling)