Dr Simon Ward

Dr Simon Ward The University of Aberdeen School of Language & Literature

Lecturer work +44 (0)1224 272491 pref simon.ward@abdn.ac.uk pref School of Language and Literature Taylor Building King's College Old Aberdeen AB24 3UB

Lecturer

MA, D Phil (Oxon)

Personal Details

Telephone:	+44 (0)1224 272491
Email:	simon.ward@abdn.ac.uk
Address:	School of Language and Literature Taylor Building King's College Old Aberdeen AB24 3UB

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Biography

After completing his degree in Modern History and Modern Languages at Oxford, Dr Ward wrote his doctoral thesis on constructions of self in the works of Wolfgang Koeppen, which appeared as a book with Rodopi (see below). He is currently completing a book on the urban memory in Berlin from 1960 to 2012, focusing on the relationship between memory, visual culture and the urban environment, and moving away from a focus on 'space' in the city towards a reading of the experience of 'time' in the city.

He is also preparing a book on 'Modernity off the Rails? A Cultural History of the Railways in Twentieth Century Europe', based around a number of articles he has already published.

His teaching interests are principally in German cultural history and visual culture; he has devised and taught Honours courses on Berlin, City of the Twentieth Century; the cultural history of travel and tourism in Germany since 1770; and on German History since 1945. He also teaches a range of literature courses relating to twentieth-century German modernist literature.

Reflecting his growing interest in film and visual culture, he has developed modules on the cinema of Wim Wenders, as well as other film modules on 'Cinematic Cities' and 'Transport Technologies', courses which itself crosses the boundaries between European, American and 'world' cinema. He has also developed a module on 'Filming German History' which examines the strategies used by film makers such as Edgar Reitz, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Oliver Hirschbiegl to put 'history' on film, as a way of discussing the changes that have taken place in German film making in the post-unification era.

In his spare time, he enjoys running and playing cricket.

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Research Interests

His wider research interests focus on the relationships between architecture and critical theory, and the cultural significance of 'in-between' spaces as they are encountered and imagined in urban space, artistic discourse, including travel writing, and between artistic disciplines. He contributes to the M. Litt in Visual Culture. He would be particularly interested in supervising a PhD on the relationship between regeneration and resistance in art and literature in post-unification Berlin, as well as in any area of twentieth-century German literature and film.

He is also interested in Northern Irish prose and poetry since Louis MacNeice, with particular reference to Derek Mahon and Michael Longley.

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