Professor Karen J. Leeder
Karen J. Leeder, M.A., D.Phil.
Professor of Modern German Literature, Fellow of New College
Director of Graduate Studies in Modern Languages
Address: New College, Oxford, OX1 3BN
Email: karen.leeder@new.ox.ac.uk
Fax: 01865 279590
Research
Karen Leeder specialises in the following areas: German poetry and the German poetic tradition; GDR literature; post-1989 literature; contemporary German literature and politics; comparative literature; translation; reception of Brecht and Rilke. She is currently working on a book on gender and contemporary German poetry; one on lateness and German literature and one on angels in art, literature and film. She is also editing a new volume marking twenty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall: From 'Stasiland to 'Ostalgie': Remebering the GDR - Twenty years On. http://www.mod-langs.ox.ac.uk/files/rememberthegdr She has translated several contemporary German poets into English, as well as prose works by Michael Krüger and Raoul Schrott and is currently a judge of the Times Stephen Spender prize for translation.
Teaching
German language and literature. Special interests in poetry, women's writing, post-1945 literature, GDR literature, post-1989 literature. Lectures: 20th-century German literature, especially post-1945 literature, GDR literature, poetry, contemporary literature. Special authors: teach many of them, but special interest in Brecht, Kafka, Grass, Wolf, Sebald.
Graduate Teaching
She has supervised a number of doctorates and Masters on various aspects of contemporary German literature, GDR literature, Günter Grass, post-1989 poetry, Second wave Vergangehnehitsbewältigung, pop literature etc. She regularly teaches graduate special subjects on poetry, GDR literature, post-1989 German literature.
Publications
Editor, with Robert Vilain, Nach Duino: Studien zu Rainer Maria Rilkes späten Gedichten (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2009)
Editor, with Robert Vilain, The Cambridge Companion to Rilke (Cambridge: CUP, 2009)
'Günter Grass as Poet', in The Cambridge Companion to Günter Grass, Stuart Taberner (Cambridge: CUP, 2009)
Editor, From Stasiland to Ostalgie. The GDR Twenty Years After, A special edition of Oxford German Studies, OGS, 38.3 (Oxford, 2009)
'Heimat in der neuen deutschen Lyrik', in Gedächtnis und Identität: Die deutsche Literatur nach der Vereinigung. Bilanz und Perspektiven, Fabrizio Cambi (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2008)
'The Desire of the Angel: Myth, Message and Metaphor in Contemporary German Literature and Film', in Third Agents: Secret Protagonists of the Modern Imagination, ed. Ian Cooper, Ekkehard Knorer and Bernhard Malkmus (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008), 214-228
'Günter Grass's Lateness: Reading Grass with Adorno and Said', in Changing the Nation: Günter Grass in International Perspective, ed. Rebecca Braun Frank Brunsen and (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2008), 49-66
'"Eine Grammatik der Liebe". Ulrike Draesners Lyrik', in Familien – Geschlechter – Macht: Beziehungen im Werk Ulrike Draesners, ed. Stephanie Catani and Friedhelm Marx (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2008), 37-60
'Des toten Dichters gedenkend: Remembering Brecht in Contemporary German Poetry', in Verwische die Spuren. Bertolt Brecht's Work and Legacy, ed. Robert Gillett and Godela Weiss-Sussex (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2008), 277-293
'“Nachwort zu Brechts Tod”: The Afterlife of a Classic in Modern German Poetry', Brecht und der Tod / Brecht and Death, ed. by Jürgen Hillesheim, Mathias Mayer, and Stephen Brockmann = special edition of Brecht Yearbook / Brecht Jahrbuch,, 32 (2007), 333-354
Editor, Flaschenpost: German Poetry and the Long Twentieth Century, Special Edition of German Life and Letters (GLL, LX, No. 3, 2007)
Editor, Schaltstelle: Neue deutsche Lyrik im Dialog, German Monitor 69 (Amsterdam, Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 2007)
'Sarah Kirsch', in Deutschsprachige Lyriker des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts, ed. Ursula Heukenkap and Peter Geist (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2007), 249-560
'Die Poesie der Wissenschaft und die Wissenschaft der Poesie. Das Gedicht im Labor des 20. Jarhunderts', in Jahrbuch für Internationale Germanistik,, ed. Georg Baumgart, Theo Elm, Christine Maillard (Bern: Lang, 2007), Band 7, 437-445
Translator, , After Brecht: A Celebration (Manchester: Carcanet, 2006)
Editor, with Erdmut Wizisla, O Chicago! O Widerspruch!: Ein Hundert Gedichte auf Brecht (Berlin: Transit, 2006)
'‘Cold media’: The science of poetry and the poetry of science', Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 30.4 (2005), 301-311
'Principles of Correspondence: Scientist, Explorer, Poet in the work of Raoul Schrott', in Blueprints for No-Man’s Land: Connections in Contemporary Austrian Culture, ed. Janet Stuart and Simon Ward (Frankfurt: Lang, 2005), 173-189
'', Literary Reflections of Modern War = a special edition of Forum for Modern Language Studies, ed. by Nicolas Martin, 41.2 (2005), 174-186
'”spritzende brocken: der erinnerung / versteht sich”: Thomas Kling’s poetry of memory', Literary Reflections of Modern War, a special edition of Forum for Modern Language Studies, ed. by Nicolas Martin, 41.2 (2005), 174-186
'Another Piece of the Past: Stories of a New German Identity', Oxford German Studies, special number for T.J. Reed, 33 (2004), 25-147
'Augenblick ohne Zeitmaß: Translation and its tropes in the work of Evelyn Schlag', in Evelyn Schlag: Readings of Text, ed. Beverley Driver Eddy (Bern and New York: Lang, 2004), 153-170
'Time, Love and Literature!: The Work of Elegy in the Poetry of Evelyn Schlag', Austrian Studies (The Austrian Lyric), 12 (2004), 231-248
'“rhythmische historia”: Contemporary poems of the First World War by Thomas Kling and Raoul Schrott', in Cultural Memory and Historical Consciousness in the German-speaking world since 1500, ed. Christian Emden and David Midgely (Fankfurt: Peter Lang, 2004), 281-305
Translator, Evelyn Schlag, Selected Poems (Manchester: Carcanet, 2004)
'The “poeta doctus” and the new German literature', special edition of The Germanic Review, ed. by Michael Eskin, Vol. 77.1 (2002), 51-67.
'Glücklose Engel: Fictions of German History and The End of the German Democratic Republic', in: Recasting German Identity: Culture, Politics and Literature in the Berlin Republic, ed. by Francis Finlay and Stuart Taberner (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2002), 99-109
'“After Brecht”: The reception of Brecht’s poetry in English', in Empedocles’ Shoe: Essays on Brecht’s poetry, ed. Tom Kuhn and Karen Leeder (London: Methuen, 2002), 231-256
'''Erkenntnistheoretische Maschinen': Questions of the sublime in Raoul Schrott', German Life and Letters - Special edition: Emerging writers in German, ed. by Stuart Taberner and Francis Finlay, 55: 2 (2002), 51-67
Editor, with Tom Kuhn, Empedocles' Shoe: Essays on Brecht's poetry (London: Methuen, 2002)
'Vom Unbehagen in der Einheit: Autobiographical writing by women after 1989', in: Autobiography by Women in German, ed. by Mererid Puw Davies, Beth Linklater and Gisela Shaw (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2000), 249-272.
'Two-way Mirrors: The Possibilities of the Subject in the poetry of Barbara Köhler', in Entgegenkommen: Dialogues with Barbara Köhler, ed. Georgina Paul and Helmut Schmitz (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000), 63-92
'Those born later read Brecht: The reception of Brecht’s “An die Nachgeborenen”', in Brecht’s Poetry of Political Exile, ed. Ronald Speirs (Cambridge: CUP, 2000), 211-240.
'Post-1945 Women’s Poetry in East and West', in A History of Women’s Writing in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, ed. Jo Catling (Cambridge: CUP, 1999), 200-215
'"B.B.s spät gedenkend": Reading Brecht in the 1980s and 1990s', Brecht 100<=>2000, = special edition of Brecht Yearbook, ed. by John Rouse, Marc Silberman, Florian Vaßen, 24 (1999), 111-129
'Modern German Poetry', in: Cambridge Companion to Modern German Culture, ed. by Eva Kolinsky and Wilfried van der Will (Cambridge: CUP, 1998), 193-212
'Towards a profane Hölderlin: Representations and revisions of Hölderlin in some GDR poetry', in Neue Ansichten: The Reception of Romanticism in the Literature of the GDR, ed. Howard Gaskill, Karin McPherson and Andrew Barker, GDR Monitor No.6 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996), 212-231
'The Ninth Elegy', in Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies: Cambridge Readings, ed. Roger Paulin and Peter Hutchinson (London and Riverside, CA: Duckworth and Ariadne Press, 1996), 152-70
Breaking Boundaries: A New Generation of Poets in the GDR (Oxford: OUP, 1996)
'"ich fühle mich in grenzen wohl": The metaphors of boundary and the boundaries of metaphor in Prenzlauer Berg', in Prenzlauer Berg: Bohemia in East Berlin?, ed. Philip Brady and Ian Wallace, German Monitor (Amsterdam, Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1995), 20-44
'"Dunkles zu sagen": Die Sprache der Liebe in der Lyrik Ingeborg Bachmanns', in Kritische Landnahme:Ingeborg Bachmanns Werke in der Rezeption der 90er Jahre, ed. Robert Pichl and Alexander Stillmark (Wien: Hora, 1994), 11-21
'"eine abstellhalle des authentischen": Postmodernism and Poetry in the New Germany,', in The Individual, Identity and Innovation: Signals from Contemporary Literature and the New Germany, ed. Athur Williams and Stuart Parkes (Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang, 1993), 201-220.
With Tom Kuhn, The Young Brecht (London: Libris, 1992, paperback 1996)