Dr Gundula-Maria Sharman

Biography

Dr Sharman has been a member of the German Department since 1998.  In 1999 she completed her Phd Twentieth-century Reworkings of German Literature, which analysis how selected canonic texts ranging from Goethe to Thomas Mann, were received by post-1945 writers, including Brecht, Wolfgang Koeppen, and the Irish novelist John Banville.  

Focus of her research and teaching includes 20th century German fiction, children's literature and crime novels. 

Dr Sharman has been programme coordinator for German Studies since Sep 2011. 

External Memberships

Year Abroad co-ordinator.

Dr Sharman is currently an external examiner for Advanced Higher German with the SQA (since 2001).

Research Overview

Dr Sharman's research areas are based in German literature and culture of the late 18th century until the post-45 era.  Her first monograph was concerned with the phenomenon of 'Literary Reworkings' (literarische Bearbeitungen) in the context of German literature.  The analysis includes works by authors such as Wolfgang Koeppen, Peter Schneider, Ulrich Plenzdorf and the Irish writer John Banville.

Publications

Monograph

Twentieth-century Reworkings of German Literature, Rochester: Camden House, 2002. The publication was supported by The Carnegie Trust with a grant of £1200 plus a Faculty Award of £300.

Co-edited volumes

Margaret Stone, Gundula Sharman eds., Jenseits der Grenzen. Die Auseinandersetzung mit der Fremde in der deutschsprachigen Kultur (Bern: Peter Lang, 2000). Financially supported by the University of Eichstätt.

Journal articles

The jungle strikes back: European defeat at the hands of the South American landscape in the films of Werner Herzog, Journal of Transatlantic Studies, 2.1, Spring 2004

‘Literature in the modern syllabus’, Academic Exchange Quarterly 2002, 6.4

Warum Borchert?, Jahresheft der Internationalen Wolfgang-Borchert-Gesellschaft e.V., vol. 9, 1997 

Articles in books

Words and Deeds in Goethe’s Iphigenie auf Tauris, in: Heike Bartel, Brian Keith-Smith, eds. ‘Nachdenklicher Leichtsinn.’ Essays on Goethe, and Goethe Reception (Lampeter: Edwin Mellen, 2000)

Elective Affinities with Ireland: Goethe’s Die Wahlverwandtschaften and John Banville’s The Newton Letter, in: S. Stark, ed., The Novel in Anglo-German Context (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000)

Web publication

German translation of St Alban’s Psalter, website, AHRB project with Professor Jane Geddes, University of Aberdeen, www.abdn.ac.uk/stalbanspsalter

Book Reviews and Peer Reviews

Reworking the German Past: Adaptations in Film, the Arts and Popular Culture. Edited by S. G. Figge and J. K. Ward. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2010, in: Journal of European Studies, forthcoming, March or June 2012

John Pizer, Imagining the Age of Goethe: contemporary German fictionalizations of major intellectuals in the 18^th and early 19^th centuries (Rochester: New York, 2011), peer review for Camden House.  

Current Research

• the fragile self in Goethe's Werther, B?chner's Lenz and their literary successors, and
• German intercultural encounters with a special focus on the European North, Germans abroad and Nordic travellers in Germany

Through collaboration on the St Albans Psalter web site Dr Sharman also has inter-disciplinary links with History of Art.

Teaching Responsibilities

Honours options

• Images of Childhood
• Love Marriage and Adultery in German literature
• Film and Text: literary film adaptations of NGC and DEFA
• Allusion and fusion: Goethe's Werther and BÏ‹chner's Lenz
• Means and motives: German crime fiction from Schiller to Tatort

Other teaching duties include a lecture series on Goethe's Faust, selected 20th-century novels and Kurzgeschichten, German film and German language options at all levels.