Dr. Christian Sieg

Institute for German Philology

Curriculum vitae:

Function within the cluster/Membership in projects and groups:

• Research assistant, project B10 Authorship as Scandal
• Member of the study group Authorship
  Member of the study group Charting the Boundaries of the Religious Field
• Member of the study group Civil Religion, Religion and the State in the 19th and 20th Centuries

Project: Authorship in a globalised culture. On the transformation of political and religious aspects of German-language prose since the postwar period

My project is based on the hypothesis that, in the course of globalisation, a new model of literary authorship is emerging that is characterised both by a redefinition of the political aspect of literary production and by a changed role of religion in the authors’ self-image. German-language postwar literature had been dominated by authors who placed themselves in the political and cultural context of the nation, were politically committed or positioned themselves through being critical of civilisation, thus staging authorship as a moral authority. In contrast, contemporary authors admit to their particularity both within and outside their works and discard their predecessors’ universalistic claim. The socio-cultural disposition of the authors is increasingly gaining in importance due to this trend. Methodically based on Pierre Bourdieu’s literary sociology, I will analyse how the religious dimension of politically committed literature is changing given the globalised culture, and how a paradigm established in the 1960s is being removed. This transformation of the political in the literary field is accounted for by an analysis of the literature by authors with a migration background. Although the political aspects of migration literature have been given increased consideration in literature studies in the past decades, they have however not been placed in the tradition of politically committed literature. But only through such a perspective, the fundamental transformations of literary authorship, which are accelerated by globalisation, become apparent.

Research interests:

• Literature of classical modernism
• Contemporary literature
• History of the novel
• Frankfurt School
• Literary sociology
• Postcolonialism
• Globalisation 

Publications:

Monographs

• The Ordinary in the Novel of German Modernism. Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2011.
  
  extract (pdf-document, ca. 695 kb)

Articles

• „Schriftsteller als Gewissen der Nation. Religiöse und politische Aspekte eines Autorschaftskonzepts der Nachkriegszeit“, in: Christel Meier, Martina Wagner-Egelhaaf (eds.), Autorschaft. Ikonen – Stile – Institutionen, Berlin: Akademie-Verlag 2011, 317-330.
• „Deterritorialisierte Räume. Katharina Hackers »Die Habenichtse« und Terézia Moras »Alle Tage« im Spiegel des Globalisierungsdiskurses“, in: Weimarer Beiträge 57/1 (2011), 36–56.
• „Von Alfred Döblin zu Terézia Mora: Stadt, Roman und Autorschaft im Zeitalter der Globalisierung“, in: Wilhelm Amann, Georg Mein u. Rolf Par (Hg.), Globalisierung und Gegenwartsliteratur. Konstellationen – Konzepte – Perspektiven, Heidelberg: Synchron 2010, 193-208.
• „Beyond Realism: Siegfried Kracauer and the Ornaments of the Ordinary”, in: New German Critique 109 (Winter 2010), 99-118.
• „Briefe aus der Nach-Wende-Zeit – Zur Poetik der Erinnerung in Ingo Schulzes »Neue Leben«“, in: Gerhard Jens Lüdeker, Dominik Orth (Hg.), Nach-Wende-Narrationen. Das wiedervereinigte Deutschland im Spiegel von Literatur und Film, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2010, 163-174.

Reviews

• Rezension von Patrizia C. McBride: The Void of Ethics: Robert Musil and the Experience of Modernity, Evanston: Northwestern University Press 2006, in: Telos 140 (Winter 2007).
• Rezension von Peter Jelavich: Berlin Alexanderplatz: Radio, Film, and the Death of Weimar Culture, Berkeley: University of California Press 2006, in Telos 137 (Winter 2006).

Contact

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