Staff research interests in German include: Austrian Studies; post-Idealist philosophy and the German lyric tradition; naturalism; modernism and 20th-century literature, especially Rilke, Kafka, Mann, W G Sebald and Jean Améry. Other areas of specialism within the School include: Beckett; Proust; the European avant-garde; modernism and postmodernism; cross-cultural transmission; translation theory; literary theory and aesthetics; Jewish writing; and literature and fundamentalism.

Research is consciously conceived as interdisciplinary, through close links with the Centre for Modern European Literature (co-directed by German). Regular research seminars help to bring postgraduates together as a community, as well as to introduce them to visiting speakers from outside the University.

We can supervise postgraduate students in any of the areas listed in our staff research interests, as well as in other main fields of German and European literature. We encourage you to contact us to discuss your plans at an early stage of your application.

Staff research interests in German include: the age of Goethe; Austrian Studies; German linguistics; modernism and 20th-century literature, especially Rilke, Kafka, Mann, Hesse, Grass, W G Sebald and Jean Améry. Other areas of specialism within the School include: Beckett; Proust; the European avant-garde; modernism and postmodernism; cross-cultural transmission; translation theory; literary theory and aesthetics; Jewish writing; and literature and fundamentalism. The list below indicates the range of current staff research interests. We can supervise postgraduate students for the degrees of MPhil or PhD in any of these areas, as well as in other main fields of German and European literature. We encourage you to contact us to discuss your plans at an early stage of your application.

Full details of staff research interests can be found on our website.

Dr Ian Cooper: Lecturer

Post-idealist philosophy and the German lyric tradition; comparative approaches to German and English poetry. Recent publications include: The Near and Distant God: Poetry, Idealism and Religious Thought (2008); Third Agents: Secret Protagonists of the Modern Imagination (co-ed, 2008); Dialectic and Paradox: Configurations of the Third in Modernity (co-ed, 2012).

Dr Deborah Holmes: Lecturer

Biography; Austrian literature; Italian literature; Feuilleton journalism. Recent publications include: Austrian Studies 16: From Ausgleich to Jahrhundertwende (co-ed, 2008); Ikonen, Helden, Außenseiter. Film und Biographie (co-ed, 2009); Interwar Vienna. Culture between Tradition and Modernity (co-ed, 2009); Langeweile ist Gift: Das Leben der Eugenie Schwarzwald (2012).

Professor Ben Hutchinson: Head of German; Director, Modern German and Comparative Literature MA; Co-director, Centre for Modern European Literature

Nineteenth and 20th-century German and European literature, especially Rilke, W G Sebald, Jean Améry, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Geoffrey Hill, 20th-century poetry, modernism. Recent publications include: Rainer Maria Rilke's The Book of Hours: A new Translation with Commentary (ed, 2008); W G Sebald Die Dialektische Imagination (2009); Modernism and Style (2011); Archive, special issue of Comparative Critical Studies 8: 2-3 (co-ed, 2011); A Literature of Restitution: Essays on W G Sebald (co-ed, 2012).

Professor Karl Leydecker: Dean of Humanities

Divorce in European literature, 18th to 20th centuries; German drama and social history, 1890-1930; Expressionism; Ernst Toller; novelists of the Weimar Republic. Recent publications include: After Intimacy: The Culture of Divorce in the West since 1789 (co-ed, 2007).

Dr Katja Haustein: Lecturer

French and German autobiographical writing; visual culture; memory and identity; literature and the emotions; women and gender; art and medicine. Recent publications include: Regarding Lost Time: Photography, Identity and Affect in Proust, Benjamin and Barthes (2012).

Dr Anna Katharina Schaffner: Senior Lecturer; Co-director, Centre for Modern European Literature

Avant-garde and neo-avant-garde literature, art, theory and film; the short story; European and American cinema; modernism and postmodernism. Recent publications include: Sprachzerlegung in historischer Avantgardelyrik und konkreter Poesie (2007); Modernism and Perversion: Sexual Deviance in Sexology and Literature, 1850-1930 (2012); Modernist Eroticisms: European Literature after Sexology (co-ed, 2012).

Dr Axel Stähler: Senior Lecturer

Jewish literature and culture; representations of the Holocaust; early modern European festival culture; the eighteenth-century novel in Europe; intermediality and ‘iconarratology'; postcolonial literature and theory; contact zones and intercultural communication; fundamentalism and literature. Recent publications include: Literarische Konstruktionen jüdischer Postkolonialität. Das britische Palästinamandat in der anglophonen jüdischen Literatur (2009); Anglophone Jewish Literature (2009); Writing Fundamentalism (co-ed, 2009).

Professor Shane Weller: Director of Postgraduate Studies in Comparative Literature; Co-director, Centre for Modern European Literature

European modernism, postmodernism and literary theory; literature and ethics; literature and philosophy. Recent publications include: Literature, Philosophy, Nihilism: The Uncanniest of Guests (2008); Samuel Beckett's Molloy (ed, 2009); Modernism and Nihilism (2011); Modernist Eroticisms: European Literature after Sexology (co-ed, 2012).

Further information:

• School website
• School staff profiles

T: +44 (0)1227 827272
E: information@kent.ac.uk

Professor Ben Hutchinson
German Literature School of European Culture and Languages, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NF, UK
T: +44 (0)1227 823077
E: b.hutchinson@kent.ac.uk

Centre for English and World Languages
T: +44 (0)1227 824069
E: premasters@kent.ac.uk
W: www.kent.ac.uk/cewl/courses/GraduateDiplomas

Before applying, please read our ‘How to apply’ section.

You can then go straight to the online application form by clicking the programme below:

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