Charlotte Johanna Rauth, Research Area 4: "Literary Currencies"
Doctoral Research Project

Drawing on the neomaterialistic concept of 'response-ability', Rauth's dissertation project focuses on poetics in contemporary German and English literature, illuminating – from both a narratological and philosophical perspective – the position and attitude of the narrative voice in relation to its environment and the themes it addresses. While referencing further contemporary prose works that combine documentary, autobiographical, essayistic and fictional techniques, the project explores a preliminary corpus consisting of Aus der Zuckerfabrik (Dorothee Elmiger, 2020), The Argonauts (Maggie Nelson, 2016) and Blutbuch (Kim de l'Horizon, 2022) through the method of close reading.

Its aim is to shed light on the narrative constitution of the texts as well as their ethical, political and critical implications. In several respects, this approach contributes to a differentiated understanding of texts that have been little researched to date: Not only does the focus on textual response structures highlight the specific nature of transtemporal, transnational and transmedia networks in a contemporary literary trend; the investigation and conceptualisation of poetic 'response-abilities' also opens up fresh perspectives on the formation of temporal communities of contemporary prose through both text-immanent literary evaluations – including the specific selection, circulation and translation of the incorporated texts – and through their reception and valorisation against the backdrop of contemporary discourses.

Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Jutta Müller-Tamm (Freie Universität Berlin/EXC 2020), Prof. Dr. Julia Weber (Freie Universität Berlin)