Professor Gerrit-Jan Berendse FLSW
Candidaats, Drs., Dr. (Utrecht)
Overview
Position:
Professor of Modern European Literature and Culture, and of German.
Email:
BerendseGJ@cardiff.ac.ukTelephone: +44(0)29 2087 4534
Fax: +44(0)29 2087 4946
Extension: 74534
Location: Room 0.33, 65-68 Park Place
Studied German Language, Literature and Society, Art History and Modern Philosophy in Utrecht, Göttingen and Frankfurt/Main. MA summa cum laude in 1985 and PhD in 1990, funded by the Dutch Research Council, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). Postdoc at University of Bochum and University of Utrecht. Start of teaching career in 1994 at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. In 2002 moved to Cardiff School of European Studies as Chair in Modern European Literature and Culture. From 2002 to 2006 Director of Postgraduate Studies and Head of the German Department from 2007 till 2010. Joint chair of the research unit Languages, Cultures and Ideologies.
Research interests in contemporary German poetry and in the links between European literature and terrorism.
Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
Member of the AHRC Peer Review College.
Corresponding Member of the Saxon Academy of Arts.
Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales (FLSW).
Research Unit
Languages, Cultures and Ideologies
Related Links
Glossen - journal on literature and art in the German speaking countries after 1945
Cardiff Centre for Modern German History
Sächsische Akademie der Künste
Publications
Research
Key projects
Organisor of the Conference of the Association for German Studies in Great Britain and Ireland at Cardiff in 2013 with Ruth Owen.
Terror in the Arts. Changing Views of Political Violence in Literature and the Arts. 23-24 August 2000 at University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand (with Mark Williams)
Cultural Memories of Left-Wing German Terrorism. 15-17 September 2005 at Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK (principal investigator)
May 68 Postgraduate symposium. 9 May 2006 at Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK (principal investigator)
Hamlet Reception in European Cultures. 11-13 September 2008 at Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK (with Ruth Owen)
Research fellowships
Research Fellowship of Netherlands Organisation of Scientific Research, Humanities section (NWO): 1986-1990
Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship: 1999-2000, 2006 and 2010
DAAD Senior Academic Fellowship 2007 and 2010
Biography
Undergraduate teaching: final year option modules
- May 68: Marking Changes in European Politics and Culture
- Life and Letters of Bertolt Brecht
Postgraduate teaching
MA European Studies
i. Pathway on Europe in a National & Global Context.
In this scheme I teach European protest culture in the 1960s and 70s. I have a special interest in the configurations between student movements and political violence in various European nations.
ii. Pathway on Identities in European Studies.
I teach the module on German Youth Culture, a phenomenon that spans from the 1770s to the 1970s, focusing on authors such as Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, Georg Büchner, Jakob van Hoddis, Hans Magnus Enzensberger and Rolf Dieter Brinkmann.
MA Literature in European Cultures
i. Module on Memories of the Second World War in European Autobiographical Writing.
I teach texts by the Holocaust survivor Jean Améry and the anonymously published diary Woman in Berlin in which Germans are portrayed as victims of
WWII.
ii. Module on The Novel and the City.
I teach the novel Death in Rom by Wolfgang Koeppen.
iii. Module on Crossing Borders: Adaptations of Literature into Film.
Here, the main focus is the transfer from Günter Grass’s novel to Volker Schlöndorff’s film The Tin Drum.
