Intern
Englische Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft

Kuhn

Anna Frieda KUHN, M.A.

Research Associate (wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin)
under the aegis of the Marianne-Plehn-Programm

Englische Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft
Room 5.E.16

anna_frieda.kuhn@uni-wuerzburg.de

Office Hours

During the semester: By Appointment

PhD Project

'Articulating Classicism: Attic Tragedy and the Fiction of Globalisation’  (working title)

Abstract

The historically received positioning of the Greco-Roman tradition at the core of Euro-American sociocultural consciousness has been the subject of ardent debate over the past decades. Although in fields such as comparative literature and continental philosophy the authority of classical antiquity is affirmed more often than destabilised, its pre-eminence is waning in English departments globally. The decreasing prominence of classics in these circles, however, threatens to obstruct two key articulatory elements: firstly, a proper recognition of how a classicist ‘legacy’ is (re-)constructed in cultural responses to the condition of globalisation; secondly, an understanding of how this ‘legacy’ is handed down in the form of Attic tragedy. The importance of classical literature and specifically of Attic tragedy is most evident in contemporary Anglophone novels that purposefully address a transnational cultural marketplace. In consequence, my dissertation project aims to broaden current Anglophone literary criticism and globalisation studies by critically examining the implications of Attic tragedy for the global novel. Analysing how contemporary authors such as Colm Tóibín, Kamila Shamsie, Natalie Haynes, and Marlon James have attempted to novelise the works of the three major Attic tragedians, I will seek to unravel the complex mechanisms of tragedy in a globalised world. Proceeding along three conceptual axes—(tragic) epistemology, (tragic) phenomenology, and (tragic) articulation—I will confront a crucial question once posed by George Steiner anew: in what ways, for what reasons, and to what effects do classical ideas or their classicist re-inventions continue ‘to give vital shape to our sense of self and of the world.’

Research Interests

  • Globalisation Studies
  • Postcolonial Studies/Postcolonial Ecocriticism
  • Classical Reception Studies
  • Sound Studies

  • WiSe 23/24

'Global Shakespeares'

  • SoSe 23

'"Modern" Tragedy: From Antiquity to Now'

  • WiSe 22/23

23.03.: 'Land Rover and the Colonial Imagination' (teaching unit as part of the workshop 'Automobility Studies'; Dr. Johannes Schlegel)

'Cold War Britain & Literary Representation'

  • SoSe 22

'Science Fiction: The Legacy of H.G. Wells'

  • WiSe 21/22

08.03.: Teaching unit with ecocritical scholar and lecturer Camille Lavoix on OSS 117: Alerte rouge en Afrique noire (as part of her seminar 'Unsafari the Savannah')

'Ian Fleming's James Bond: A Very English Myth?'

  • SoSe 21

'The Memory of Apartheid: South African Theatre as a Living Archive'

  • WiSe 20/21

'The Fiction of Globalisation: Coetzee and Rushdie in the Cultural Marketplace'

Anna Frieda Kuhn is a PhD candidate and research associate at the chair of English Literature and British Cultural Studies, where she convenes undergraduate modules and organizes academic events. Apart from the studies she undertook at the University of Würzburg (BA and MA), she also attended Cambridge University (2016/17) and completed short-term research stays at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi (2019) and the University of Cape Town (2021). Kuhn is also editor of the multilingual Denksport:ART blog.

Publications

Articles

  • [Forthcoming] Kuhn, Anna Frieda. 'Autobiography and The Bang Bang Club: Photography in an Era of Post-Truth.' Commonwealth Essays and Studies 46.1, 2024, 'Special Issue: Generic Boundaries in South African Literature: a Revaluation.'
  • ---. ‘An Animal Counter-Textuality? Sounding the Dog in the Global South.’ Word and Text: A Journal of Literary Studies and Linguistics 11 (2021): 135-46. DOI: 10.51865/JLSL.2021.09 

Conference Papers

  • ‘Articulating Classicism: Attic Tragedy and the Fiction of Globalisation.’ The 2023 Classical Association Conference, April 2023, University of Cambridge. (GBR)
  • ‘The Art of Memory: Photography in an Era of Post-Truth.’ Photography and History, December 2021, University of Madeira. (PRT)
  • 'Pan Buzzed in Every Ear.' Classics Section, September 2021, University of Cape Town. (RSA)
  • ‘Canine Imaginaries and the Construction of the Other in Early Modern Southern Africa.’ On Belonging 2:  English Conceptions of Migration and Transculturality, 1550 – 1700, July 2021, University of Oxford. (Online)
  • Creating New Worlds in Time: The Normative Force of Rushdie and Shamsie.’ When Is Theory?  Shifts of Time Frame in Contemporary Literary Studies, April 2021, Babeş-Bolyai University. (Online)
  • ‘The Postmemory of Apartheid: South African Theatre as a Living Archive.’ Postmemory and the Contemporary World: 2nd International Interdisciplinary Conference, February 2021. (Online)
  • ‘Introductory Keynote: “Homo Classicus”.’ Globalized (Neo-)Classicisms? Uses of Antiquity in Contemporary World Literatures, December 2020, JMU Würzburg and Jawaharlal Nehru University. (Online)
  • ‘Post-Colonial Dramaturgies of Sound: Adapting Greek Tragedy in the Global South.’ Two-Day International Workshop on “Literature in a Globalized World, February 2020, Jawaharlal Nehru University. (IND)
  • ‘Sound and the South: Staging Greek Tragedy in Post-Colonial South Africa.’ Re-/Un-working Tragedy: Perspectives from the Global South. CRASSH, December 2019, University of Cambridge. (GBR)

Conference Organisation

  • 'Toxic! Toxicity In-Between the Humanities and Natural Sciences,' November 2022, JMU Würzburg. (Hybrid)
  • 'Globalized (Neo-)Classicisms: Uses of Antiquity in Contemporary World Literatures,' December 2020, JMU Würzburg and JNU, Delhi. (Online)