Maria Hornisch
Maria Hornisch (née Weber) is a doctoral candidate and lecturer at the Institute of English Literature at the University of Kassel. In her doctoral project, she is investigating the entanglements of horror literature and apocalypse in the context of the climate crisis in the works of Jeff VanderMeer, Margaret Atwood and Cormac McCarthy. She is a member of the Climate Thinking working group, which deals with climate change from a humanities and cultural studies perspective. Her research interests include the processing of climate-related fears in contemporary literature, representations of the non- and more-than-human, genre theory and gender studies.
Scientific career
Since 2021 | PhD with Prof. Dr. Susanne Bach: Ghosts of our own making. The Ecogothic in Contemporary Apocalyptic Fiction (working title). |
Since 2021 | Scholarship holder of the doctoral scholarship of the University of Kassel |
2021 | 1st state examination for the subject History (1.0) |
2020 | Interdisciplinary study program in Women's and Gender Studies (1.0) |
2013-2021 | Studied to become a secondary school teacher of German and English at the Universities of Kassel and Birmingham (UK), Degree: 1st state examination (1.2) Thesis: Uncanny Memories and the Return of the Dead. The Postmodern Gothic in Margaret Atwood (1.0) |
Professional career
Since 2021 | Lecturer, Literary Studies (English Studies) |
| 2020-2022 | Coordinator of the Interdisciplinary Working Group Women's and Gender Studies |
2020-2021 | Propaedeutic course in literary studies, "Writing a Term Paper in British and American Literary Studies" (English/American Studies) |
2015-2021 | Tutor, Literary Studies (English/American Studies), "Introduction to British and American Literatures", Dr. Lars Heiler |
2014-2020 | Student assistant, Literary Studies (English/American Studies) |
2018-2019 | First semester introduction of the Faculty of Humanities 02, Humanities and Cultural Studies (German and English Studies) |
2018-2019 | Tutor, Interdisciplinary Working Group Women's and Gender Studies, "Interdisciplinary Introductory Course: Fundamentals of Women's and Gender Studies" |
2018-2019 | Tutor, Linguistics (German Studies), "Introduction to German Linguistics", Prof. Dr. Andreas Gardt |
2017 | Tutor, Literary Studies (German Studies), "Introduction to the Literature of the Enlightenment", Prof. Dr. Stefan Greif |
2024 | Editorship of the anthology Apocalypse and Apathy. Action(in)ability in the context of the climate crisis (withMartin Böhnert and Annika Rink) [in planning] |
| 2024 | "'Annihilation' of the Gendered Human: Ecogothic Transgressions of Anthropocentrism in Jeff Vandermeer's Annihilation", in: Sarah Faber and Kerstin-Anja Münderlein (eds.), New Directions in Gothic Studies: Rethinking Gothic Transgressions of Gender and Sexuality, Routledge, 2024 (with Tamara Schmitt). |
2020 | "'She went softly to him and drove the peg into his temple': Intersections of Gender and Space in Aritha van Herk's The Tent Peg and The Book of Judges 4-5", in: Tamara Schmitt et al. (eds.), Intersections of Gender and Myth in Canadian Culture and Media, UB Paderborn, 2020. (with Sarah Jäger) |
2019 | "The Subversive Staging of Homoeroticism and Homosexuality in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell", in: Susanne Bach (ed.), Erotik in Theater und Literatur, WVT, 2019. |
| 2024 | 15th Annual Conference of the Society for Fantastic Research "Fantastic Climates", September 05-07, University of Kassel |
2023 | Lecture at the Graduate Conference of the Faculty of Humanities and Cultural Studies (GeKKo): Die Geister, die wir riefen: Entanglements of apocalypse and horror literature in the context of the climate crisis |
2022-2023 | Lecture series: Apocalypse and apathy. The (in)ability to act in the context of the climate crisis |