Centre for Translation and Comparative Cultural Studies
 

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Maike Oergel

Professor of German and Comparative Cultural Studies (Director of the Centre for Translation and Comparative Cultural Studies), Faculty of Arts

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Biography

I hold an M.A. in English, German and Art History from the University of Hamburg in Germany and a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of East Anglia. In 1994 I was appointed as Lecturer in German here at Nottingham, promoted to Associated Professor in 2003 and to Professor of German and Comparative Cultural Studies in March 2019. I am the Director of the Centre for Translation and Comparative Cultural Studies. From 2010 to 2017, I co-edited Comparative Critical Studies, the journal of the British Comparative Literature Association. My field is 18th- and 19th-century cultural, literary, and intellectual history in Germany and Britain. I am particularly interested in the relationships between language(s), ideas, cultural identity, and cultural practice. My research focuses on interdisciplinary and comparative approaches to cultural identity construction, the circulation of ideas, and cultural transfer processes.

Expertise Summary

  • Enlightenment and Romanticism
  • Anglo-German cultural relations 1750-1900
  • constructions of national identities (German, English, British, the Germanic/Teutonic)
  • aesthetic and political radicalisms (Sturm & Drang, German nationalism/Befreiungskriege, Burschenschaften)
  • concepts of Zeitgeist
  • translation studies

My key area of expertise is 18th and early 19th-century English and German intellectual and cultural history, especially the construction of the concepts of modernity, national identity, and historicity in the context of the Enlightenment and Romanticism.

Comparative Studies/Literature

My first book The Return of King Arthur and the Nibelungen: National Myth in 19th-century English and German Literature (1998) was the first study to investigate the similarities between notions of the Germanic/Teutonic in 19th-century German and English thinking, and their importance for the construction of national identities in both national contexts, filling a gap in the understanding of Anglo-German intellectual relations. I have published widely on the concept of the Germanic as well as the importance of the mythic in 19th-century German and English literature, thought, and identity since.

Interdisciplinary Links between Ideas, Revolution and Identity

My interest in the idea of the national as revolutionary around 1800 produced a volume of essays entitled Counter-Cultures in Germany and Central Europe: From Sturm und Drang to Baader-Meinhof (2003), co-edited with Steve Giles. Studying the paradigm shift from Enlightenment to Romanticism I became interested in the idea of historicity as a defining category of modern thought, which, as I have argued in my second monograph, leads to the emergence of the modern Denkmodell of dialectics: Culture and Identity: Historicity in German Literature and Thought 1770-1815 (2006). This study explores how the emergence of modern historical awareness defines German thought on cultural and national identity and critically informs the work of one of the most significant German writers of that time, Johann Wolfgang Goethe. The research for this project was funded by the AHRB.

Cultural Transfer

My interest in the link between ideas, literature, and politics resulted in an edited volume of essays on the 'revolutionary' 1790s in Germany, Britain and France: Re-Writing the Radical. Enlightenment, Revolution and Cultural Transfer (2012), which looks at the ways in which radical ideas were dealt with following the French Revolution. I am currently completing a project on Zeitgeist, funded by a Leverhulme Fellowship, which investigates the origins and emergence of this concept around 1800 and formulates a conceptual definition of Zeitgeist which demonstrate its usefulness as a methodology for understanding international transfer processes by identifying the conditions under which ideas travel 'successfully' between disciplines and national contexts.

Translation Studies

As a comparatist, I am also interested in translation, in theory and practice. I have published a translation of Lou Andreas-Salome's Drei Briefe an einen Knaben (2016) and have contributed to the British Academy-funded project Frantz Fanon in and through Translation, the essay 'The Contexts of the German Translations of Frantz Fanon's Les Damnés de la terre' (2017).

Teaching Summary

My areas of teaching are Translation Studies, German Studies and Comparative Literature, both at undergraduate and postgraduate level. In the past I taught extensively in the area of Enlightenment… read more

Research Summary

My principal area of research focuses, from comparative and interdisciplinary angles, on constructions of modern cultural identities (1750-1850), especially the idea of the Germanic, the concept of… read more

My areas of teaching are Translation Studies, German Studies and Comparative Literature, both at undergraduate and postgraduate level. In the past I taught extensively in the area of Enlightenment studies and Romantic literature and thought. I supervise PhD projects in the areas of cultural transfer, translation studies and Romanticism.

I welcome enquiries about PhD supervision in the areas of comparative cultural and intellectual history (18th and 19th c, especially English and German), constructions of national histories and cultural identities, cultural transfer and literary translation. I am particularly interested in comparative projects, and interdisciplinary work on intellectual history, historiography and literature.

For many years I convened the Undergraduate Ambassadors for Modern Foreign Languages- module, which supports the School's community engagement activities by sending final year students into local schools to deliver a teaching project to stimulate interest in their language.

Current Research

My principal area of research focuses, from comparative and interdisciplinary angles, on constructions of modern cultural identities (1750-1850), especially the idea of the Germanic, the concept of historicity, constructions of national identities, and modern political radicalisms. Within 18th and 19th-century English and German intellectual and cultural history, I am particularly interested in cultural contact and exchange between Britain and Germany and the impact of such contact on national and cultural self-definitions. I have recently completed a project on Zeitgeist, funded by a Leverhulme Fellowship, which investigates the origins and emergence of this concept in the 18th century, its redefinition in Germany in the wake of the French Revolution and its transfer to Britain in the 1820s. The study formulates a conceptual definition of Zeitgeist which demonstrate its usefulness as a methodology for understanding not just the triggers of historical change but equally the international transfer processes which accompany such change by identifying the conditions under which ideas travel 'successfully' between disciplines and national contexts. I am currently working on a co-authored monograph on interdisciplinary approaches to investigate the dynamics of cultural change. These approaches focus on analyzing the relationship between the emergence and transnational circulation of new ideas and the cultural practices they derive from or generate, and the agents in this process: Zeitgeist, Cultural Patterns, Elites and their Audiences: Interdisciplinary Approaches to investigate Circulation and Cultural Change.

I am also interested in the theory and practice of translation. In 2016 I published the first English translation of Lou Andreas Salomé' s Drei Briefe an einen Knaben (Sex and Religion. Two Texts of Early Feminist Psychoanalysis by Lou Andreas Salomé) and contributed to to the British Academy-funded research project 'Frantz Fanon in and through Translation' in 2017.

Past Research

I have worked extensively, from comparative and interdisciplinary angles, on constructions of modern cultural identities (1750-1850), especially the idea of the Germanic, the concept of historicity, constructions of national identities, and modern political radicalisms.

Comparative Studies/Literature and National Identity

My first book The Return of King Arthur and the Nibelungen: National Myth in 19th-century English and German Literature (1998) was the first study to investigate the similarities between notions of the Germanic/Teutonic in 19th-century German and English thinking, and their importance for the construction of national identities in both national contexts, filling a gap in the understanding of Anglo-German intellectual relations. I have published widely on the concept of the Germanic as well as the importance of the mythic in 19th-century German and English literature, thought, and identity since.

Interdisciplinary Links between Ideas, Revolution and Identity

My interest in the idea of the national as revolutionary around 1800 produced a volume of essays entitled Counter-Cultures in Germany and Central Europe: From Sturm und Drang to Baader-Meinhof (2003), co-edited with Steve Giles. Studying the paradigm shift from Enlightenment to Romanticism I became interested in the idea of historicity as a defining category of modern thought, which, as I have argued in my second monograph, leads to the emergence of the modern Denkmodell of dialectics: Culture and Identity: Historicity in German Literature and Thought 1770-1815 (2006). This study explores how the emergence of modern historical awareness defines German thought on cultural and national identity and critically informs the work of one of the most significant German writers of that time, Johann Wolfgang Goethe. The research for this project was funded by the AHRB.

Cultural Transfer

My interest in the link between ideas, literature, and politics resulted in an edited volume of essays on the 'revolutionary' 1790s in Germany, Britain and France: Re-Writing the Radical. Enlightenment, Revolution and Cultural Transfer (2012), which looks at the ways in which radical ideas were dealt with following the French Revolution. My most recent monograph, Zeitgeist. How Ideas Travel. Culture, Politics and the Public in the Age of Revolution (2019), which was funded by a Leverhulme Fellowship, investigates the origins and emergence of this concept around 1800 and its transfer to Britain. The study shows that the zeitgeist discussions around 1800 contributed to the formation of modern politics and capture key aspects of how ideas are disseminated within societies and across borders, providing a way of reading history horizontally.

Translation Studies

As a comparatist, I am also interested in translation, in theory and practice. I have published the first English translation of Lou Andreas-Salome's Drei Briefe an einen Knaben (2016) and contributed the essay 'The Contexts of the German Translations of Frantz Fanon's Les Damnés de la terre' ( 2017) to the British Academy-funded project Frantz Fanon in and through Translation.

Future Research

Anglo-German relations during the Napoleonic Wars