German

Dr Ben Hutchinson

BA, M.St. D.Phil (Oxon)

Email: bh66@kent.ac.uk

 

Profile

Ben Hutchinson joined the University of Kent in 2007. He studied at the Universities of Bristol, Vienna and Oxford (where he took a Masters in European Literature and a D.Phil in German literature [2004]), after which he lectured at St. John’s College, Oxford for the year 2004-5, then spent two years as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Oxford and an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Marbach. His research ranges broadly across modern European literature (with a particular focus on German poetry and prose), and revolves around questions of style, around what Nietzsche calls 'slow reading'. Publications include monographs on Rilke, Sebald, and Modernism and Style, as well as essays and chapters on Améry, Bassani, Domin, Dujardin, Gadamer, Geoffrey Hill, Handke, Hofmannsthal, and Frank Kermode. He has given guest lectures at institutions across Europe, including Oxford, Heidelberg, Marbach, and the ENS Paris. Amongst other activities he writes for numerous newspapers and journals such as the Times Literary Supplement and The Observer.

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Research

Current major research projects

  • Writing a monograph on constructions of lateness in modern European literature
  • Co-editing a volume of essays on Jean Améry (2012)
  • Co-editing a volume of essays on 'European Poetry and Sculpture' (2013)

Conference organization

Recent media work

Recent papers, guest lectures and conferences (selected)

  • UEA: 'A Brief History of Archive Time' (February 2012)
  • Poitiers: 'W.G. Sebald et l'ecole de Francfort' (November 2011)
  • St. Andrews: ‘From Pure Style to Purely Style? Modernism and the “Absolute Manner”’ (October 2011)
  • IGRS, London: 'Modernism and the Erotics of Style', Modernist Eroticisms (May 2011)
  • DLA, Marbach: Podium discussion on 'Die Suhrkamp-Ära' (January 2011)
  • Rilke Gesellschaft: 'Rilkes Widmungsgedichte für Hedwig Bernhard' (September 2010)
  • DLA, Marbach: 'Hans-Georg Gadamer und Frank Kermode', Gadamer und die Literaturwissenschaft (March 2010)
  • Malta: '"Les Affres du Style": Flaubert's letters and modernist self-styling', Style in Theory / Styling Theory Conference (November 2009)
  • HMI, Leeds: Co-organizing European Poets and Sculptors in the 20th Century (Nov 2009)
  • Heidelberg: 3 guest lectures on 'Late Style' (Hill, Rilke, Sebald) (May 2009)
  • Tel Aviv: Young Koenigswinter Alumni Conference (April 2009)
  • DLA, Marbach: "‘“Zerrissen von inneren Widersprüchen”: Paradoxien eines Positivisten’, Jean Améry – Literatur zwischen Erinnerung, Politik und Selbstsuche (January 2009)
  • UKC, Canterbury: '"Ein Penelopewerk des Vergessens?" W.G. Sebald's Poetics of Forgetting' (September 2008)
  • IGRS, London: '“Ah, diese chronischen Mißverständnisse!" The hermeneutics of ‘understanding’ in Hofmannsthal's Der Schwierige' (May 2008)
  • ENS, Paris: ‘“Ankunft”: spätes Gedicht oder frühes Motiv?’ (April 2008)
  • CUTG, Nottingham: ‘“Ich bin Ich im Altern durch meinen Körper und gegen ihn”: Jean Amérys Grammatik des Alterns als Dialog mit der französischen Philosophie’ (April 2008)
  • UKC, Canterbury: '"Raw with late wisdom": Geoffrey Hill's A treatise of civil power' (April 2008)
  • UKC, Canterbury: ‘“Der Erzähler als Schutzengel?”: W.G. Sebald’s reading of Giorgio Bassani' (February 2008)

Young-Koenigswinter alumni events, 2008

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Publications

Monographs

Edited volumes

Journal articles and book chapters

  • 'Der Schatten des Widerstandes’. W.G. Sebald and the Frankfurt School, Journal of European Studies 41: 3-4 (2011), 267-84
  • ‘Archive Time’ (with Shane Weller), Comparative Critical Studies, 8:2–3 (2011), pp. 133–53.
  • 'Une écriture blanche? Style and symbolism in Les Lauriers sont coupés', Modern Language Review, 106.3 (July 2011), 709-23
  • '"Moreplovac" ili "Zemljoradnik"? Nekoliko razmisljanja o Zebaldovom citanju eseja "Pripovedac" Valtera Benjamina', Polja, godina LVI / broj 469 (maj / jun 2011), 265-79
  • '"Recuperative temperaments“? Hans-Georg Gadamer und Frank Kermode', Text und Interpretation - Hans-Georg Gadamers Philosophische Hermeneutik und die Literaturwissenschaft (Heidelberg: Winter, 2011)
  • ‘"Ah, diese chronischen Mißverständnisse!" The Hermeneutics of “Understanding” in Hofmannsthal’s Der Schwierige’, The Nameable and the Unnameable: Hofmannsthal's Der Schwierige Revisited (Munich/London: Iudicium/IGRS, 2011), 80-93
  • ‘Dichterin der Rückkehr. Hilde Domin in retrospect’, Modern Language Review, 105.2 (April 2010), 479-86
  • 'Jean Amérys Dialog mit dem französischen Strukturalismus’, Strukturalismus in Deutschland: Literatur- und Sprachwissenschaft 1910-1975 (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2010), 308-20
  • ‘“Ankunft”: spätes Gedicht oder frühes Motiv?’, Nach Duino (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2010), 109-22
  • '“Der Frosch der Kritik”. Interview with Sir Frank Kermode', Zeitschrift für Ideengeschichte, 2010, vol.1, 47-58
  • ‘"Raw with late wisdom”: Geoffrey Hill’s A Treatise of Civil Power’, Modern Language Review, 104.4 (October 2009), 947-961
  • ‘“Ein Penelopewerk des Vergessens”? W.G. Sebald’s Poetics of
    Forgetting’, Forum for Modern Language Studies 45 (July 2009), 325-336
  • ‘“Seemann” oder “Ackermann”? Überlegungen zu W.G. Sebalds Lektüre von Walter Benjamins Essay “Der Erzähler"', W.G. Sebald and Expatriate Writing (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009), 277-98
  • ‘“Ici commence l’indicible”. Hans Blumenbergs Lektüre des späten Rilke’, Etudes germaniques 63, 1/2008, 115-29
  • ‘“Ich bin Ich im Altern durch meinen Körper und gegen ihn”: Jean Amérys Grammatik des Alterns als Dialog mit der französischen Philosophie’, Jahrbuch für internationale Germanistik XL, 1/2008, 119-34
  • ‘Bausteine 3: Sprachen’, Wandernde Schatten: W.G. Sebalds Unterwelt, Marbacher Katalog 62 (2008), 114-27
  • ‘Introduction’ to The Book of Hours (New York: Camden House, 2008)
  • ‘Jean Améry’s semiotics of exile’, Fünfzig Jahre Staatsvertrag: Schreiben, Identität und das unabhängige Österreich (München: Iudicium, 2008), 83-93
  • ‘“Der Erzaehler als Schutzengel?”: W.G. Sebald’s reading of Giorgio Bassani’, Gegenwartsliteratur, 6/2007, 69-9.
  • ‘Wozu Denker in dürftiger Zeit?’  Review-Essay on Jean Améry, IASL-Online, February 2007
  • ‘Die Leichtigkeit der Schwermut: W.G. Sebalds Kunst der Levitation’, Jahrbuch der deutschen Schillergesellschaft 50 (2006), 457-477
  • ‘Narrative status and its implications’, W. G. Sebald: History - Memory – Trauma (Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 2006), 171-182
  • ‘The Structure of the Double-Bind in W.G. Sebald’, Revista de Filología Alemana vol.14 (2006), 101-111
  • ‘“Ist das der Eingang eines neuen Lebens?” Rilke’s Thresholds as an Inversion of Passivity’, German Life and Letters, 58/1 (2005), 13-21
  • ‘The Uses of “Zittern” in the Early Rilke’, Focus on German Studies, vol. 11 (2004), 135-46

Newspaper articles and reviews

Observer

Times Literary Supplement

  • Review of George Steiner, The Poetry of Thought, 28/03/2012
    • http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1004392.ece
  • Review of new translations of Rilke, 30/09/2011
  • Review of Malte Herwig, Meister der Daemmerung, 05/08/2011
  • Review of The Cambridge Companion to Rilke, 21/05/2010
  • Commentary on the Siegfried Unseld Archive, 23/04/2010
  • Review of Friedrich Hölderlin, Essay and Letters, 12/02/2010
  • Review of Walter Kappacher, Der Fliegenpalast, 20/11/2009
  • Review of Rainer Maria Rilke/Eva Cassirer Briefwechsel, 16/10/2009
  • Review of Theodor Storm translations, 15/05/2009
  • Review of Rilke's The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, 13/02/2009
  • Review of Rainer Maria Rilke / Norbert von Hellingrath, Briefe und Dokumente, 06/02/2009
  • Review of W.G. Sebald, Über das Land und das Wasser. Ausgewählte Gedichte 1964-2001, 14/11/2008
  • Review of Nicholas Boyle’s German Literature. A Very Short Introduction, 20/06/2008
  • Article on Jean Améry, 04/04/2008
  • Article on Peter Handke, 16/06/2007
  • Review of Ilke Scheidgen, biography of Hilde Domin, 24/11/2006
  • Review of Michael Krueger, Die Turiner Komoedie, 7/4/2006

 

Modern Language Review

  • Review of The Undiscover’d Country: W. G. Sebald and the Poetics of Travel (Ed. Markus Zisselsberger), 107.3 (2012)
  • Review of Saturn's Moons: W.G. Sebald - A Handbook (Ed. Jo Catling, Richard Hibbitt), 107.2 (2012)
  • Review of Visualising the Holocaust (Ed. David Bathrick, Brad Prager & Michael D. Richardson), 105.2 (2010)
  • Review of George Schoolfield, Young Rilke and his Time, 104.4 (2009)
  • Review of Chloe Paver, Refractions of the Third Reich in German and Austrian Fiction and Film, 103.3 (2008)
  • Review of Martyn Crucefix’s translation of the Duino Elegies, 103.1 (2008)
  • Review of Volker Durr, Rainer Maria Rilke: The Poet's Trajectory, 102.3 (2007)
  • Review of Eric Santner, On Creaturely Life, 102.2 (2007)
  • Review of Friederike Eigler, Generationenromane, 102.1 (2007)
  • Review of W.G. Sebald: Politische Archäologie und melancholische Bastelei (Ed. Michael Niehaus & Claudia Oehlschläger),102.1 (2007)
  • Review of Irene Heidelberger-Leonard, Jean Améry: Revolte in der Resignation, 101.3 (2006)
  • Review of Anne Fuchs, Die Schmerzenspuren der Geschichte: Zur Poetik der Erinnerung in W.G. Sebalds Prosa, 100.4 (2005)
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Teaching

Undergraduate:

  • GE301 Post A-Level German
  • GE547/52 Desire and Identity in Modern Germany
  • GE506 German Dissertation
  • GE566/7 German Modernism
  • GE571/1 The Lyric Imagination
  • GE573/4 The German Novelle

Postgraduate:

I also teach on the following modules for Comparative Literature:

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German, School of European Culture and Languages, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NF

Enquiries: +44 (0)1227 827159 or email German

Last Updated: 02/04/2012