Research

• Heroic epics of the High and Late Middle Ages
• Minstrel and aventurist novels
• Media forms of mediation and representation
• Medieval reception in literature, comics, film and theater
• Gender studies and historical intersectionality research
• Relationalities of animals, humans and society

• Literary learning and medieval media networks

• Cultural-historical and theory-critical learning in German lessons

HUMANIMALES Erzählen: Tier-Mensch-Relationalität aus kulturhistorischer Perspektive

(Interdisziplinärer LOEWE-Schwerpunkt „Tier – Mensch – Gesellschaft: Ansätze einer interdisziplinären Tierforschung“ 2014-2017; Eröffnung und Abschluss der Habilitation 10/2021-01/2023)

engl.: (Interdisciplinary LOEWE focus "Animal - Human - Society: Approaches to Interdisciplinary Animal Research" 2014-2017; opening and completion of habilitation 10/2021-01/2023)

In a systematizing introduction and in 13 essays, literary animal-human relationships are examined from a diachronic and intermedial perspective, taking into account the new approaches of human-animal studies. The majority of the studies in this cumulative habilitation thesis are the result of several years of research in the interdisciplinary LOEWE research focus " Animal - Human - Society: Approaches to Interdisciplinary Animal Research" (2014-2017).Through a theory-based and diachronic 'search for traces', it was possible to show how an animal-human relationality - specifically the ambiguous co-constitution of animal and human figures in their literary and medial constitution - opens up a discursive space of possibility in narration within and between different times, genres, media and contexts.This raises the question of how a HUMANIMAL narrative, i.e. an entanglement of humans and animals, of culture and nature, of civilization and savagery already inherent in the representation, is designed and interpreted as ambiguous in textual and pictorial representations. The fusion of two words and the capitalization of the term deliberately open up several ways of reading, which is designed for this ambiguity.

In the selected objects of comparison from the Middle Ages and modernity, however, it does not only exist per se as a specific characteristic of literary and media texts, but in its various manifestations it is essentially dependent on historically changeable and often conflicting perspectives on animal-human relationality. This contrasting of different types of relationships encourages reflection on the scope for action in storytelling and the cultural otherness of the narrative. The process of diachronically comparing the thematization and evaluation of relational modes of negotiation across historical distance is fundamentally characterized by a tension between alterity and similarity. For which animals are associated with which attributions and forms of relationship, or which animal-related feelings are appealed to in which context and with which intention, is subject to cultural-historical change. At the same time, however, spontaneous experiences of the similarity between the narrative and the present lifeworld also arise. The question of the respective status of the animals in the relationship structure also structures the positioning of the respective narrative instances in relation to the story they tell.

HeldenGeschlechtNarrationen: Gender, Intersektionalität und Transformation im Nibelungenlied und in Nibelungen-Adaptionen (2008-2011, publication 2/2014)

The dissertation is a diachronic and media-comparative gender analysis of the reception of the Middle High German Nibelungenlied in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries and, taking into account the intersectionality debate in sociology, examines gender- and media-specific production and representation processes in a multi-level analysis. The three main manuscripts of the Song of the Nibelungs, the Lament, Friedrich Hebbel's Trauerspiel, Fritz Lang's silent film adaptation and Moritz Rinke's theatrical television adaptation are compared with the aim of determining the relationship between gender and narration in more detail. This orientation is to be seen as the innovative potential of the work, as to date there has been a lack of comparative studies that take a diachronic approach to gender constructions, including media- and culture-specific as well as narratological aspects.

• DFG proposal for a separate position: „Heroische Heterogenität: Reflexive Diversität, Intersektionalität und kulturhistorische Kompetenz in der literarischen Bildung“ (03/21 submitted for review)
  
  The subject-specific didactic project focuses on diversity-conscious concepts in literary learning and pursues the approach of an intersectional and cultural-historical competence orientation in practical (higher) education contexts. It is based on concepts that have been developed and tested in university teaching and learning projects. However, how a teaching and learning concept can be designed in universities and schools that does not simply perpetuate social labels, but instead focuses on individualized, culturally and historically oriented learning based on the literary subject area, which explores the potential of diversity and incorporates approaches that are critical of discrimination, is still largely a research desideratum. This is precisely where the planned project comes in and stands for the linking of diversity-conscious approaches with literary-aesthetic skills, which are to be examined using historical media networks and tested in literary learning.
• Development of a specialist didactic project „Tier-Wissen im Transfer: Von der Handschrift ins World Wide Web“ (since 1/2021)
  The project focuses on cultural-historical and animal-theoretical perspectives on late medieval, early modern and contemporary formations of learning with animals. It is a scientific and didactic project that I am testing over two semesters using a cooperative online encyclopedia. Based on late medieval animal studies such as Konrad von Megenberg's"Book of Nature", the materiality and mediality of the small form "animal article" in manuscripts and prints will be illuminated as a multi-layered teaching and learning arrangement and reconstructed using a dynamic text and image development process, and the negotiated animal knowledge will be commented on and interpreted with students in a digital compilation.
• Collaboration on the research design of the interdisciplinary network „Geschlecht – Ungleichheit – Intersektionalität. Forschungspraxis im interdisziplinären Dialog“ (2013-2014)
  
  An interdisciplinary anthology emerged from this network: Bereswill, M./ Degenring, F./ Stange, S. (Hg.): Intersektionalität und Forschungspraxis – Wechselseitige Herausforderungen (Forum Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung Band 43), Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot 2015.
• ZFF research focus  „Normalität und Ordnung – Transdisziplinäre Perspektive auf Geschlecht“ (2013-2014)

• ZFF research focus  „Ungleichheiten in Geschlechterverhältnissen“  (2010-2012)

• Study group "Historical Intersectionality Research" of the Research Center for Historical Humanities at Goethe University Frankfurt (2011-2014)

• Scholarship holder in the DFG Research Training Group "Public Spheres and Gender Relations. Dimensions of Experience" Frankfurt/Kassel (2008)
  
  In this interdisciplinary research training group, the historically developed and currently prevailing conceptions of the public and private spheres and the associated dimension of experience were analyzed. These topics are particularly interesting and informative for the analysis of gender relations. The exciting combination of previously largely unconnected subject areas produces new insights into historical and current phenomena and developments.

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