Dr. Anne Rüggemeier

Dr. Anne Rüggemeier 

Postdoctoral Research Fellow | Principal Investigator
"Poetics of Isolation in English Literature: 17^th – 21^st Century"
Funded by the DFG | German Research Association

anne.rueggemeier@anglistik.uni-freiburg.de
☎ +49 761 203-97445

R 4206 | KG IV

CV

Anne Rüggemeier studied Comparative Literature, English and History at Eberhard-Karls University Tübingen (Germany) and at Oxford Brookes University (UK). From 2009-2013 she held a scholarship at the Gießen Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC) where she conducted a PhD project on relational autobiographies in contemporary English Literatures. In 2014/2015 she received the GCSC Career Development Grant. From 2015-2017 she worked as Junior Research Group Leader at the Heidelberg School of Education. From 2017-2022 she held a postdoc position in the ERC-funded project "Lists in Literature and Culture" and was an associated member of the research training group Factual and Fictional Narration (GRK Faktuales and fiktionales Erzählen). Since May 2022 Anne is Principal Investigator of the project "Poetics of Isolation in English Literature (17^th to 21^st century)" which is funded by the German Research Organisation (DFG “Eigene Stelle”).

RESEARCH INTERESTS

• Cultural and literary history of listmaking (18^th–21^st century)

• Life Writing Studies (Relationality, Experimental Life Writing)
• Stories and Data: Chances and Dangers of Storytelling
• Comics and Graphic Narratives (focus on Disability Studies and Narrative Medicine)
• and, of course, the question: "Why does literature matter?"

POSTDOC PROJECT

My current research project Poetics of Isolation in English Literature (17^th to 21^st century) focuses on the investigation of the ambivalent phenomenon of isolation as presented in literary texts. Covering diverse manifestations of isolation such as loneliness, solitude, retreat and confinement, I draw on a range of concepts and theoretical frameworks (e.g. spatial theory, island studies, gender studies, new formalism, disability studies and health humanities) to analyze and interpret a vast corpus of literary texts that reminds us that even before the drastic experiences related to the Covid-19 pandemic, the topic of isolation has “surfaced in prose and verse for more than two millennia” (David Vincent, History of Solitude, 2)

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCES & ACADEMIC POSITIONS

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

PUBLICATIONS

MONOGRAPHS

• Literary Lists: A Short History of Form and Function. Palgrave Macmillan, 2023. (co-authored with Eva von Contzen and Roman Barton)

• Die relationale Autobiographie: Ein Beitrag zur Theorie, Poetik und Gattungsgeschichte eines neuen Genres in der englischsprachigen Erzählliteratur. Trier: WVT, 2014.

EDITED COLLECTIONS

• Roman Barton, Julia Böckling, Sarah Link und Anne Rüggemeier, editors. Forms of List-making: Epistemic, Literary and Visual Enumeration. Palgrave Macmillian, 2022.
• Anne Rüggemeier, editor. Life Writing and the Poetics of List-Making. Forum in a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 35.3, 2020.

ENCYCLOPEDIA ARTICLE

• “Bildungsroman.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature. Oxford University Press, 2015—. Article published July 19, 2023.

BOOK CHAPTERS

• “Introduction: Epistemic and Artistic List-Making.” (with R. Barton, J. Böckling, S. Link). Forms of List-Making: Epistemic, Literary, and Visual Enumeration. Eds. Roman Barton, Julia Böckling, Sarah Link and Anne Rüggemeier. Palgrave Macmillan, 2022,1-24.
• "What's Beyond (and Beneath) the Numbers and the Measures: Where Lists and Tables Meet Visual Vocabularies." Invisible Made Visible: Comics and Mental Illness. Eds. Leah Misemer and Jessica Gross. (in preparation; under contract with Penn State University Press)
• "Self-Reflexivity in Contemporary English Auto/biographies." Transparent Texts. Self-referentiality and Self-reflexivity in Literature. Eds. Florian Lippert and Marcel Schmid. Brill / Rodopi (Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft), 2019, 239-57.
• "Von Krankheit gezeichnet – vom Bruder porträtiert. Über die Produktion und die Bedeutung von Krankheitsmetaphern in David B.s Auto/BioGRAPHIE Die heilige Krankheit." Krankheit erzählen: Texte der Gegenwartsliteratur und Perspektiven für den Literaturunterricht. Eds. Jan Standke and Dieter Wrobel. Trier: WVT, 2019. 239-60.
• "Der Autobiograph als Biograph? Relationale Selbsterzählungen in Theorie und Praxis." Sich selbst erzählen. Autobiographie – Autofiktion – Autorschaft. Eds. Sonja Arnold et al. Kiel: Steve-Holger Ludwig, 2018. 75-100.
• "Auto/biographic Metafiction and Relational Lives: Antonia S. Byatt's The Biographer's Tale (2000) and J.M. Coetzee's Summertime (2009) as Paradigms of Meta-auto/biographies." The British Novel in the Twenty-first Century: Cultural Concerns – Literary Developments – Model Interpretations. Eds. Vera Nünning and Ansgar Nünning. Trier: WVT, 2018. 283-96.
• "Kingston's The Woman Warrior in the Context of Life Writing Studies: An Exploration of Relational Selfhood." Critical Insights: The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston. Eds. Linda Trinh Moser and Kathryn West. Ipswich: Salem Press, 2016. 95-108.
• "J.M. Coetzee's Summertime – Breaking the Rules of a Genre to Create a Space for Broken Narratives." Emergent Forms of Life in Anglophone Literature: Conceptual Frameworks and Critical Analyses. Eds. Michael Basseler, Daniel Hartley and Ansgar Nünning. Trier: WVT, 2015. 231-46.
• "Narrating Selves: Generischer Wandel und gegenwärtige Entwicklungen in der Autobiographie." Key Concepts and New Topics in English and American Studies/Schlüsselkonzepte und neue Themen in der Anglistik und Amerikanistik. Eds. Ansgar Nünning and Elizabeth Kovach. Trier: WVT, 2014. 239-62.
• "Über Pop, TV und silberne Zigarettenetuis: Intermediale und materiale Inszenierungsverfahren relationaler Identität in zeitgenössischen englischsprachigen Autobiographien." Medialisierungsformen des (Auto-)Biografischen. Eds. Carsten Heinze and Alfred Hornung. Konstanz: UVK, 2013. 181-200.
• "The Re-Construction of Autobiography through Objects: Nancy K. Miller's Auto/biography What They Saved." The Cultural Dynamics of Generic Change in Contemporary Fiction: Theoretical Frameworks, Genres and Model Interpretations. Eds. Michael Basseler, Ansgar Nünning and Christine Schwanecke. Trier: WVT, 2013. 329-45.
• "Medialisierung von Lebensgeschichten: Formen und Funktionen von multimodalem Erzählen in relationalen Autobiographien." Medialisierung des Erzählens im englischsprachigen Roman der Gegenwart: Theoretischer Bezugsrahmen, Genres und Modellinterpretationen. Eds. Ansgar Nünning and Jan Rupp. Trier: WVT, 2011. 287-303.

PEER-REVIEWED JOURNAL ARTICLES

• “Lists, Vignettes, Enumerations: Contemporary Life Writing and the Gesture of Refusal toward Narrative.” Poetics Today 43.2. (2022) 363–385. 
• "Transformative List-Making: Challenging Heteronormativity and Ableism in Somatographies." Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics 11.4 (2020). 10.1080/21504857.2020.1757478
  
• Finalist Martin Schüwer-Publikationspreis
• "Introduction: Life Writing and the Poetics of List-Making: On the Manifestations, Effects, and Possible Uses of Lists in Life Writing." a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 35.3 (2020). DOI: 10.1080/08989575.2020.1815371

• "Female Mental Illness, Monstrosity, and Male Medical Discourses: Revisiting Jane Eyre." Anglistik 30.3 (2019). 73-88.
• "Shame and Shamelessness in Contexts of Care and Caregiving in Philip Roth's Patrimony (1991) and Sarah Leavitt's Tangles (2012)." EJES European Journal for English Studies 23.3. (2019). 263-80.
• ---, and Maren Scheurer. "Autobiography and/as Narcissism? Psychoanalysis and Self-Reflexive Life Writing in Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's A Dialogue on Love and Alison Bechdel's Are You My Mother?" a/b Auto/biography Studies 34.2. (2019): 167-95.
• "Lists in Life Writing: The List as a Means to Visualize the Trace of the Absent." a/b Auto/Biography Studies 34.2. (2019): 329-41.
• "The List as a Means of Assessment and Standardization and Its Critical Remediation in Graphic Narratives About Illness and Care." Closure 5 (2018). 55-82.
• "Graphic Illness: Die Krankheit im Leben der Geschwister am Beispiel von David B.s Comic Epileptic." Internationale Kinder- und Jugendliteraturforschung (interjuli) 1 (2017): 69-90.
• "'Posing for all the characters in the book': the multimodal processes of production in Alison Bechdel's relational autobiography Are You My Mother?" Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics 7 (2016): 254-67.
• "Beyond the Subject – Towards the Object? Nancy K. Miller's What They Saved: Pieces of a Jewish Past (2011) and the Materiality of Life Writing." European Journal of Life Writing (EJLW) 5 (2016): 36-54.
• "The Autobiographer as Family Archivist: Relational Autobiographies and the Many Modes of Writing a Life." Amsterdam International Electronic Journal for Cultural Narratology (AJCN) 6 (2011).

LEXICON ARTICLE

• "Coetzee, J.M. – Summertime." Kindlers Literatur Lexikon. Vol. 3. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, 2009.

REVIEWS

• Rev. of Inseln. Wunschland, Wildnis, Weltferne. Fundstücke aus Literatur und Film by Thomas Koebner. Marburg: Schüren, 2021. MEDIENwissenschaft 39.3 (2022): 325– 327.

• Rev. of Forms of Poetic Attention by Lucy Alford. New York: Columbia University Press, 2020.” Medienwissenschaft 38.1 (2021): 32-33
• "'All one can do is tell a better story.' The Ethical Potential and the Risks of Storytelling." Rev. of Storytelling and Ethics: Literature, Visual Arts and the Power of Narrative, eds. Hanna Meretoja and Colin Davis. Diegesis. International E-journal for Narrative Research/Interdisziplinäres E-Journal für Erzählforschung 7.2 (2018): 176-83.

BLOG-POSTS

• “Die Medizin – eine Checklisten-Disziplin: Zwischen Data & Stories im Krankenhausalltag.” KWI-BLOG: Die Macht der Liste, 4 May 2022. DOI: https://doi.org/10.37189/kwi-blog/20220504-0830
• with Sarah Link. "ERC Starting Grant Project on Lists in Literature and Culture at the University of Freiburg." Blog Post. Listology: Exploring Lists in All Their Possibilities. 3 June 2018.

TALKS (SELECTION)

• “Harriet Martineaus Life in the Sick Room (1844) und die Praktiken der vernetzten Isolation” 
  Die Praxeologie der Schreibszene: Schreiben und Lesen als Raum- und Beziehungspraktik
  University of Hildesheim, Germany | 13–15 March 2024
  
  
• “Experiences of Grief, Experiments with Form” (Talk and Panel Chair)
  International Auto/Biography Association: Life Writing in Times of Crisis
  University of Warsaw, Poland | 6–8 July 2023
  
  
• “The Covid Chronicles and the Practice of “Drawing our World Together”: Sharing Covid-Related Isolation while Reproducing Geopolitical Isolation?”
  Joint Conference: International Graphic Novel & Comics/ International Bande Dessinée Society: Better Living Through Comics
  University of Cambridge, UK | 4–7 July 2023 (online)
  
  
• ”Female Disability and the Isolating Forces of Shame” 
  Workshop: Autobiographical Writing and the Gestalt of Shame
  Humboldt University Berlin, Germany | 23–24 June 2023
  
  
• “Lists, Literature, and (Graphic) Medicine” 
  Webinar Series: Health, Wellbeing and Literature, Literature and Science Forum 
  University of Durham, UK | 1 June 2024 (online)
  
  
• “Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) and the Relationality of the Writing Scene"
  LitCultColloquium
  University of Freiburg, Germany | 2 May 2023
  
  
• “A natural resource to exploit”: Natasha Brown’s Assembly as Quit Lit
  MLA Annual Convention
  San Francisco | 4–9 Jan. 2023
  
  
• “Harriet Martineau: Woman, Writer, Invalid“
  Eucor Lecture Series: Victorian Women Writers
  University of Freiburg | 22 Oct. 2022 (online)
  
  
• “Between Courage & Cowardice: Ambivalences of Retreat in Female (Pre-)Romantic Poetry” 
  European Society for the Study of English (ESSE) Conference
  University of Mainz, Germany | 29 Aug. – 2 Sept. 2022
  
  
• “Where the “Mad Woman” meets the “Club Van Gogh”: A Bipolar Queer Comic Artist and the Intersectional Cultural Heritage of Madness, Femininity and the Genius” 
  Workshop: The Cultural Heritage of Psychiatry and Its Literary Transformations
  University of Dresden, Germany | 28–29 Oct. 2021
  
  
• “Daniel Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year (1722): Lists, Statistics and the Plague” 
  Nachwuchstagung „Poetik der Quantität“, Graduiertenschule für Literatur, Kultur, Medien
  University of Bamberg, Germany | 4–5 June 2021 (online)
  
  
• “The light never goes out in the clinic: Illness and the Experience of the Night” 
  Int. Conference CorpoRealities: Perceptions of ‘Extraordinary’ Time in Literature & Comics
  Freie Universität Berlin, Germany | 25-27 June 2020 (online)
  
  
• “Listen machen. Die Form der Liste zwischen (Selbst-)Evaluation, (Selbst-)Optimierung und medizinischer Alltagspraxis“
  Tagung der Robert Bosch Stiftung: Medizin und Idealvorstellungen von Körper und Verhalten
  Stuttgart, Germany | 21–23 Oct. 2020 (online)
  
  
• “Lists in Illness Narratives – the ‘Power Effect’ of Science and Comic Counterinscriptions” 
  Guest Lecture, Uses of Literature Group
  University of Southern Denmark, Odense | 11 June 2020 (online)
  
  
• “Lists and Aestheticism: Dorian’s Collections and Art’s (Thwarted) Mutiny Against Narrative” 
  International Society for the Study of Narrative (ISSN) Annual Conference
  New Orleans, USA | 5–7 Mar. 2020
  
  
• “Gibt es visuelle Listen? Einführung in Formen und Funktionen der visuellen Enumeration“ 
  Einführungsvortrag zum Workshop: Visuelle Listen in Malerei, Photographie und Comic
  Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies, Germany | 24 Jan. 2020
  
  

• "Lists in Graphic Illness Narratives"
  Que(e)rying Graphic Medicine: Paradigms, Power and Practices. Graphic Medicine Conference
  Brighton and Sussex Medical School, United Kingdom | 11–13 July 2019
  
  

• "Fragmentary Linearities: The List, Graphic Illness and the Concept of Broken Narratives"
  Panel Chaired: Lists and Narrative Configuration in Comics and Graphic Narrative
  ISSN 2019. The Society for the Study of Narrative Annual Conference.
  University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain | 30 May – 1 June 2019
  
  

• "Contesting the Experience of Illness: The Form of the List as a Means of Counter-Inscription"
  ISSN 2019. The Society for the Study of Narrative Annual Conference
  University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain | 30 May – 1 June 2019
  
  

• "Introduction"
  Workshop: Lists of Life – Life Writing and the Poetics of List Making
  Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Freiburg | 18 Jan. 2019
  
  

• "Visualizing Illness. The Remediation of Medical Imaging Techniques in Graphic Illness Narratives"
  Why Care to Write? Medical Humanities Conference
  Ulm University | 4–6 Dec. 2018
  
  

• "Illness and the List: The Knowledge of Illness between Medicine and Literature"
  Anglistentag. Jahrestagung des Deutschen Anglistenverbandes
  University of Bonn | 23–26 Sept. 2018
  
  

• "The Lists of Leisure: The Economy of Self-improvement and Relationship Management as Observed in the Cultural Practice of the Bucket List"
  Muße und Arbeit. Tagung des Sonderforschungsbereichs 1015 "Muße"
  University of Freiburg | 12–14 Apr. 2018
  
  

• "Dickens and the Language of Illness"
  Dickens and Language. 23^rd Annual Dickens Symposium
  University of Tübingen | 30 July – 1 Aug. 2018

• 
  "The Hidden Agendas of Healing – Medical Lists and the (Non)authorial Shaping of Being Ill"
  Roundtable Discussion: Hiding, Revealing, Belonging. International Auto/Biography Association World Conference
  Federal University of São João del-Rei, Brazil | 11–14 July 2018
  
  
• "Lists in Life Writing: Reading between the Lines – The List as a Means to Visualize the Trace of the Absent"
  Invited Roundtable Discussion: Hiding, Revealing, Belonging. International Auto/Biography Association World Conference
  Federal University of São João del-Rei, Brazil | 11–14 July 2018
• "Coetzee's Summertime: Broken Narrative and the Curse of Coherence"
  Annual Meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA)
  University of Utrecht, Netherlands | 6–9 July 2017
  
  
• "Fakt und Fiktion in digitalen Krankheitserzählungen: Beispiele, Funktionen und die Frage nach einem 'pacte automédiatique.'"
  Workshop: Fakt/Fiktion – Referentielle Multimodalität in der digitalen Medienkultur
  University of Tübingen | 1–2 June 2017
  
  
• "Der unfreiwillige inklusive Blick – Thematisierung und (graphische) Darstellung von Krankheit und Behinderung aus der Perspektive von Geschwisterkindern"
  Konferenz. Der inklusive Blick II. Kinder- und Jugendliteratur im Fokus
  University of Cologne | 17–18 March 2017
  
  
• "'I Pose for All the Characters in My Book': The Multimodal Processes of Production in Alison Bechdel's Are You My Mother?"
  Winter School: Transmedial Narratology – Theories and Methods
  University of Tübingen | 23–26 Febr. 2016
  
  
• "Challenging the Life Course: Narratives of Disruption in Contemporary English Literatures"
  The Failed Individual. Research & Study Centre Dynamics of Change
  University of Mannheim | 12–14 Nov. 2015
  
  
• "Broken Narratives and the Curse of Coherence"
  The Ethics of Storytelling: Historical Imagination in Contemporary Literature, Media and the Visual Arts
  University of Turku, Finland | 4–7 June 2015
  
  
• "Beyond the Subject, towards the Object? Auto/biographical Objects as Triggers for Re-Thinking the Ideologies of a Genre"
  Beyond the Subject: New Developments in Life Writing. International Auto/biography Association Europe
  Ludwig Boltzmann Institute, Vienna, Austria | 31 Oct.–3 Nov. 2013
  
  
• "How I Found My Family in a Drawer: Nancy K. Miller's What They Saved and the Framing of Multimodal Artefacts in Relational Life Narratives"
  Narrative Matters: Life & Narrative. Sixth Biannual Interdisciplinary Conference on Narrative Research
  American University of Paris, France | 29 May–1 June 2012
  
  
• "Intermediale Selbstpräsentationen als Inszenierungsverfahren interpersonaler Identitätskonzepte"
  Medialisierungsformen des (Auto-)biographischen und ihre Kommunikationskontexte
  Sektion Biographieforschung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Soziologie
  Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences, University of Hamburg | 2–4 Dec. 2011
  
  
• "The Autobiographer as Family Archivist: Forms and Functions of Multimodality in Relational Autobiographies"
  Working with Stories: Narrative as a Meeting Place for Theory, Analysis and Practice. Second European Narrative Network Conference
  University of Southern Denmark, Kolding | 10–11 March 2011
  
  
• "Peter Handke's Immer Noch Sturm as an Example of Relational Life Writing in Europe"
  Trajectories of (Be)longing: Europe in Life Writing. International Auto/biography Association Europe
  Talinn University, Estonia | 18–20 May 2011