NELK

Michelle Stork, M.A., M.A.

Michelle Stork, M.A., M.A.

Michelle Stork, M.A., M.A.

Contact
Office: IG 4.156
Email: M.Stork@em.uni-frankfurt.de

Office hour in the winter semester 2023 and 2024:
Wednesday 3 - 4pm 

To sign up, please send me an email no later than Thursday and mention the reason for your visit.
Some weeks, my office hours will take place on Zoom.

Michelle Stork is a Research Associate at the Department of English and American Studies at Goethe University, Frankfurt. Her PhD project aims at reading road narratives in fiction and film across the Anglophone world from a transcultural perspective. Since November 2020, Michelle holds a scholarship with the German Academic Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes). In 2017 and 2018, she obtained two Masters degrees – one in Art History and one in Moving Cultures Transcultural Encounters, both from Goethe University.

Together with Prof. Dr. Nadia Butt, she co-directs the Forum of Global Anglophone Literatures and Cultures.

Current Project

PhD project: “Transcultural Automobilities in Contemporary Anglophone Road Narratives.” First supervisor: Prof. Dr. Frank Schulze-Engler; Second supervisor: Prof. Dr. Nadia Butt.

Current CfPs

Special Issue of European Journal of English Studies (EJES). "The Poetics and Politics of Gender, Mobility and Migration in the New Anglophone Literatures." Abstract deadline: 30 November 2023.
Special Issue of The Journal of Transport History (JTH). "Representing Automobility in Fiction and Film." Abstract deadline: 15 December 2023.

Find me on Academia.edu and LinkedIn.

RESEARCH & CV

RESEARCH & CV

 

Research Interests
  • Road Narratives and Automobility
  • Literary Mobility Studies
  • Transcultural English Studies
  • Literature and Globalisation
  • Petrofiction, Petrocultures

Education
since 2018 PhD "Transcultural Automobilities in Contemporary Anglophone Road Narratives," Department of New Literatures in English and Culture, Institute of British and American Studies, Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany. First supervisor: Prof. Dr. Frank Schulze-Engler; Second supervisor: Prof. Dr. Nadia Butt
2018 MA History of Art, Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany
2017 MA Moving Cultures – Transcultural Encounters, Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany
2017 BA History of Art and English Studies, Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany
 

Academic CV

Since 10/2023
Research Associate, New Anglophone Literatures and Cultures, Department of English and American Studies, Goethe-University Frankfurt, Germany

10/2020 – 04/2024
PhD Scholarship, German Academic Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes)

04/2021 – 03/2023
Adjunct Lecturer, New Anglophone Literatures and Cultures, Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany

09/2016 – 01/2017
Research M.A. Comparative Literary Studies, ERASMUS+ Universiteit Utrecht, Netherlands

11/2014 – 03/2016
Student Assistant, New Anglophone Literatures and Cultures, Department of English and American Studies, Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany

Funding and Awards 
  • PhD Scholarship, German Academic Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes)
  • Grant from Goethe University’s Faculty of Modern Languages (Forschungsförderung am FB10) for the organisation of the international conference “Representing Automobility in Literature and Film”
  • Grant from Deutsch-Französische Hochschule for the organisation of the international conference “Representing Automobility in Literature and Film”
  • Grant from Goethe University’s Faculty of Modern Languages (Forschungsförderung am FB10) for the participation in Harvard University’s Institute for World Literature Summer School
  • Grant from Goethe University’s GRADE for the workshop “Publishing in the New Anglophone Literatures and Cultures”

Commission of Trust

2023
Guest Editor, Matatu. Brill.
Guest Editor, The Journal of Transport History (JTH). SAGE.
Guest Editor, The European Journal of English Studies (ejes). Taylor and Francis.
Reviewer, English Studies in Africa. Taylor and Francis.

Professional Memberships
  • GAPS (Association for Anglophone Postcolonial Studies)
  • EACLALS (European Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies)
  • Deutscher Anglistenverband
  • ACLA (American Comparative Literature Association)
  • GRADE (Goethe Graduate Academy)
  • Co-Chair of the Working Group “Transcultural Narratives” at GRADE

Teaching
  • "Drive! Representing the Road in Anglophone Texts from the 1960s to the Present,” Proseminar, Goethe University Frankfurt, Winter 2023/24.
  • "Changing Narratives of Automobility", Proseminar, Goethe University Frankfurt, Winter 2022/23
  • "'Running from both the Living and the Dead’: Imagining Environmental and Mobility Justice in Transcultural Anglophone Texts", Proseminar, Goethe University Frankfurt, Summer 2022. Co-taught with Dr Kathrin Bartha-Mitchell. 
  • "Petroficiton", Proseminar, Goethe University Frankfurt, Winter 2021/2022
  • "Around the World with the Road Narrative: Identity, Automobility and Transculturality in Contemporary Anglophone Road Novels and Road Movies”, Proseminar, Goethe University Frankfurt, Summer 2021.

PUBLICATIONS

PUBLICATIONS

Journal Articles (Peer-Reviewed)

  1. 2024. “A Travelling Genre: Para-Nomads in the 21st Century Anglophone Road Novel.” Anglistik 35 (1). [forthcoming]
  2. 2023. “‘I Was Taken as a Child. Stolen’: Narrating Automobility, Environmental Justice and the Stolen Generations in Mad Max: Fury Road.” Kairos: A Journal of Critical Symposium. [forthcoming]
  3. 2022. “Identities Lost and Found? Transcultural Perspectives on Jamal Mahjoub’s Road Novel Travelling with Djinns.” Postcolonial Interventions 7.1, 240-265.

Book Chapters (Peer-Reviewed)

  1. 2024. With Kathrin Bartha-Mitchell. “Notes from a Classroom: Teaching Anglophone Transculturality amidst Environmental Devastations.” In The Many Worlds of Anglophone Literature: Transcultural Entanglements, Postcolonial Frictions, edited by Silvia Anastasijevic, Magdalena Pfalzgraf and Hanna Teichler. London and New York: Bloomsbury Publishing. [forthcoming]
  2. 2023. "Experiencing the Environment from the Car: Human and More-than-Human Road Trippers in Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing." Jesmyn Ward: New Critical Essays, edited by Sheri-Marie Harrison, Arin Keeble and Maria Elena Carpintero Torres-Quevedo, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
  3. 2023. With Nadia Butt. "The Anglophone Road Novel: Moving Memoires, Histories and Identities in Jamal Mahjoub’s Travelling with Djinns (2004) and Bernardine Evaristo’s Soul Tourists (2005)." The Anglophone Novel in the 21st Century: Cultural Contexts – Literary Developments – Model Interpretations, edited by Nadia Butt, Ansgar Nünning and Alexander Scherr, Trier: Wissenschaftsverlag Trier.
  4. 2021. “‘Everyone Leaves’: (Auto)Mobility and Migration in Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive.” Mobilizing Narratives: Narrating Injustices of (Im)Mobility, edited by Ben Hager Driss. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 21-38.

Special Issues

  1. 2025. Special Issue Matatu, “Africa in Europe, Europe in Africa’: Transcultural Histories in African Anglophone Literature.” Co-edited with Nadia Butt. [forthcoming]
  2. 2025. Special Issue European Journal of English Studies (EJES), “The Poetics and Politics of Gender, Migration, Mobility in the New Anglophones.” Co-edited with Nadia Butt and Radhika Mohanram. [forthcoming]
  3. 2025. Special Issue The Journal of Transport History (JTH), “Representing Automobility in Fiction and Film.” Co-edited with Melanie Schneider. [forthcoming]

Other

  1. 2022. Shamsie, Kamila: "Home Fire." Kindlers Literatur Lexikon, edited by Heinz Ludwig Arnold and Christiane Freudenstein-Arnold. Stuttgart: Metzler-Verlag.

Review

  1. 2023. "Mobility in Contemporary Zimbabwean Literature in English: Crossing Borders, Transcending Boundaries.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing. DOI: 10.1080/17449855.2023.2179471.

Presentations

  1. “‘Driving Along a Road Between Hallucination and Amnesia’: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Mobility in Post-Civil-War Sri Lankan Literature.” Panel: Poetics and Ethics of Mobility in Postcolonial Literature, Global Mobility Humanities Conference (GMCH) and Annual Conference of the International Association for the History of Transport, Traffic and Mobility (T2M), Konkuk University, Seoul, South Korea, October 2023. [accepted]
  2. “Infrastructural Friction in Contemporary Road Narratives”, 34th Annual Conference of the Association for Anglophone Postcolonial Studies (GAPS), Konstanz, Germany, May 2023.
  3. With Nadia Butt. “Mobile Lives, Nomadic Selves: Between Home and Homelessness in the Road Film Nomadland (2020)”, Travel Light: Apprehending Being on the Move, Western University, Ontario, Canada, March 2023.
  4. "Visualising Slowness and Friction in the Contemporary Road Narrative” Panel: Representation of Mobility and Transport: Formal Matters, T2M Conference, Padua, Italy, September 2022.
  5. "A Travelling Genre: Nomads in the 21st Century Anglophone Road Novel” Panel: Nomadworld: Global Mobility and the New Anglophones, Anglistentag 2022, University Mainz, September 2022.
  6. "Narrating Overlapping Geographies and Border-Crossings in the Transcultural Road Novel,” Panel: Transcultural Transgressions, ACLALS Triennial Conference, Toronto, July 2022.
  7. "Migration and Place-Making in the 21st Century Anglophone Road Novel,” Displacement, Emplacement, and Migration: An Interdisciplinary Conference, University Bamberg, June 2022.
  8. "We need to get to Africa’: Euro-African Mobilities in the Age of Viral Disease, Nuclear Meltdown and Artificial Intelligence,” Panel: Crossovers: Imaginaries of Movement in Culture and Literary Aesthetics, Meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA), National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei [online], June 2022.
  9. "Constructing Middle-Class Identities in India via Automobility in Mohit Goyal’s Road Novel Colourful Notions,” Panel: Mobilities and Contested Identities, 33rd Annual Conference of the Association for Anglophone Postcolonial Studies (GAPS), Goethe University Frankfurt, May 2022.
  10. "Echoes, Ghosts and Polaroids: Memory and Media in Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive,” Panel: Contested Phototextualities in Contemporary Latin America, Latin American Studies Association 2022 Congress, San Francisco [online], May 2022.
  11. "Nomadland: In Pursuit of of Home and Community on the Road,” Workshop: Raconter l'habiter: faire face aux crises de l'habitat en France et en Allemagne de la fin du XIXes à nos jours (Wohnen erzählen: Bewältigung der Wohnungskrisen in Frankreich und Deutschland vom Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts bis heute), Lyon, April 2022.
  12. "Coming Home:The Road to Sisterhood in Jaswal’s The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters,” Panel: Dis/placed Subjects: Home and Belonging in Postcolonial Women's Narratives, 53rd Convention of the Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA), Baltimore [online], March 2022.
  13. "It´s a good car, it’s just broken down’: Alternative Narratives of Modernity in the Contemporary Road Narrative,” Modernities in the Contact Zone: Translating across Unfamiliar Objects, 9th Postgraduate Forum Postcolonial Narrations, University of Potsdam, October 2021.
  14. "Driving, Drugs and Dreaming: Indigenous Automobility in Paul Collis’s Road Novel Dancing Home,” Panel: Cars, Annual Meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA), Montreal [online], April 2021.
  15. "Bitumen streams’: The Representation of Oil and Water in Tara June Winch’s Swallow the Air,” Panel: Oil and Water, 52nd Convention of the Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA), University at Buffalo [online], March 2021.
  16. "Narrating Im/Mobility and Identity in Contemporary Road Novels by Paul Collis and Tara June Winch,” Panel: Conceptualizing Entangled Im/Mobilities in Diverse Contexts, Entangled Im/Mobilities: Perspectives from the Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Vienna [online], March 2021.
  17. "Identities Lost, Identities Found? Reading Jamal Mahjoub’s Road Novel Travelling with Djinns through a Transcultural Lens,” Rethinking Postcolonial Europe: Moving Identities, Changing Subjectivities, 8th Postgraduate Forum Postcolonial Narrations, University of Gießen [online], February 2021.
  18. "A Continent of Strangers: Crossing 1950s Australia in Peter Carey’s A Long Way from Home” 31st Annual Conference of the Association for Anglophone Postcolonial Studies (GAPS), Goethe University Frankfurt, March 2020. [paper accepted; conference cancelled due to COVID-19]