Anglistik V: Anglophone Literatures / Literary Translation
The section is dedicated to Anglophone literatures in our transculturally entangled world. Tracing exchange, interrelations and differences across diverse literatures written in English, we draw on world literature theory, postcolonial and transcultural studies as well as theories of translation. While we are committed to tracing the uneven travels of literary traditions, creative practices and texts across the world, we also put emphasis on the transformative power of locality. Foregrounding the aesthetics and politics of fiction, we seek to examine the role of Anglophone literatures in the negotiation, reflection and translation of social configurations and cultural concepts across the globe. We firmly believe that literature can offer new ways of ‘worlding’ and does therefore make a difference – not in spite of but because of its distinct characteristics.
In our teaching and research, we aim to identify and retrieve the marginalised and neglected voices of postcolonial and transcultural writers within a wide spectrum of cultures, genres and periods. The literary and cultural topics we study therefore vary widely: for example, memory and transculturality, cosmopolitanism and gender, postcolonial justice and ethics, visuality and visibility in postcolonial cultures, nature and the environment, queerness and sexuality, nation and state, memory and trauma, English as a language of imperialism and English as a world language. We are committed to “unforgetting” English (Rebecca Walkowitz) and to showing what it means to represent specific experiences in English.
Theories, concepts and practices of linguistic and cultural translation also figure prominently in our MA programme 'Literary Translation'. We understand translation as a key academic and cultural practice that enables complex processes of negotiation and transformation between different languages, groups, media and disciplines. We are committed to making the creative and transformative work of translators and translation more visible. The Centre for Translation Studies (CTS) offers an interdisciplinary forum for the study of interlingual and cultural translation.
News & Events
"Decolonial Hope: Solidarity, Sustainability and Nigerian Ecodocumentaries as Counter Narratives"
We are pleased to announce that Dr Goutam Karmakar (University of Hyderabad, University of Cologne) will deliver a guest lecture on the topic of "Decolonial Hope: Solidarity, Sustainability and Nigerian Ecodocumentaries as Counter Narratives" in Dr Hannah Pardey's seminar on Nigerian petrofiction. The lecture will take place on 10 June 2026, 12:30-14:00, in room 23.21.U1.95. Everyone interested is warmly welcome!
Panel at 2026 ESSE conference: “The Poetics of Affect – Literary Perspectives”
We are pleased to announce that Prof Birgit Neumann and Dr Hannah Pardey will co-convene a panel at the 2026 ESSE conference (31 Aug–4 Sept 2026, Santiago de Compostela, Spain). Titled “The Poetics of Affect – Literary Perspectives”, the panel brings together international researchers to discuss how Anglophone works of literature codify affects as literary and medial forms in their critical discussions of the climate crisis, the excesses of neo-liberal capitalism and contemporary labour, and the mainstreaming of right-wing populist rhetoric across the globe. Using a wide array of reading strategies, the panel traces the connections and disconnections between affective functions in Anglophone literatures, as well as other media. Further details can be found on the ESSE 2026 website.
Re-Membering Translation: How Memory Studies Can Invigorate Translation Studies
5-6/03/2026, Haus der Universität
Re-Membering Translation: How Memory Studies Can Invigorate Translation Studies
International Conference
Organisation: Dr. Yvonne Liebermann & Dr. Hannah Pardey (HHU)
The aim of this international conference is to engage critically with the nexus between Memory Studies and Translation Studies and to explore how recent concepts in Memory Studies can strengthen theories and practices of translation. Opening up the field of Translation Studies and rethinking it with concepts in Memory Studies not only fosters new connections across the two fields but also bears the potential to ‘re-member’ Translation Studies so as to attune it to the globalized and digitized twenty-first century.
Bringing together scholars from Memory Studies and Translation Studies, the conference engages in questions such as: Should we shift our attention away from transfers between source and target languages and rather investigate translation’s potential to reimagine cultures? Can translation be detached from its dual (source and target) context, and how would this modify concepts of translation more generally? What are the merits of ‘translating’ notions such as ‘latent memory’, ‘cosmopolitan memory’, ‘multidirectional memory’ or ‘globital memory’ to a Translation Studies context? Can the field of Memory Studies transform the global book market, including the imbalance of languages, in ways that are comparable to its impact on museum cultures?
Post-Monolingual Literatures Across Europe: Renegotiating Civic and Literary Participation
International Conference
February 5-6, 2026
Prof. Dr. Birgit Neumann
This conference is dedicated to exploring the poetics and politics of literary texts that employ multi- and translingual strategies to challenge monolingual norms. Post-monolingual literatures activate literary multi- and translingualism to express the experiences of subjects who live in more than one language, who resist institutionalized monolingual paradigms, and who create new links between languages to foster affective forms of community-building beyond the nation. The conference asks how this corpus of texts, by embracing linguistic exchange, also models new concepts of language. Post-monolingual literatures dismantle notions of language as a singular, countable, and separable entity, configuring it instead as a fluid, relational, embodied, and pluralized practice. Together, these works make a significant contribution to the search for more hospitable collectivities and to the assertion of pluralized civic and literary forms of participation. While focusing on the aesthetics of languaging in literatures across Europe, the conference also addresses the role of the book market in regulating language.