Research

• Heroic epic of the High and Late Middle Ages
   
• Minne and aventiure novels
   
• Medial forms of mediation and representation
   
• Medieval reception in literature, comics, film and theater
   
• Gender research and historical intersectionality
   
• Relationalities of animals, humans, and society
   

• Literary Learning and Medieval Media Alliances
   

• Cultural-historical and theory-critical learning in the teaching of German

HUMANIMAL storytelling: Animal-human relationality from a cultural-historical perspective.

(Interdisciplinary LOEWE-focus "Animal - Human - Society: Approaches of an interdisciplinary animal research" 2014-2017; opening and completion of habilitation 10/2021-01/2023).

In a systematizing introduction and in 13 essays, literarily designed animal-human relationships are examined from a diachronic and intermedial perspective, incorporating the new approaches of Human-Animal Studies. A large part of the present studies of the cumulative postdoctoral work emerge from several years of research activity in the interdisciplinary LOEWE research focus "Animal - Human - Society: Approaches to Interdisciplinary Animal Studies" (2014-2017). Through a theory-based and diachronic 'search for traces', it was possible to show how an animal-human relationality - specifically, the ambiguous co-constitution of animal and human figures in their literary and medial constitution - opens up a discursive space of possibility in narrative within and between different times, genres, media, and contexts. Here the question arises how a HUMANIMAL narrative, i.e. an entanglement of humans and animals, of culture and nature, of civilized and wildness, already inherent in the representation, is designed and interpreted in textual and pictorial representations as ambiguous . The merging of two words and the capitalization of the term deliberately open up several readings, which is designed towards this ambiguity.

However, in the selected objects of comparison of the Middle Ages and modernity, it does not only exist per se as a specific characteristic of literary and media texts, but in its different manifestations it is essentially dependent on historically changeable and often also conflicting perspectives on animal-human relationality. This contrasting of different types of relationships encourages reflection on the scope of action in narrative and in the cultural otherness of what is narrated. The procedure of diachronically comparing the thematization and evaluation of relational modes of negotiation across historical distance is thereby fundamentally characterized by a tension between alterity and similarity. For which animals are associated with which attributions and forms of relationship, or which animal-related feelings are appealed to in which context and with which intention, is subject to cultural-historical change. At the same time, however, spontaneous experiences of the similarity of what is narrated and the present lifeworld also arise. The question of the respective status of the animals in the structure of relationships also structures the positioning of the respective narrative instances in relation to the story they tell.

HeldenGeschlechtNarrationen: Gender, Intersectionality, and Transformation in the Song of the Nibelungs and in Nibelungen Adaptations (2008-2011, publication 2/2014).

As a diachronic and media-comparative gender analysis, the dissertation turns to the reception of the Middle High German Nibelungenlied in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries and, incorporating the intersectionality debate in sociology, asks in a multi-level analysis about gender- and media-specific processes of production and representation. The three main manuscripts of the Song of the Nibelungs, the Lament, Friedrich Hebbel's Trauerspiel, Fritz Lang's silent film adaptation, and Moritz Rinke's television theatrical adaptation are compared to each other with the goal of determining the relationship between gender and narration. This orientation is to be seen as the innovative potential of the work, because until now there has been a lack of comparative studies that address diachronically viewed gender constructions with the inclusion of media- and culture-specific as well as narratological points of view.

• DFG application for a dedicated position: "Heroic Heterogeneity: Reflexive Diversity, Intersectionality and Cultural-Historical Competence in Literary Education" (03/21 submitted for review)
  
  The subject-didactically oriented project takes a look at diversity-conscious concepts in literary learning and follows the approach of an intersectional and cultural-historical competence orientation in (high) school practice contexts. It is based on concepts developed and tested in university teaching and learning projects. However, how a teaching and learning concept can be designed in universities and schools that does not simply perpetuate social labels, but instead focuses on individualized, cultural-historically oriented learning starting from the literary subject area, that explores the potentials of diversity and incorporates approaches critical of discrimination, this still proves to be a research desideratum to a large extent. The planned project starts exactly here and stands for the linking of diversity-conscious approaches with literary-aesthetic competencies, which are to be examined on the basis of historical media associations and tried out in literary learning.
• Development of a subject-specific didactic project "Animal Knowledge in Transfer: From Manuscripts to the World Wide Web" (since 1/2021)
  The project focuses on cultural-historical and animal-theoretical perspectives on late medieval, early modern and contemporary formations of learning with animals. This is a disciplinary and didactic project that I am testing over two semesters using a collaborative online encyclopedia. Starting from late medieval animal customers such as Konrad von Megenberg's"Book of Nature", the materiality and mediality of the small form "animal articles" in manuscripts and prints will be illuminated as a multi-layered teaching and learning arrangement and reconstructed with the help of a dynamic text and image development process­and the negotiated animal knowledge will be commented on and interpreted with students in a digital compilation.
• Collaboration on the research design of the interdisciplinary network "Gender - Inequality - Intersectionality. Research Practice in Interdisciplinary Dialogue" (2013-2014)
  
  An interdisciplinary anthology has emerged from this collaborative: Bereswill, M./ Degenring, F./ Stange, S. (eds.): Intersectionality and Research Practice - Wechselseitige Herausforderungen (Forum Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung Vol. 43), Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot 2015.
• ZFF Research Focus "Normality and Order - Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Gender" (2013-2014).

• ZFF Research Focus "Inequalities in Gender Relations" (2010-2012)

• Study group "Historical Intersectionality Research" of the Research Center for Historical Humanities at Goethe University Frankfurt (2011-2014).

• Fellow in the DFG Research Training Group "Public Spheres and Gender Relations. Dimensions of Experience" Frankfurt/Kassel (2008)
  
  The interdisciplinary research training group analyzed the conceptions of the public sphere and privacy that have become historical and are currently prevalent, as well as the related dimension of experience. These topics are particularly interesting and informative for the analysis of gender relations. The exciting combination of previously largely unconnected topics produces new insights into historical and current phenomena and developments.

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