Dr. Julia Ditter

Julia Ditter is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Konstanz. She holds a PhD in English literature from Northumbria University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and an MA in British and American Cultural Studies from the University of Freiburg.

For a more detailed CV please visit my personal website

Energy Infrastructures in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical Press (Post-Doc / Habilitation)

This project focuses on representations of energy infrastructures in the nineteenth-century Anglophone periodical press. I posit that the periodical press of the nineteenth century played a central role in the creation of systems and epistemologies of energy that continue to structure our understanding of and relationship with energy today. In particular, I am interested in the affordances of the periodical as a miscellaneous literary form for creating and negotiating energy imaginaries, the connections between energy infrastructures and the British Empire, and how understanding these imaginaries and connections may help us grapple with our relationship with energy today.

Scottish Literature, Borders and the Environmental Imagination (Monograph, Bloomsbury)

My book considers the potential vantage points and/or trajectories Scottish literature can offer for the revaluation of dominant frameworks underlying the relationship between borders and the environment as well as the parameters used to define both bordering processes and the environment.

• Anglophone and Scottish literature (esp. C19 – C21)
• Environmental and energy humanities, animal studies
• Literary infrastructures
• The nineteenth-century periodical press
• New formalism
• Border and mobility studies
• Cultural studies
• Literature, science and technology

ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8840-9841

Journal Articles

2022. “‘Ghosts of the Future’: Elegiac Temporalities and Planetary Futures in Nancy Brysson Morrison’s The Gowk Storm.” Scottish Literary Review 14 (1): 171-190. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/857660

2022. “Reading Scotland’s Borders through the Environment.” The Bottle Imp 29. https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2022/05/reading-scotlands-borders

2021. “Verhandlungen von Rewilding im Britischen Gegenwartsroman.” Tierstudien 20: 66–75. [Engl. “Negotiations of Rewilding in the Contemporary British Novel”]

2021. “Wayfaring the Outlands: Exploring the Borders of Mobility and Nature in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Writing.” Nineteenth-Century Contexts 43 (3): 369–389. https://doi.org/10.1080/08905495.2021.1925866

Book Chapters

2019. “Human into Animal: Post-Anthropomorphic Transformations in Sarah Hall’s ‘Mrs Fox’.” In Borders and Border Crossings in British Short Stories of the Twenty-First Century, edited by Barbara Korte and Laura Lojo-Rodríguez, 187–204. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30359-4_11

Reviews

2022. “Review of The Living World: Nan Shepherd and Environmental Thought by Samantha Walton.” ecozon@ 13 (1). https://doi.org/10.37536/ECOZONA.2022.13.1.4708

2019. “Review of Nordic Narratives of Nature and the Environment, edited by Reinhard Henning, Anna-Karin Jonasson and Peter Deger.” ecozon@ 10 (2). https://doi.org/10.37536/ECOZONA.2019.10.2.3272

Posters

2017. Ditter, Julia and Anne Korfmacher. “Schwarzwald Tourism: ‘Go to Baden and – Live.'” In The Victorians and the Black Forest, edited by Barbara Korte and Stephanie Lethbridge, University of Freiburg. https://doi.org/10.6094/UNIFR/218413

Editorials

2022. “What Happens Now? Conference Special Issue” Alluvium 10 (1), April 2022, with Martin Goodhead and Liam Harrison. https://doi.org/10.7766/alluvium.v10.1.01

2020. “Contemporary Representations of Homelessness”, Alluvium 8 (3), December 2020, with Martin Goodhead and Liam Harrison. https://doi.org/10.7766/alluvium.v8.3.03

2019. Alluvium 7 (4), August 2019, with Victoria Addis and Sam Cutting. https://doi.org/10.7766/alluvium.v7.4.03

2018. Alluvium 7 (2), April 2019, with Andreas Theodorou. https://doi.org/10.7766/alluvium.v7.2.01

Talks and Conference Presentations (Selection)

“Extractive Ecologies and Industrial Tourism in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical Press.” ASLE-UKI Biennial Conference: Transitions, 30 Aug – 1 Sep 2023, University of Liverpool

“Energy Infrastructures and the British Empire in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical Press.” GAPS 2023: Postcolonial Infrastructure, 17-20 May 2023.

“Victorian Energy Infrastructures.” DACH Victorianists: Ecocritical Perspectives, 9 December 2022, online.

“Apathy or Empathy?: The Role of Community in British Pandemic Literature.” ESSE 2022 Conference, 29 Aug-2 Sep 2022, University of Mainz.

“Sowing the Seeds of Change: Moving Towards Decolonisation by Creating Tools Together”, Advance HE EDI Colloquium: Decolonising Pedagogies, 21 July 2022, online.

“Ghosts of the Future: History and Grief in Nancy Brysson Morrison’s The Gowk Storm”, Unforgettable, Unforgotten: Continuing the Recovery of Scottish Women Writers, c.1880-1940, Scottish Network for Religion and Literature, University of Edinburgh, 29 June 2021

“Alluvium: Academic Publishing and EDI”, Contemporary EDI Issues, BACLS Online Seminar Series, 23 April 2021

“Borders and the Environment in the Scottish Literary Imagination, 1800–present”, Postgraduate Forum, BritCult: “British Borders”, Saarland University Saarbrücken 16-20 Nov 2020

“The Animal Worlds of Saki”, Beastly Modernisms, University of Glasgow, 12-13 Sep 2019

“Between Co-existence and Individualism: Ecofeminism in Willa Muir’s Imagined Corners”, ASLE-UKI Biennial Conference: Co-emergence, Co-creation, Co-existence, University of Plymouth, 4-6 Sep 2019

“‘Everything Outside the Border is Wilderness’: Border-Crossings in Sarah Hall’s The Wolf Border”, Negotiating, Subverting, Reconfiguring Borders in the English-Speaking World, University of Strasbourg, 5-6 Oct 2018

“‘I can’t find anywhere anymore – where they can’t see’: Self-Surveillance and Mental Illness in Jenni Fagan’s The Panopticon”, Experiencing Surveillance in Fiction and Theory Workshop, University of Freiburg, 8 Jun 2018

“Human into Animal: Post-Anthropomorphic Transformations in Sarah Hall’s Mrs Fox”, Border Experiences: The English Short Story in the 21^st Century, University of Freiburg, 9-10 Feb 2018

“‘Pussy Grabs Back’: Adapting the Handmaid’s Tale for the 21^st Century”, Pop Hero and Action Princess: Negotiating Gender in Popular Culture, WWU Münster, 12-13 Jan 2018