Almut Suerbaum
Fellow & Tutor in German; Professor of German
For the last three years, I have been involved in Oxford’s first Marie Curie international training network in the humanities: the project on ‘Mobility of Ideas and Transmission of Texts’ (MITT) studies the medieval transmission of learning from the univiersities to the wider readership that could be reached through the vernacular.
Together with partners in Antwerp, Freiburg, Lecce, and Leiden, we have built up a network og 20 graduates and post-docs and held regular interdisciplinary workshops. One of the early stage researchers, Racha Kirakosian, is based at Somerville, and together,we organized a conference on ‘Medieval Women and their Books’, held jointly at the Talyorian and at Somerville.
Arising from this project, I have completed a series of articles on the use of song in mystical writing, and am planning a joint colloquium with a musicologist on the ‘Jenaer Liederhandschrift’ and the ‘Carmina Burana’ manuscript, as well as a project on voice and style as medieval literary concepts. I am interested more generally in the relationship between cultures in the middle ages – Latin and the vernacular, manuscript and voice, lay and institution, and in the role which gender plays in negotiating such cultural tensions.
Further details of my research interests, as well as an updated list of my publications, can be found on my departmental page.
Publications
‘A Room with a view. Zur Spannung zwischen Kontemplation und Leben in der Welt in den Dorotheenviten des Johannes Marienwerder’, in Mußediskurs im kulturellen Wandele, ed. Burkhard Hasebrink, Philipp Riedl ( Berlin: de Gruyter, in press)
‘Style over Substance? Interkulturelle Austauschbeziehungen zwischen geistlicher und weltlicher Lyrik am Beispiel der Hymnik’, in Stil in der deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters, ed. Elizabeth Andersen, Ricarda Bauschke, Nicola McLelland, (forthcoming, Berlin: Akademieverlag, 2013)
‘An Urban Housewife as Saint: Dorothea von Montau and Johannes Marienwerder’, in Companion to Mysticism and Devotion in Northern Germany (1200-1500), ed. Elizabeth Andersen, Henrike Lähnemann, Anne Simon (Leiden: Brill: 2014), 179-204
‚Formen der Publikumsansprache bei Bertold von regensburg’, in: Predigt im Kontext, ed. Volker Mertens et al. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013), 21-33
Caesar asl Integrationsfigur im Mittelalter? In: Praktiken europäischer Traditionsbildung im Mittelalter. Wissen – Literatur – Mythos, ed. Manfred Eikelmann, Udo Friedrichs (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 2013), 229-243
‘gedenk ûf scheiden! Transformationen des Tagelieds im 13. Jahrhundert, in Wolfram-Studien XXI: Lyirk im 13. Jahrhundert, ed. Susanne Köbele ( Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 2013), 231-249
‘Tauler reception in religious lyric: the (pseudo)-Tauler cantilenae’, in Ons Geestelijk Erf 83.3 (2012), 41-54
Editor, with Elke Brüggen, Sebastian Coxon, Franz-Josef Holznagel, Text und Normativität im deutschen Mittelalter. XX. Anglo-German Colloquium. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2012)
‘Es kommt ein schiff, geladen: Mouvance in mystischen Liedern aus Straßburg, in Schreiben und Lesen in der Stadt.Literaturbetrieb im spätmittelalterlichen Straßburg, ed. Felix Heinzer, Stephen Mossman, Nigel F. Palmer (Berlin:: de Gruyter, 2012), 99-116
‘Wissen als Macht. Figurendarstellung in Thürings von Ringoltingen Melusine’, in Figurenwissen. Funktionen von Wissen bei der narrativen Figurendarstellung, ed. Lilith Jappe, Olav Krämer, Fabian Lampart, (Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 2012), 54-74