Dr Ruth J Owen – BA, MSt, DPhil (Oxon)
Overview
Position:
Senior Lecturer
Email:
OwenR12@cardiff.ac.ukTelephone: +44(0)29 2087 5036
Fax: +44(0)29 2087 4946
Extension: 75036
Location: Room 0.35, 65-68 Park Place
My research focuses on German poetry. I have written a book about the relationship between political history and poetry, with respect to the ‘Wende’ of 1989 and the impact of unification. Further publications have explored questions of national identity, as expressed in poetry about urban landscapes; contemporary poetry about science; and the representation of the human body in poetry through different eras of the twentieth century. More recently, I have been working on poetry translation, especially in the GDR. I have also developed an ongoing project concerning how the Ophelia figure from Shakespeare’s Hamlet has been appropriated by German-language culture.
Selected Publications
The Poet’s Role: Lyric Responses to German Unification by Poets from the GDR (2001)
‘Freedoms of Expression: Poetry Translations in the East Berlin Poesiealbum’, Translation Studies (2011)
‘Bodies in Contemporary Poetry’, German Monitor (2007)
‘Claiming the body: The Ophelia Myth in the GDR’, Germanic Review (2007)
‘Voicing the drowned girl: Poems by Hilde Domin, Ulla Hahn, Sarah Kirsch and Barbara Köhler', Modern Language Review (2007)
Selected Projects
- Lyric Responses to Unification
- The German City in Postwar Poetry
- Representing the Body in Twentieth-century Poetry
- Ophelia in Literary and Visual Culture
- The GDR Poetry Magazine ‘Poesiealbum’
Research Units & Networks
Publications
Authored book
The Poet’s Role: Lyric Responses to German Unification by Poets from the GDR (Amsterdam and New York: Editions Rodopi, 2001)
Refereed journal articles
‘Roses are Red: The Peculiar Remembrance of Rosa Luxemburg in Lyric Poetry’
Seminar 48.2(2012), 127-146
‘Freedoms of Expression: Poetry Translations in the East Berlin Poesiealbum’
Translation Studies 4.2 (2011) special issue Poetry and Translation, ed. Lawrence Venuti, 133-148
‘British Poets in the GDR Poesiealbum’
Angermion: Yearbook for Anglo-German Cultural Relations 1 (2008), 157-172
‘Claiming the Body: The Ophelia Myth in the GDR’
Germanic Review 82.3 (2007), 251-267
‘Bodies in Contemporary Poetry’
German Monitor 69 (2007), special issue Schaltstelle: Neue deutsche Lyrik im Dialog, ed. Karen Leeder, 269-291
‘Voicing the Drowned Girl: Poems by Hilde Domin, Ulla Hahn, Sarah Kirsch and Barbara Köhler in the German Tradition of Representing Ophelia’
Modern Language Review 102.3 (2007), 781-792
‘The Body as Art, in Early-Twentieth-Century German Poetry’
Monatshefte 96 (2004), 503-520
‘Time in Volker Braun’s Poetry’
German Monitor 58 (2004), special issue Volker Braun in Perspective, ed. Rolf Jucker, 197-208
‘Eine im Feuer versunkene Stadt: Dresden in Poetry’
Gegenwartsliteratur 1 (2002), 87-106
‘Science in Contemporary Poetry: A Point of Comparison between Raoul Schrott and Durs Grünbein’
German Life and Letters 54 (2001), 82-96
‘The Ex-GDR Poet and the People’
German Life and Letters 52 (1999), 490-505
Edited books
The Hamlet Zone: Reworking Hamlet for European Cultures edited by Ruth J. Owen
(Cambridge Scholars, 2012)
New German Literature: Life-Writing and Dialogues with the Arts edited by Julian Preece, Frank Finlay and Ruth J. Owen
(Lang, 2007)
Kölner Ausgabe der Werke Heinrich Bölls Band 10 herausgegeben von Viktor Böll & Frank Finlay in Zusammenarbeit mit Ruth J. Owen (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2005)
Chapters in books
‘A Poetics of Presence: Travel Cycles in Aroma and Lob des Taifuns’
Durs Grünbein Today, ed. Karen Leeder, Michael Eskin, Christopher Young (de Gruyter, [forthcoming] 2013)
‘Death by Cultural Mobility: Ophelia in German’
The Hamlet Zone, ed. Ruth J. Owen [forthcoming 2012]
‘wenn ein staat ins gras beißt, singen die dichter: The Wende in Poetry ’
Memory Traces: 1989 and the Question of German Cultural Identity, ed. Silke Arnold-de Simine (Lang, 2005), pp.151-180
‘Germania im Bunker: German Urban Landscapes in Contemporary Poetry’
Cityscapes and Countryside in Contemporary German Literature, eds. Julian Preece and Osman Durrani (Lang, 2004), pp.29-44
‘The Colonizing West: Poetry by Heiner Müller, Steffen Mensching and Bert Papenfuß in the 1990s’
Legacies and Identity: East and West German Literary Responses to Unification, ed. Martin Kane (Lang, 2002), pp.113-126
Journal Issues
Hamlet and Poetry, themed issue vol. 12 of New Readings, co-edited with Marta Minier (2012)
Truth Claims in Fiction Film, themed issue vol. 11 of New Readings, co-edited with Tilmann Altenberg (2011)
Other publications
Reviewing for Modern Language Review, Angermion and Arbitrium
‘Which airport next? Ruth J. Owen follows the trail of contemporary German poets’, New Books in German 2003
Biography
Career profile
I was educated at Oriel College, Oxford (BA, MSt, DPhil) and held research posts at the Humboldt University in Berlin, the University of Leeds, and the Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies in London. After being a lecturer at various colleges in Oxford, I joined Cardiff University in 2007 and became Senior Lecturer in 2008. I direct the Poetry Research Network.
Awards and prizes
2002 Research Fellowship, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
Conference organisation
2011:
Hamlet & Poetry
2009: Hamlet-Reception in European Cultures
2008: Made in the GDR: Visual Culture in the Other Germany
2004: Interactions: Contemporary German Literature’s Dialogue with other Arts
Teaching profile
- Year 1: German Culture - Modernity and Metamorphosis
- Year 2: German Political Drama
- year 2: Poetry in German
- Year 2: German Culture for Beginners
- Year 4: The GDR in Literature and Visual Culture
- Year 4: Translation into English
- Translation for German Erasmus students
- Postgraduate: MA European Studies (Cultural Mobility Literature and the Visual Arts)
- Postgraduate: MA Literature in European Cultures (Travel Writing)
- Postgraduate: MA Translation Studies (Literary Translation, Adaptation in the Arts, dissertation supervision)
- Postgraduate: MPhil and PhD supervision in German literary studies
