Projects
Visual Downtoning. A systematic comparison of downtoning patterns in German co-speech gesture and in German Sign Language. KU Leuven
In language studies, the term 'downtoning' is used for the expression of subtle nuances which can be added to an utterance without changing its truth value, in that they indicate, for instance, the speaker's view on the content of the utterance, or give an indication about which reaction the speaker expects from the hearer. Previous research on German downtoning particles (a particular kind of marker of downtoning) has shown that when people ...
Eastbound: The circulation and reception of translations of Dutch literature in the German language area, 1850 - 1990 KU Leuven
Eastbound aims to give insight into the complex mechanism of bringing literature into circulation in a transnational context. In a first step the project investigates the translation flows of literature from the Netherlands and Flanders to the German language area between 1850 and 1990 from a macro perspective based on bibliographic data. This gives i. a. insights into which authors were translated, when and by whom. Based on this initial ...
The Prussian Phantasm. Imaginations of Prussia in 20th- and 21st-Century German Literature. KU Leuven
Since the mid-19th century, Prussia has been mythologised as a vigorous European superpower, which played a pivotal role in the political, socio-economic, intellectual and cultural life of Europe in general and Germany in particular. Conceived as it was as a progressive, enlightened and efficiently-run state as well as a centre of reaction, militarism and imperialism, the legacy of Prussia is profoundly ambivalent. This Janus-faced status has ...
Rethinking immunity in the German novel between 1918 and 1942. KU Leuven
Re-mapping the transnational spread of the novel: French pseudo-translations in German translation (1731-1776). KU Leuven
From Rhetoric to Interdiscursivity: Reception of a Cultural Paradigm Shift in German Literature After 1800 KU Leuven
Between 1500 and 1800, rhetoric held a dominant position in European culture. Not only did it serve as a set of formal rules, but it also represented a system of human virtues and a mode of cultural thinking. As such, it was closely tied to absolutist monarchies and Christianity. It played a central role in education until well into the 19th century. However, after 1800 rhetoric lost its social function as an all-encompassing cultural system. ...
From Royal Chamber to Bedroom ? Imaginations of Female Sovereignty in German Women Writers' Literature between Ancien Régime and Modernity. KU Leuven
Women disappeared from public political life after the French Revolution. Their participation in politics was foreclosed by their civil subordination and relegation to the private sphere. For more than thousand years female sovereignty had been a political possibility throughout Europe's Ancien Regime. But in the long nineteenth century, with its angst-ridden gender dichotomies, political discourse erased women’s participation in or even ...