literary theory

The PHD project Käte Hamburger’s Philosophy of Literature and the ‘Scientification’ of Literary Studies: The Logic of Literature (1957) in the Context of the History of Ideas (Modern German Literature) focuses the German Jewish philosopher and specialist in German studies Käte Hamburger who has held a guest professorship at Stanford University in 1968.
In 1957 Käte Hamburger published her study The Logic of Literature. This soon became well-known among narrative theory experts, both in German-speaking countries and internationally. It engendered debates beyond the field of narrative theory into the broader realm of methodology and the self-conception of German Studies. Historians have said that Hamburger’s work marked a milestone within the post-war transformation of German Studies, when the discipline was marked by the introduction of new philosophical methodological approaches. Hamburger acquired renown as the precursor to a highly systematic literary theory. New academic values which became an imperative for German studies were severely criticised during the seventies of the twentieth century for being devoid of methodological substance. They were also criticised for being opportunistic between the years 1933 and 1945. However, the canonisation of the Logic of Literature often entailed an oversimplified reading. As a result attributions were made to the work of Käte Hamburger which cannot bear critical scrutiny because they ignore the fact that her perception of literature always remained continuous with the approach of intellectual history.

The aim of this study is to contextualise the work of Käte Hamburger within the much broader debate about scientific standards in philosophy and literary studies that emerged in the twentieth century. The fact that these debates occured at different moments is important because it moots the question as to whether Käte Hamburger should be assessed as a protagonist of the impact of analytic philosophy on the ongoing methodological renewal of literary studies.
 

Petra Dierkes-Thrun’s research and teaching interests include the European and transatlantic fin de siècle and modernism (including literature, the visual arts, opera, dance, and film); feminist and queer theory; LGBTQ literary and cultural studies; and literary theory. Her book, Salome’s Modernity: Oscar Wilde and the Aesthetics of Transgression, was published by The University of Michigan Press in Spring 2011.  Other publications include articles on Oscar Wilde, Arthur Symons, Stéphane Mallarmé, George Bernard Shaw, Richard Strauss, Victoria Cross, fin-de-siècle realism, and feminism and modernist dance.  Petra Dierkes-Thrun is an Editorial Board member of Rodopi's "Dialogue" series.  She also co-edits The Latchkey: Journal of New Woman Studies  ,   a peer-reviewed, international scholarly online journal dedicated to the figure of the New Woman in fin de siècle and modernist society and culture, published by The Rivendale Press (UK) and affiliated with The Oscholars.

Haerin Shin is a Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Literature at Stanford University, working on contemporary American, Japanese and Korean literature, culture, visual media and critical theory. Born and raised in South Korea, she received her B.A. in English Literature at Seoul National University. Shin is currently completing her dissertation entitled Dialectic of Spectrality: A Transpacific Study on Being in the Age of Cyberculture, 1945~2012. 

[Dissertation Abstract]

The advent of computers, the internet and networked mobile devices throughout the latter half of the 20th century has brought abstracted flows of data to the fore of social interaction and communication. With ghost-like images flickering on computer screens, disembodied voices in phone conversations flying all over the globe, and faceless chat windows occupying our daily lives, the touch and feel of physical interaction appears to have lost its necessity, burying us in fragmented sensory inputs and free-floating information. The greater body of critical and scientific scholarship produced so far has seen this proliferation of immaterial, digitally codified data as either an evolutionary triumph of technology or a deterioration into a cold, inhuman dystopia. My dissertation (titled The Dialectic of Spectrality: Reality and Being in the Age of Digital Telecommunication Media) subverting the two contending views’ premise that material agents could be divorced from the content of consciousness and knowledge, asserts that digitalization technology in fact reinstates, rather than denies, the significance of fragmented, transgressive and incomprehensible modes of being as crucial constituents of human existence.  

[Teaching Experience]

LITERATURE

- Self-designed and taught course Complit 151 “Reality Check: Modes of Reality and Representation in the Age of Cyberculture.” Winter 2012.

- Guest lecturer on the “Persecution of the Rapper Tablo” at Korgen 201 “Korean Culture in the New Millenium.” Fall 2012.

- Course Development and Teaching Assistant. Complit 150 “Terror and Apocalypse: An Examination of Literature of Fear.” Spring 2011.

- Course Development and Teaching Assistant. Complit 12SC “Ghost Stories: Why the Dead Return and What They Want from Us.” Summer 2008 ~2012.

- Research and Coordination Assistant. English 88N “Graphic Novels Asian American Style.” Fall 2012.

- Guest Lecturer on Chris Ware’s Lost Buildings and Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth at English 87N “The Graphic Novel: Word, Image, Sound, Silence.” 22 Feb. 2010.

WRITING AND RHETORIC 

- Instructor in Program in Writing and Rhetoric (PWR) 1-38 and 1-05: Self-developed course “The Rhetoric of the Unreal: Science Fiction, Fantasies, and the Supernatural.” Winter, Spring 2009.

LANGUAGE

- Korean Instructor. Program for Advanced Language Maintenance (PALM) at Stanford University’s Center for East Asian Studies (CEAS). Fall 2011 ~Present. 

Victoria Saramago Padua is a third-year doctoral candidate in the Department of Iberian and Latin American Cultures. She is especially interested in 20th Century Latin American fiction, novel theory and relations between space and narrative.

Undergraduate Honors Thesis: "Radicalizing Crime and Punishment: Purity, Pollution, and the Pharmakos in Feodor Dostoevsky's Work."

MA Thesis: "Dostoevsky and Bakhtin" 

PhD Dissertation: "At Home in the Margins: Authorship, Autobiographical Discourse and Alterity in Vasily Rozanov's Modernist Family Tree"

Languages: Russian (native), French, Spanish, Ancient Greek