E-mail: christina.wald@uni-konstanz.de
Phone: +49 (0) 7531 88 2403
Fax: +49 (0) 7531 88 3897
Office: H 203
Director of the Centre for Cultural Inquiry
Office hours in presence or online via Zoom (link)
For an appointment please register using this online timetable.
Please follow this link for general information on term papers, final theses and oral exams
Information concerning letters of recommendation
Secretary:
Karin Schunk M.A.
Office: H 204
Phone: + 49 (0) 7531 88 2433
E-mail: karin.schunk@uni-konstanz.de
Student Assistants:
Lena Feiler, Lea Vass, Natalie Zwätz, Felix Sauer
Office: H 202
E-mail: shk.wald@uni-konstanz.de
Postal Address:
Universität Konstanz
Fachbereich Literatur-, Kunst-, und Medienwissenschaften
Fach 161
78457 Konstanz
Germany
News and Recent Activities
8 July 2023 Panel at European Shakespeare Research Association Conference in Budapest: "Hamlets Today: Retooling Hamlet for the New Century" with Zoltán Márkus, Christina Wald,
Douglas M. Lanier, Thomas Cartelli
15-17 June 2023, Traveling Forms
17 May 2023 Homi Bhabha's Iser Lecture 2023: Not All Each Day: The Infrastructures of Racial Life, Video Recording
02 May 2023 Fritz Breithaupt: Narrative Tools as Co-experiencing
14-16 July 2022 International Workshop at the University of Konstanz
"Shakespeare's Seriality" with Aleida Assmann, Carla Baricz, Elisabeth Bronfen, Ewan Fernie, Sarah Hatchuel, Diana Henderson, Isabel Karremann, Paul Kottman, Claudia Olk, and Christina Wald
co-organised by Elisabeth Bronfen und Christina Wald
29 June- 1 July, Centre for Cultural Inquiry, Universität Konstanz: Workshop on "Rethinking Infrastructure"
8-9 June 2022, The New Institute, Hamburg: Workshop on "The Right to Interpretation”
28 April 2022, Christina Wald: "Antigone: Requiem, Ruin, Revenant", Talk at the ReTAGS Speaker Series
29 May 2022 (11:00 Uhr), Stadttheater Konstanz: Podiumsdiskussion zu "Königin Lear" (mit Dr. Johannes Bruggaier, Dr. Doris Happl, Kristo Šagor, Prof.Dr. Christina Wald und Dr. Martin Windisch)
25 March 2022, Paris, AgorAkademi: Workshop on Public Space Democracy: Performative, Visual and Normative Dimensions of Politics in a Global Age
26 November 2021, Christina Wald: "Taking Shakespeare to The Wilds: Feminist Revisions of The Tempest in Complex TV", Keynote at the conference "Women’s Rights and Global Adaptations of Shakespeare", FU Berlin, 25-26 November 2021
29 October 2021, Christina Wald: "Male Mothers in Westworld and The Tempest", Talk for a workshop on "Westworld" at the University of Zurich
7-9 October 2021 International workshop on "Traveling Tragedy", organised by the NOMIS research group "Traveling Forms"
4 July 2021, Christina Wald: "Viel Lärm um Nichts" ("Much Ado about Nothing"), Talk at the Konstanz Münsterplatz
9 March 2021, Christina Wald: "Hamlet & Black Earth Rising: Returns to the Roots", Talk at Syracuse Univerity
10 February 2021 Guest Talk by Sola Adeyemi: "Refracted from the Canon: The Transmuted Form of Europe's Ambassador to Africa in Femi Osofisan’s Wesoo Hamlet!"
15 January 2021, Christina Wald: "„europa liegt am strand“: Die Rückkehr der Toten in Thomas Köcks antigone. ein requiem" Talk for a workshop on "Tragischer Konflikt und politische Vermittlung" as part of the project „Der Antigonistische Konflikt“ by Marcus Llanque and Katja Sarkowsky.
Christina Wald is part of the interdisciplinary NOMIS-Research Group "Traveling Forms", which starts its collaboration in October 2020
Christina Wald's new book Shakespeare’s Serial Returns in Complex TV has been published
Fields of Research
- Early Modern Drama (in particular Shakespeare) and Prose Fiction
- Contemporary Drama, Theatre and Performance, Film and TV Series
- Adaptation Studies, Inter-/Transmediality, Transcultural Form Travels
- Literary and Cultural Theory: Gender Studies, Feminist Theory, Postcolonial and Transcultural Theory, New Formalism and Infrastructuralism, Ecocriticism, Psychoanalysis and Poststructuralism, Plausibility Theory
Research Projects
- Cultures of Plausibilization
As one result of the Centre of Cultural Inquiry's core topic on "Cultures of Plausibilization", I am currently co-editing a volume with Thomas Kirsch on "Provisional Certainties: Plausibility as Socio-Cultural Practice". My own research focuses on theatrical plausibility in the drama of migration.
- Transforming Infrastructure: Cultural Perspectives
As part of the interdisciplinary research initiative "Transforming Infrastructure: Cultural Perspectives", I have co-organised a workshop on in June 2022 on "Rethinking Infrastructure" with a keynote by Bruce Robbins on "Elevator Pitch. Gratitude for Infrastructure and Beyond“ and a conference on "Postcolonial Infrastructure" in May 2023 with an opening keynote by Homi K. Bhabha on "Not All Each Day: the Infrastructures of Racial Life" (link to the video recording). We are currently working on an edited collection on "Postcolonial Infrastructure" that will be published open access by Heidelberg University Press.
My second interest in infrastructure studies is the re-conceptualisation of genre as mental infrastructure. I have published on romance as infrastructure, and my work with the research group "Traveling Forms" focuses on the infrastructural operations of tragedy.
- Traveling Forms
As member of the NOMIS Research Group "Traveling Forms" I am working on forms of resistance in postcolonial tragedy.
I am currently co-editing a collection on "Tragedy as a Travelling Form" with Philipp Lammers and Juliane Vogel, and the research group has just conducted an international workshop on "Traveling Forms: Practices, Politics, Potentialities".
My publications on postcolonial tragedy so far include
"European tragedy as Requiem, Ruin, Revenant in Magnet Theatre’s Antigone (not quite/quiet) and Thomas Köck’s antigone. a requiem." South African Theatre Journal (2023). KOPS, Publisher
"Europas Wiedergänger und die postkoloniale Politik der Toten: Thomas Köcks antigone. ein requiem und Magnet Theatres Antigone (not quite/quiet)." Die Politik der Toten: Figuren und Funktionen der Toten in Literatur und Politischer Theorie. Eds. Marcus Llanque and Katja Sarkowsky. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2023. 189-215. KOPS, Publisher
"Migrant Deaths and European Revenants in Thomas Köck’s antigone. a requiem (2019): Sophocles’ Tragedy Recomposed and Decomposed." Modern Drama 65.4 (2022): 547–570. KOPS, PDF, Publisher
“‘Why Didn’t You Just Stay Where You Were, a Relic in the Memory of Poets?’: Yoruban Ritual and Sororal Commonality in Fémi Òsófisan’s Tègònni: An African Antigone.” The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 56.2 (2018): 201 –217. KOPS / PDF / Publisher
- Shakespeare and Seriality
A large part of my research activities in recent years has focused on how Shakespeare's plays recur in complex TV, how they offer a formal repertoire, plots and characters that are productive for the negotiation of current concerns such as postcolonial justice, the potentials and threats of Artificial Intelligence, the state of democracy in late capitalism, the ecological challenge of global warming, the future of feminism, etc.
I am currently co-editing a collection with Elisabeth Bronfen on "Shakespeare and Seriality: Page, Stage, Screen".
Past publications is this field include:
"Shakespeare in The Wilds: Experimenting with The Tempest." Adaptation 15.2 (2022): 264-284. KOPS, PDF, Publisher
Shakespeare’s Serial Returns in Complex TV. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. KOPS, Publisher, Google Books
"The Homeland of Coriolanus: War Homecomings between Shakespeare's Stage and Current Complex TV." Shakespeare Survey 72 (2019), 136-149. KOPS / Publisher
Curriculum Vitae
- since Dec 2019
Director of the Centre for Cultural Inquiry (Zentrum für kulturwissenschaftliche Forschung) at the University of Konstanz
- since 2014
Professor of English Literature and Literary Theory, University of Konstanz
- 2013 - 2014
Professor of English and American Literature and Culture with a Focus on Gender and Postcolonial Studies at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
- 2011
Habilitation in "English Literature and Culture" at Universität Augsburg
Thesis: "Spectres of Transubstantiation: The Eucharist, Disguise and Foreign Fashion in Early Modern Prose Fiction and Culture"- 2009 - 2010
Postdoctoral Fellow at Humanities Center at Harvard (sponsered by the Volkswagen Foundation)
- 2006 - 2013
Assistant Professor of English Literature ('Wiss. Assistentin') at Universität Augsburg
- 2006
Dr. phil. in English Literature at Universität zu Köln
Thesis: "Hysteria, Trauma, and Melancholia: Performative Maladies in Contemporary Anglophone Drama" (sponsored by the German National Academic Foundation)- 2005
Visiting Research Fellow at Birkbeck College, London
- 2002 - 2006
Lecturer ('wiss. Hilfskraft') at the English department, Universität zu Köln
- 1997 - 2003
Actor, Director's Assistant and Director at Studiobühne Köln and Schauspiel Köln
- 1997 - 2002
BA and MA Studies of English and German Literature, Theatre, Film and TV Studies at the Universities of Cologne and Warwick
Supervision and mentorship
PhD Projects:
Lena Frommer: "'Space for all' - The Cultural Politics and Narrative Ideologies of Popular BBC Series"
Neha Arora, "The Perpetuation of Loss: Parallels Between Indian and Western European Notions of Gender and Sexuality"
Jasmin Bieber: "Unprecedented Paths Beyond Europe: British Female Travel Writing, 1680-1780"
Eszter Vass: "Trauma and Metatheatre on the Contemporary Anglophone Stage"
Evelyn Mohr: "Envisioning the End of the World: Ecocritical readings of Complex TV"
Selina Winkler: „Shakespeare in the Cyberworld“
Ashley Moser: Confronting the Anthropocene in the Science Fictions of Kim Stanley Robinson (as second supervisor)
Murat Kabak (Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Türkei): A Semiotics of Humour in Neo-Victorian Fiction (Erasmus+ Austauschprogramm, 2022-2023)
Swapnil Sree (Jawaharlal Nehru Universität Neu-Delhi, Indien): Filmische Umarbeitungen der Kinder- und Hausmärchen der Brüder Grimm in Deutschland und Amerika (Austausch der Baden-Württemberg Stiftung 2019-20)
Susanne Köller: "Nostalgia, Trauma, Retrofuturism: Reframing History in Serial Neo-Period Drama" (completed 03/2023)
Marit Meinhold: “Irish Adaptations of Greek Tragedy - Mothers, Families, Communities” (completed 04/2022)
Jonas Kellermann: “The Aesthetics of Affect in Romeo and Juliet” (completed 07/2020)
Publication: Dramaturgies of Love in Romeo and Juliet - Word, Music, and Dance
Anja Hartl: "Experiential Brecht - Dialectical Theatre on the Contemporary British Stage" (completed 07/2019)
Publication: Brecht and Post-1990s British Drama - Dialectical Theatre Today
Postdoc Projects:
Jonas Kellermann: Queer Spectralities in Contemporary Anglophone Novels
Anja Hartl: Textures of Shame in the Victorian Novel
Leila Vaziri: Between (M)others: A Diachronic View of Pregnancy in British Literature and Culture
Current courses
| Title | Type |
|---|---|
| Research and Exam Colloquium | Colloquium |
| Interdisciplinary Colloquium to the M.A. program „Literary Studies“ | Colloquium |
| Resetting Shakespeare | Seminar |
Shakespeare’s Serial Returns in Complex TV. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. KOPS, Publisher, Google Books
Hysteria, Trauma and Melancholia: Performative Maladies in Contemporary Anglophone Drama. New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. KOPS / Contents / Publisher
[Reviewed in gender forum 20 (2008); Journal for the Study of British Cultures 15.1 (2008) 90-91; Anglistik - International Journal of English Studies 20.2 (2009), 211-218; The Year's Work in English Studies (2009), 78-79: Litteraria Pragensia 20:39 (2010)]
Co-editor and Review Editor of JCDE: Journal of Contemporary Drama in English (published by de Gruyter with the German Society for Contemporary Drama in English), 2013-2021. Publisher
with Gerd Bayer: “Section II: Early Modern Narratives and the Genesis of Genre.” Anglistentag 2011, Freiburg: Proceedings. Eds. Monika Fludernik and Bernd Kortmann. Trier: WVT, 2012. 105-192. KOPS
Articles in Peer-Reviewed Journals
- "European tragedy as requiem, ruin, revenant in Magnet Theatre’s Antigone (not quite/quiet) and Thomas Köck’s antigone. a requiem." South African Theatre Journal (2023): 212-226. KOPS, Publisher
- "Migrant Deaths and European Revenants in Thomas Köck’s antigone. a requiem (2019): Sophocles’ Tragedy Recomposed and Decomposed." Modern Drama 65.4 (2022): 547–570. KOPS, PDF, Publisher
- "Shakespeare in The Wilds: Experimenting with The Tempest." Adaptation 15.2 (2022): 264-284. KOPS, PDF, Publisher
- "Shakespeare’s Suppliants: The ‘Rotten Custom’ of Ancient Asylum Seeking in Coriolanus." Classical Receptions Journal 14.1 (2022): 1–25. KOPS, Publisher
- "Shakespeare’s Art of Entanglement: The Tempest’s Tragicomic Dramaturgy of Knotting and Untying." Shakespeare (2021). KOPS, Publisher
- "The Spectral Returns of The Merchant of Venice in Marina Carr’s Portia Coughlan: 'Only his shadow?'." Shakespeare Bulletin 39.2 (2021): 241-260. KOPS, PDF, Publisher
- "The Homeland of Coriolanus: War Homecomings between Shakespeare's Stage and Current Complex TV." Shakespeare and War Shakespeare Survey 72 (2019), 136-149. KOPS / Publisher
- “‘Why Didn’t You Just Stay Where You Were, a Relic in the Memory of Poets?’: Yoruban Ritual and Sororal Commonality in Fémi Òsófisan’s Tègònni: An African Antigone.” The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 56.2 (2018): 201 –217. KOPS / PDF / Publisher
- “‘Medieval Shakespeare?’: Introduction.” Medieval Shakespeare. Special Issue of Shakespeare: Journal of the British Shakespeare Association 8.4 (2012): 1-5. KOPS / Publisher
- “‘I would eat his heart’: Liebeshunger und Blutdurst in Shakespeares Much Ado About Nothing.” Zeitsprünge: Forschungen zur Frühen Neuzeit 15.4 (2011): 503-531. KOPS / PDF
- “Second Selves, Second Stories: Unreliable Narration and the Circularity of Reading in Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier and Chuck Palahniuk’s / David Fincher’s Fight Club.” Literature and Circularity, Special Issue of Symbolism: An International Annual of Critical Aesthetics 9 (2010). Eds. Christoph Henke and Martin Middeke. 217-241. KOPS / PDF
- “‘But of course the stage has certain limits’? The Adaptation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in Shakespeare’s Plays.” Anglia: Zeitschrift für Englische Philologie 127.3 (2009): 425-458. KOPS / PDF / Publisher
- “Screening Austen’s Pride and Prejudice in Transcultural Britain: Joe Wright’s Little England and Gurinder Chadha’s Global Village.” Transcultural Britain. Special Issue of Journal for the Study of British Cultures 15.1 (2008). Eds. Bernd-Peter Lange and Dirk Wiemann. 43-58. KOPS / PDF / Publisher
- “Reproductions and No Original: Gender and Traumatic Memory.” Iterationen: Geschlecht im kulturellen Gedächtnis. Querelles: Jahrbuch für Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung 2008. Eds. Anja Schwarz and Sabine Lucia Müller. 171-190. KOPS / PDF / Publisher
- “Martha C. Nussbaum versus Judith Butler oder ‚Old-style’-Feminismus versus poststrukturalistische Gender-Theorie.” Kontroversen in der Literaturtheorie / Literaturtheorie in der Kontroverse. Publikationen zur Zeitschrift für Germanistik 19 (2007). Eds. Ralf Klausnitzer and Carlos Spoerhase. 427-442. KOPS / PDF / Publisher
Articles in Books
- “Männliche Mutterschaft in Westworld und The Tempest.” One More Loop Around the Bend: Kulturanalytische Betrachtungen zu Westworld. Eds. Elisabeth Bronfen, Christine Lötscher, and Klaus Müller-Wille. Zürich and Berlin: Diaphanes, 2023. 187-216. KOPS / Publisher
- with Anja Hartl and Jonas Kellermann: “Queering Infrastructures of Romance.” Rethinking Infrastructure Across the Humanities. Eds. Aaron Pinnix, Axel Volmar, Fernando Esposito, and Nora Binder. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2023, 191-200. Publisher
- “Matchmaking and the Infrastructure of Romance: The One or What You Will?" Figures of Pathos: Festschrift in Honor of Elisabeth Bronfen. Eds. Frauke Berndt, Isabel Karremann, and Klaus Müller-Wille. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2023, 293-305. Publisher
- "Europas Wiedergänger und die postkoloniale Politik der Toten: Thomas Köcks antigone. ein requiem und Magnet Theatres Antigone (not quite/quiet)." Die Politik der Toten: Figuren und Funktionen der Toten in Literatur und Politischer Theorie. Eds. Marcus Llanque and Katja Sarkowsky. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2023. 189-215. KOPS, Publisher
- "'And Here Remain With Your Uncertainty': Paradoxien des Raumes in Shakespeares Hikesie-Tragödie 'Coriolanus'." Flucht und Szene : Perspektiven und Formen eines Theaters der Fliehenden / Menke, Bettine; Vogel, Juliane (ed.). - Berlin : Theater der Zeit, 2018. - (Recherchen ; 135). - pp. 140-166. . KOPS / Publisher
- "Romancing the Eucharist: Confessional Conflict and Elizabethan Romances." Forms of Faith: Literary Form and Religious Conflict in Early Modern England . Eds. Jonathan Baldo and Isabel Karreman. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2017. 72-89. KOPS / Publisher
- "The Theatrical Topology of Tyranny in Richard III ." Shakespeare and Space: Theatrical Explorations of the Spatial Paradigm. Eds. Ina Habermann and Michelle Witen. Shakespeare Series. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 39-57. KOPS / Publisher
- with Gerd Bayer: "Introduction: Early Modern Prose Fiction and the Making of Genre." Anglistentag 2011, Freiburg: Proceedings. Eds. Monika Fludernik and Bernd Kortmann. Trier: WVT, 2012. 107-111. KOPS
- with Martin Middeke: “Melancholia as a Sense of Loss: An Introduction.” The Literature of Melancholia: Early Modern to Postmodern. Eds. Martin Middeke and Christina Wald. New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. 1-19. KOPS / PDF / Publisher
- “Transubstantiation, Transvestism, and the Transformative Power of Elizabethan Prose Fiction.” Narrative Developments from Chaucer to Defoe. Eds. Gerd Bayer and Ebbe Klitgård. New York: Routledge, 2011. 235-254. KOPS / Publisher
- “The Quest for the Body Underneath: Die Säkularisierung der Transsubstantiations-Debatte in englischen Romances der Renaissance.” Weltliche Wallfahrten: Die Suche nach dem Realen. Eds. Stefan Börnchen and Georg Mein. München: Fink, 2010. 305-321. KOPS / PDF / Publisher
- “Gender-Performativität und theatrale Performance: As You Like It.” Theorien der Literatur: Grundlagen und Perspektiven. Band III. Eds. Günter Butzer and Hubert Zapf. Tübingen: Francke, 2009. 169-189. KOPS / PDF / Publisher
- “Zurückgekehrt, um dramatischer zu verschwinden? Hysterikerinnen im englischsprachigen Gegenwartsdrama.” Rhetoriken des Verschwindens. Ed. Tina-Karen Pusse. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2008. 203-216. KOPS / Publisher
- “Forced Entertainment’s Adaptation of Sophie Calle’s Exquisite Pain.” Non-Standard Forms of Contemporary Drama and Theatre. Eds. Ellen Redling and Peter-Paul Schnierer. Trier: WVT, 2008. 69-93. KOPS / PDF
- “The Drama of Hysteria: Wiederholung zwischen Zwang und Subversion.” Kippfiguren der Wiederholung. Eds. Svenja Flaßpöhler, Tobias Rausch, and Christina Wald. Berlin: Peter Lang, 2007. 56-66. KOPS / PDF / Publisher
- “'What discoveries do we bring back from that alien terrain?' The Spatialization of Trauma and the Exploration of the Pedophile's Mind in Bryony Lavery's Frozen ." Mapping Uncertain Territories: Space and Place in Contemporary Drama and Theatre. Eds. Thomas Rommel and Mark Schreiber. Trier: WVT, 2006. 111-126. HEAD / PDF
Book Chapters
- “William Baldwin, Beware the Cat (1553/1570).” Handbook of English Renaissance Literature. Ed. Ingo Berensmeyer. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2019. 265-279. KOPS / Publisher
- “Kulturwissenschaft, British Cultural Studies, American Cultural Studies: Perspectives on Mad Men.” Approaches to American Cultural Studies. Eds. Eva Boesenberg, Antje Dallmann, and Martin Klepper. London: Routledge, 2016. 37-45. KOPS / Publisher
- “Analyzing Film.” English and American Studies: Theory and Practice. Eds. Martin Middeke, Timo Müller, Christina Wald, and Hubert Zapf. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2012. 353-358. KOPS / Publisher
- “Analyzing Drama.” English and American Studies: Theory and Practice. Eds. Martin Middeke, Timo Müller, Christina Wald, and Hubert Zapf. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2012. 346-352. KOPS / Publisher
- “Analyzing Culture.” English and American Studies: Theory and Practice. Eds. Martin Middeke, Timo Müller, Christina Wald, and Hubert Zapf. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2012. 359-364. KOPS / Publisher
- with Verena Olejniczak Lobsien. “British Literary History: The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.” English and American Studies: Theory and Practice. Eds. Martin Middeke, Timo Müller, Christina Wald, and Hubert Zapf. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2012. 18-36. KOPS / Publisher
- “Kevin Elyot.” The Methuen Drama Guide of Contemporary English Playwrights. Eds. Martin Middeke, Aleks Sierz, and Peter-Paul Schnierer. London: Methuen, 2011. 163-182. KOPS
Reviews
in Theatre Research International, Anglia, Shakespeare Jahrbuch, Anglistik, gender forum, Journal for the Study of British Cultures.
Latest Review: Shakespeare and Girl's Studies. By Ariane M. Balizet. New York: Routledge, 2019. In: Shakespeare Jahrbuch, hg. von Isabel Karremann und Sabine Schülting, Band 158 (2022).