News
News
Margarete von Wrangell-Funding for Maria Sulimma
JProf. Dr. Maria Sulimma has received funding through the Margarete von Wrangell Programm of the Conference of Equal Opportunities Officers at universities and academic institutions in Baden-Württemberg (LaKoG) and the Ministry of Science, Research and Arts in Baden-Württemberg (MKW). The funding will enable her Post-Doctoral collaborator Dr. Anna-Lena Oldehus (University of Hannover) to join the English Department in Freiburg as part of Maria Sulimma’s team.
05/2024
Kit Schuster receives John W. Kluge Center Fellowship
At the annual conference of the German Association for American Studies (GAAS/DGfA) in Oldenburg, Kit Schuster hasreceived the John W. Kluge Center Fellowship at the Library of Congress to support their research project which explores the intersections of trans narratives and speculative fiction, shedding light on important questions of gender identity, representation, and social justice.
Awarded through the GAAS, the Fellowship seeks to enable young scholars to conduct independent research using the collections of the Library of Congress. Access to the extensive resources at the Library of Congress, especially in LGBTQIA+ studies, literature, and history, will enrich Schuster's research and significantly contribute to the development of their dissertation project. Congratulations!
05/2024
Kit Schuster on Trans Future Fiction
As part of the 2023 Topic Week on Queer Perseverance, Kit Schuster was featured in Dr. Lena Mattheis' podcast Queer Lit, the episode of which was published in January. Schuster and Mattheis spoke about Trans Future Fiction, which includes how transgression in fiction can help us think new futures, norms or settings in science fiction, as well as trans, nonbinary, and gendernonconforming characters.
You can find the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and on other platforms.
01/2024
Prof. Dr. Fludernik wins the 2024 Wayne C. Booth Lifetime Achievement Award
Prof. Dr. Monika Fludernik is the winner of the 2024 Wayne C. Booth Lifetime Achievement Award! This award recognizes outstanding scholar-teachers who have made sustained contributions to narrative studies over the course of their careers: Fludernik has contributed major research to fields that include, first and foremost, narrative and narrative theory, but she has also worked in areas like linguistic approaches to literature, law and literature studies, postcolonial theory, eighteenth-century aesthetics, and prison literature.
Her book Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology (Routledge, 1996), which won the Barbara Perkins and George Perkins Prize in 1998, offers up a groundbreaking root and branch reformulation of classical narratology from the perspective of sociolinguistics and cognitive theory. Fludernik continues to shake up narrative studies, publishing widely and brilliantly on topics as you/we narration, cognitive narratology, fictionality, and narrative factuality. She has made vital, ongoing contributions to the study of free indirect discourse as a linguistic phenomenon from medieval literature to contemporary fiction, offering a pragmatic framework for identifying alterity that is nonetheless grounded in rigorous grammatical analysis. Her most recent work, funded by a German Research Foundation Reinhard-Koselleck grant, elaborates the field of diachronic narratology, which considers the evolution of narrative genres in English-language texts from the late Middle Ages to the nineteenth century. Forthcoming issues of Narrative and Language and Literature, (co-)edited by Fludernik, focus on this topic. Fludernik’s work has influenced scholars working in a range of fields from the history of the novel to current social media practices.
Prof. Dr. Monika Fludernik is the first younger European scholar after Gérard Genette, Tzvetan Todorov and Mieke Bal (besides three expatriates) to win the Wayne C. Booth Lifetime Achievement Award. She currently holds an endowed chair position as Professor of English at the English Department. The Department cordially congratulates her and is honoured and proud to have her as part of the Department!
You can find out more about the Wayne C. Booth Lifetime Achievement Award here.
11/2023
ERC Consolidator Grant für Prof. Dr. Eva von Contzen
Prof. Dr. Eva von Contzen erhält ein Consolidator Grant des Europäischen Forschungsrats (ERC), womit die Europäische Union ihr Forschungsprojekt zur Erzählform des retelling fördert. Die Auszeichnung gehört zu den renommiertesten Preisen für Wissenschaftler:innen in der EU. Die Förderung läuft über fünf Jahre und beträgt je zwei Millionen Euro. Von europaweit gut 2.000 eingereichten Anträgen fördert der ERC in diesem Jahr 308.
Weitere Informationen zur Förderung und zum Forschungsprojekt finden Sie hier.
11/2023
Neu gewählte Fakultätsgleichstellungsbeauftragte
Prof. Dr. Eva von Contzen wurde als Nachfolgerin von Prof. Dr. Holdenried zur Fakultätsgleichstellungsbeauftragten der Philologischen Fakultät gewählt. Seit 2019 hatte sie bereits das Amt der stellvertretenden Gleichstellungsbeauftragten inne. Dieses wird nun von JProf. Dr. Maria Sulimma, ebenfalls am Englischen Seminar, übernommen.
Update: In der Fakultätsratssitzung am 22.1.2024 wurde Prof. Dr. Joachim Grage vom Skandinavischen Seminar in Nachfolge von Prof. Dr. Eva von Contzen zum neuen Fakultätsgleichstellungsbeauftragten gewählt.
11/2023
On October 11, Prof. Dr. Sieglinde Lemke was a guest of the successful German Youtube podcast Jung&Naiv to speak about US History and Politics.
Watch the entire episode here.
10/2023
Am 01.10.2023 hat Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Bernd Kortmann das Amt des neuen Dekans der Philologischen Fakultät übernommen. Das Englische Seminar gratuliert ihm herzlich zur erfolgreichen Wahl!
10/2023
JProf. Dr. Maria Sulimma hat zum 01.10.2023 ihr FRIAS-Fellowship angetreten, welches das Forschungsprojekt Gentrification Imaginaries: Postindustrial Literature, Leisure, and Urban Transformations umfasst.
Weitere Informationen zum Projekt finden Sie hier.
10/2023
Der Tenure-Prozess von Prof. Dr. Eva von Contzen, welcher im Jahre 2017 begann, ist abgeschlossen. Eva von Contzen arbeitet am Englischen Seminar nun als ordentliche Professorin und ist Inhaberin des Lehrstuhls für English Literature including the Literatures of the Middle Ages.
09/2023
Bernd Kortmann wird Präsident der ISLE
Am 22. Juni 2023 hat Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Bernd Kortmann die Präsidentschaft der International Society for the Linguistics of English (ISLE), dem internationalen Fachverband der anglistischen Sprachwissenschaft, übernommen. Seine Amtszeit beläuft sich auf zwei Jahre. Den Schwerpunkt seiner Präsidentschaft sieht Bernd Kortmann in der Verbesserung der Kommunikation und Interaktion der ISLE-Mitglieder untereinander, aber auch innerhalb der großen internationalen Gemeinschaft von Forschenden und Lehrenden auf allen Karrierestufen im Bereich English Linguistics weltweit.
Einer der Höhepunkte seiner ISLE-Präsidentschaft wird die von ihm verantwortlich organisierte ISLE-Sommerschule English(es) as a Moving Target: Exploring online data and online processing vom 22.-27.7.2024 in Freiburg sein. Im Zentrum dieser Sommerschule werden acht mehrtägige Kurse sowie Panels und Plenarvorträge zur quantitativen und qualitativen Analyse von Online-Daten (besonders in sozialen Medien und Onlineforen) und Online-Sprachprozessierung (also: in Echtzeit während des Sprachverarbeitungsprozesses) stehen.
06/2023
Fachschaft Anglistik meets Alan McSmith
On the evening of April 5, Alan McSmith was invited by Gert Fehlner to visit the Fachschaft Anglistik at the English Department.
McSmith, wilderness guide, elephant expert, and TEDx speaker from Botswana, showed numerous photos and souvenirs from the wilderness and talked with the students about leadership in nature, while also discussing Western conceptions of life. As Smith writes in his profile about our shared evening, "learning institutions are so vitally important in the paradigm of change and disrupting our flawed consumptive systems. But what good is a system change if it is not accompanied by a change in consciousness?"
The Fachschaft would like to thank Gert Fehlner for making this interesting evening possible, and is also grateful for the many years of cooperation on Gert's anniversary at the Department!
04/2023
English Department Christmas Party
December has started and Christmas eve is only three weeks away – the most wonderful time of the year has begun! After a three-year break, the English Department, the Fachschaft Anglistik, as well as the maniACTs are jointly bringing back our famous Christmas party to embellish your pre-Christmas season even more!
All English Department students, faculty and staff are cordially invited to join us in the Peterhofkeller on Saturday, December 17 from 5.30 pm!
Be prepared for an amazing evening: there will not only be hot drinks including mulled wine, a waffle bar, more tasty snacks, and Christmas music, but also a surprise skit performed by the maniACTs!
We’re looking forward to celebrating the holidays with you!
12/2022
Maria Sulimma receives Fulbright American Studies Award 2022
Jun.-Prof. Dr. Maria Sulimma has received the Fulbright American Studies Award 2022 to conduct research for her project “Trivial Pursuits: Literature, Gentrification, and Postindustrial Urban Spaces.” The award is financed by Fulbright Germany and the German Association for American Studies (DGfA) and supports research projects in American Studies that are conducted by German scholars in the context of their doctoral dissertations or “habilitation”.
In the spring 2023, Maria will be visiting the University of Freiburg’s partner institution Penn State Abington to collaborate with Prof. Dr. Thomas Heise as well as Boston University to connect with Urban Inequalities workshop and Prof. Dr. Japonica Brown-Saracino.
10/2022
Dr. Axel Bohmann | ZDF Show "Der Quiz-Champion"
See our own Dr. Axel Bohmann take part in, and get far!, in the ZDF show "Der Quiz-Champion"!
You can watch the full episode (in German), titled "Der Quiz-Champion - Das Zweite-Chance-Special", in the ZDF Mediathek.
06/2022
"Wie eine Freiburger Professorin in ihren Vorlesungen Trigger Warnings nutzt"
Our own Prof. Dr. Eva von Contzen (English Literature) was featured in an article for fudder.de on her use of trigger warnings during her in-class instruction. You can read the full article (in German) here.
02/2022
50 Jahre Lehre in der Anglistik
100 (!) Lehrsemester hat die emeritierte Professorin Prof. Dr. Ursula Schaefer in der englischen Sprachwissenschaft und Mediävistik gelehrt. Aufgenommen hat sie ihre Lehrtätigkeit zum WS 1971/72 an der Universität Freiburg, wo sie auch bislang 56 Semester absolviert hat. Neben Freiburg zählt auch eine Reihe weiterer deutscher und amerikanischer Universitäten zu den Stationen ihres Wirkens.
Im Namen des Englischen Seminars gratulierten Prof. Schaefer zu ihrem außergewöhnlichen Jubiläum ihre langjährigen Wegbegleiter, ihr Kollege Prof. Christian Mair und der Geschäftsführer des Englischen Seminars, Dr. Gert Fehlner, und wünschten der beliebten Jubilarin noch viele weitere Semester an ihrer Alma Mater.
50 years of teaching English Studies
Prof. Dr. Ursula Schaefer, Professor Emerita, has taught 100 (!) semesters in English Linguistics and Medieval Studies. She began teaching in the winter semester of 1971/72 at the University of Freiburg, where she has taught 56 semesters to date. Alongside her instruction here, she has also taught at a number of other German and American universities.
Prof. Schaefer's long-time colleagues Prof. Christian Mair and Dr. Gert Fehlner, Head of Administration, congratulated her on behalf of the English Department, wishing the beloved jubilarian many more semesters at her alma mater.
11/11/2021
Bernd Kortmann, Professor of English language and linguistics at the department, was voted President-elect by the members of the International Society for the Linguistics of English (ISLE). As of now he will be a member of the ISLE board for a total of six years, his two-year term as President of ISLE to begin in the summer of 2023.
10/2021