Profile

Associate Lecturer in German and Comparative Literature

Elaine studied for BA and M.Phil. degrees in German and Irish language and literature at University College, Cork, Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, Bonn and the University of Konstanz, before coming to Kent to study for her PhD. As a Boyle scholar, her MPhil. dissertation concentrated on the late poetry of the Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmann. Her AHRC-supported doctoral thesis saw her marry her interests in Anglo-Irish and German literatures to investigate the literary relationship of Iris Murdoch and Elias Canetti. Literary associations in all their manifestations including literary marriages and maternal, paternal and sibling literary partnerships and the extent to which theories of influence and intertextuality assist an understanding of these connections are of particular interest to Elaine. Her research and teaching are concerned with twentieth-century British, German, European and American literature and film, as well as the alliance of literature and ethics and the antagonistic coupling of literature and politics. She is a member of the Conference for University Teachers of German, Women in German, The Iris Murdoch Society and the European Network for Comparative Literary Studies.

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Research

Research Interests and Teaching

I am currently working on publishing my doctoral dissertation which investigated the literary alliance of Iris Murdoch and Elias Canetti. In addition, I am interested in German-writing authors in London during and after the Second World War and the impact of their work on that of the native British literati. A future project would investigate German-writing authors who were exiled to the United States. My teaching also reflects my research interests: Guilt and Redemption in Modern Literature, Freedom and Oppression in Modern Literature (including Kafka, Brink, Gide, Joyce, Morrison, Camus, Böll), Images of Germany 1945-1990 (including Brecht, Borchert, Sachs, Fühmann, Eich, Fried, Bernhard), The Tale (including Homer, Ovid, Boccaccio, Chaucer, Conrad, Kipling, Borges, Okri, Gaiman), German-English Translation and Intermediate German language.

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Publications

‘Reassessing Iris Murdoch’s relationship to Elias Canetti’, in Iris Murdoch and Intertextuality/Interdisciplinarity (London: Palgrave, forthcoming)

Review of Daniel Faas, Negotiating Political Identities: Multiethnic Schools and Youth in Europe (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), Journal of Contemporary European Studies IV (2010)

‘Iris Murdoch’, for the Dictionnaire des femmes créatrices,eds.
Béatrice Didier, Mireille Calle-Gruber and Antoinette Fouque (Paris: Les Éditions des Femmes, forthcoming)

Sven Hanuschek, ‘“Dwarf helicoptors that land on bald heads”: Literary Nonsense in Canetti’, in The Worlds of Elias Canetti: Centenary Essays, ed. by William Collins Donahue and Julian Preece (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007), pp. 11-22

Review of Anne Peiter, Komik und Gewalt: Zur literarischen Verarbeitung der beiden Weltkrige und der Shoah (Cologne: Böhlau, 2007), The Modern Language Review, 104 (2009)

(Under consideration) ‘The Uses and Limits of Marginalia in Comparative Investigations: The Case of Iris Murdoch and Elias Canetti’, submitted to Comparative Critical Studies

(Under consideration) ‘Murdoch and “Marginal” authors: Elias Canetti and Raymond Queneau’, submitted to ‘Iris Murdoch: In the Margins’ (conference proceedings)

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Teaching

Teaching

GE307/505: Intermediate German
GE312: Images of Germany 1945-2000
GE507: Translation
CP305 Freedom and Oppression in Modern Literature
CP306 Guilt and Redemption in Modern Literature

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