‘I’m writing a book about love letters’: My MHRA Research Scholarship
13/10/2015
Pitching your book proposal to an editor is apparently a bit like appearing on the game show ‘The Bachelor’ (according to Rachel Toor’s article, ‘The Reality of Writing a Good Book Proposal’). ‘The Bachelor’ is a reality TV show where a man has to pick one woman to take out on a date, rejecting the …
Visiting the Valley of the Fallen
16/05/2014
I have recently returned from a visit to one of Spain’s most (in)famous monuments, El Valle de los Caídos (The Valley of the Fallen), where I was doing an interview with some journalists from the BBC. I first visited the monument in 2009, and having spent the best part of five years researching and writing …
Anthems of Slovenia (Part Two): A Toast to Translation – Janez Janša’s Okopi
06/03/2014
In his second post in this series, Dr David Denton of the Department of Russian & Slavonic Studies introduces us to a new translation – produced with CLAS involvement – of the book Okopi by the former Slovene Prime Minister Janez Janša. The Slovene Publishing House Nova obzorja is set to publish an English translation …
Shifting Sherlocks
13/02/2014
Warning: the following blog contains spoilers for series three of Sherlock. Shortly after the first series of the BBC series Sherlock I contributed to an edited collection examining the series. My chapter was inspired by the almost simultaneous release of the Benedict Cumberbatch starring series, the Robert Downey Jr starring film, Sherlock Holmes (dir. Guy …
Postdramatic Theatre and the Political
24/01/2014
Postdramatic Theatre and the Political – International Perspectives on Contemporary Performance is an exciting new collection of essays, edited by Dr Jerome Carroll and Prof Steve Giles from the Department of German Studies here at Nottingham, and Dr Karen Jürs-Munby from Lancaster University, about the political claims of postdramatic theatre. The book, which has just …
A Most Curious Case: The Trials and Tribulations of the Genitive in Dutch and German
03/01/2014
In the 19th century, the Dutch genitive case was referred to as the ‘holy case’ by the poet and novelist Jacob van Lennep (1802-1868) because, like certain sacred names in Judaism, it was written but not spoken. By this, he meant that the genitive occurred still in careful written language but that it had all …
Final sneak peak: Windows on Russia
10/10/2013
The eagerly-anticipated book ‘Windows on Russia and Eastern Europe’, written by Nottingham alumni, finally launches on 26 October! In our final sneak peak before the launch, Rod Thornton describes his experience as part of a British army contingent sent to protect fuel supplies in Bosnia… We arrived at the Egyptian barracks in the middle of …
Rethinking the relationship between Realism and Romanticism in the nineteenth century
02/09/2013
Romanticism and Realism are arguably the two most prominent nineteenth-century movements in European literature and art, typically conceived as mutually exclusive and somehow reflecting the philosophical conflict of idealism and realism that runs through the history of modern European culture, or indeed is seen as universal. Nineteenth-century European literary history is seen as a shifting …
Germania remembered
16/08/2013
A new book, Germania Remembered 1500–2009. Commemorating and Inventing a Germanic Past, co-edited by Dr Nicola McLelland (German) and Dr Christina Lee (English), and with a foreword by Tom Shippey, examines how German, English and Scandinavian scholars, writers and artists have invoked the remote history of Germany in order to bolster their ideas about what it …
Jazz in France
26/07/2013
In a poem written in the 1930s, Léopold Sédar Senghor, a black student from French West Africa, soon to be recognised as a founding father of the négritude movement, recounts strolling down the Rue Fontaine in Paris, past the open door of the Cabane cubaine, an early jazz club. As the sounds of jazz spill …
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