CV

2022–2024

Associated Researcher. Associated Member, RA 2: Travelling Matters.

Research Project Schreiben des Wortlosen. Die Texte der Pantomime um 1900 (funded by the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung)

2020–2021

Postdoc at the Cluster of Excellence “Temporal Communities”. Freie Universität Berlin

2018–2019

Postdoc at the Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies. Freie Universität Berlin

2011–2017

Ph.D., German Literature, Johns Hopkins University                    

2014–2015

Visiting Fellow at the Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies, Freie Universität Berlin

2004–2010

Technical University of Berlin. Graduated as Magistra Artium in Modern German Literature, Comparative Literature and Philosophy

2006–2007

ERASMUS/SOCRATES student at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland

Seminars:

Taking Risks: Literature and Film

The Holocaust in Film and Literature (TA)

German Language (A1-C2)

Reading Circle:

Derrida und die Literaturwissenschaften

Current research includes an EXC 2020 associated research project, Writing of the Wordless. Literary Pantomime around 1900 (2022-)

EXC 2020 post-doctoral research project, Authorship and the Materiality of the Digital (2020-2021)

The project “Writing of the Wordless. Literary Pantomime around 1900” discusses the relevance of pantomime for German media and literary theoretical discourses around 1900. Although pantomime was an inherent part of social, intellectual and literary life, it is rarely the subject of literary and cultural studies. The project intends to help in closing this research gap by focusing on the intermediality of pantomime. For, at that time, pantomime was not only exceptionally prominent in theatres, cabarets and funfairs, it also became an essential part of silent movies and was the subject of a number of theoretical discussions. Moreover, canonical and lesser-known authors wrote a considerable number of texts, which they labelled “pantomimes”. These texts are the chief subject of the proposed project. Some are short notes with instructions for possible performances; some are written as plays but without speech; some are short prose texts; and still others are musical scores with short remarks for performances on stage. The project will show that these texts are not only directions for performances but valuable objects for literary and rhetorical analyses, since they frequently discuss the possibilities and impossibilities of writing the wordless. In other words: these texts pose questions of representation, which, due to the intermediality of pantomime, concern the modes of representation of different media. Because pantomime partakes in diverse arts, media and discourses, it allows for an intermedial analysis of its modes of representation. Pantomime in film, on stage and as text can thus be read as a theory of representation, which comments on and influences media theoretical questions around 1900.

Another research interest centres on digital constructions of authorship with a specific focus on the materiality of the digital and its rhetoric: On the one hand, hypertexts seem to be a realisation of poststructuralist and deconstructive theories of authorship. On the other hand, contemporary literature is confronted with discourses that require writers to be ‘real’ and ‘authentic’, by which they strengthen and reinvent concepts of authorship. For digital literature, one strategy to attest to its authenticity is by referring to the materiality of printed literature. Since questions of the materiality and the technology of writing are constitutive for the construction of authorship, the project analyses the rhetoric and visualisation of these materialities in digital literature in order to re-evaluate the contradictory concepts of authorship.

Her dissertation, Riskante Redlichkeit. Nietzsche – Kleist – Kafka, formulates a performative concept of Redlichkeit/sincerity. It discusses the possibilities of rethinking concepts of sincerity, integrity and authenticity with and after poststructuralist theories of language. The book, entitled Performativität und Rhetorik der Redlichkeit. Nietzsche – Kleist – Kafka – Lasker-Schüler, was published in 2020.

Monograph:

Performativität und Rhetorik der Redlichkeit. Nietzsche – Kleist – Kafka – Lasker-Schüler, Reihe Hermaea, Band 153, De Gruyter: Berlin/Boston, 2020.

Edited Books:

mit Michael Gamper, Anouk Luhn, Paul Wolff, Kollektive Autor*innenschaft: Analog/digital. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler (bevorstehend 2022)

Articles:

„Tiefenblick und Oberflächenästhetik. Pantomimen und Puppen rhetorisch gelesen“ In: Objektcontainer. Artefakte der Avantgarden 1885–2015. Hrsg. Andreas Bülhoff, Annette Gilbert, Cornelia Ortlieb, Susanne Klimroth, Timo Sestu. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft (bevorstehend 2022).

„Wenn das Private nicht politisch genug ist. Die Autor*in als Nachbar*in in den sozialen Medien“ In: Neue Nachbarschaften Hrsg. von Hanna Hamel und Pola Groß (bevorstehend 2022).

„Rhetorik und Schriftbildlichkeit literarischer Pantomimen” In: Orbus Litterarum. Hrsg. Von Matthias Meert (bevorstehend)

“The Will to Tell It All. With Adriana Cavarero and Judith Butler towards an Ethics of the Kafkaesque.” (in Vorbereitung).

„Innovation einer Tradition: Else Lasker-Schülers Mein Herz“ In: Innovation. Expressionismus. Ausgabe 13/202. Hrsg. von Kristin Eichhorn und Johannes S. Lorenzen. Berlin: Neofels, S. 49–58.

„Die Literarische Pantomime“ In: Handbuch Literatur und Performance. Hrsg. von Lucia Ruprecht und Bettina Brandl-Risi, de Gruyter (bevorstehend)

„Zu Kafkas Sprachen der Scham“ In: The Rhetoric of Topics and Forms. Hrsg. Gianna Zocco. Berlin/Boston 2021, S. 37–47.DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110642032-004

„Ein Fallbeil für die Aufklärung. Heinrich von Kleists Michael Kohlhaas“ In: The German Quarterly, 93 (2020): S. 237-254. doi.org/10.1111/gequ.12135

„Riskante Redlichkeit. Wahrsprechen in Nietzsches Also sprach Zarathustra“ In: Nietzsche als Kritiker und Denker der Transformation. Hrsg. von Helmut Heit und Sigridur Thorgeirsdottir. Berlin, Boston 2016, S. 37- 48. (peer-reviewed)

„Zu den Figuren und Strukturen der Wiederholung in Nietzsches Also sprach Zarathustra” In: Nietzsches Zarathustra Auslegen: Thesen, Positionen und Entfaltungen zu »Also sprach Zarathustra« von Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche. Hrsg. von Ates Murat, et al. Marburg 2014, S. 191-206.

Reviews:

Künstliche Intelligenz: Wie menschlich, ach, ist mir zumute. In: Der Tagesspiegel. 09.03.2021, URL: https://www.tagesspiegel.de/kultur/kuenstliche-intelligenz-wie-menschlich-ach-ist-mir-zumute/26988614.html

Nicholas D. More. Nietzsche’s Last Laugh. Ecce Homo as Satire. Cambridge, United Kingdom; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. In: Claudia Breger and Benjamin Robinson. “Complexity/Simplicity” Special Section. MLN 130.3 (2015).  

Other Contributions

Drei Sätze #5: Wie viele Ichs ist das Ich der Gegenwartsliteratur? Literaturwissenschaft in Berlin URL: https://literaturwissenschaft-berlin.de/drei-saetze-5-nina-tolksdorf/, 02.09.2021.

mit Anja Ketterl: „Vom Userchen und der Flexibilität der deutschen Sprache.“ Ein Beitrag zur inklusiven Sprache. Blogbeitrag auf Literaturwissenschaft in Berlin Juni 2018

mit Anna Beckmann, Vivien Bruns, Camilo Del Valle, Jennifer Gasch: Tagungsbericht: „Eskalation! Skandal in der Literatur und den Künsten“, Dezember 2019

Tagungsbericht: „Rhetoriken der Bewegung. Tanz–Pantomime–Akrobatik“, Dezember 2018

: