Goethe-Universität — Announcements

English Studies

Okt 31 2025

- 01.11.2025

31 October – 1 November 2025 | Goethe University Frankfurt

Workshop: The Companies We Keep – Figurations, Narratives, and Practices of Co-Living in Common Spaces

Questions of housing and cohabitation are a topic of undeniable relevance today. Contemporary literature in particular shows that the polycrisis and cultural trends of the 21st century reflect and influence the way we experience figurations and practices of cohabitation in an ambivalent way. While existing research focuses on the home as the place where questions of identity, ideology and power are negotiated, the interdisciplinary workshop The Companies We Keep focuses on the relationality of humans, animals, objects and technologies in all types of dwellings in 21st-century British and Anglophone literature.

The aim of this event is to examine dynamic constellations of co-living from a literary, cultural and media studies perspective and therefore to outline cohabitation and its constitutive relationalities as a field of research.

Keynote speaker Professor Ben Highmore (University of Sussex) will deliver a lecture entitled “Domestic Milieux: Infrastructure, Osmosis, Reflux" (31.10., 6 pm., s.t.) The workshop is organized by Dr. Susanne Bayerlipp (Goethe University Frankfurt) and hosted by the Institute for English and American Studies.

For further information and the full programme please contact bayerlipp@em.uni-fankfurt.de

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English Studies

Jul 10 2025

- 20.07.2025

Visiting Fellow Dr Simon Smith (Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham) at the IEAS

We welcome Dr Simon Smith as a visiting fellow in the Department of English Studies.

Simon Smith, FSA, is Associate Professor of Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama at the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham. His research focuses on early modern theatre, music and sensory culture.
https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/staff/profiles/shakespeare/smith-simon

Together with Professor Susanne Scholz, he will lead the block seminar Shakespeare's Audiences, which will take place on the weekends of 11–12 July and 18–19 July 2025.
Dr Simon Smith will give the Wednesday Lecture (Forschungszentrum Historische Geisteswissenschaften, FZHG) on 16 July 2025, titled “Twelfth Night" Reconsidered: Identity, Song and Performativity.

Jul 16

18:15 Uhr

“Twelfth Night" Reconsidered: Identity, Song and Performativity.

Twelfth Night has long been recognised as one of Shakespeare's most musical plays. In recent decades critics have increasingly given attention to the ways in which it is concerned with identity too, from Viola's adoption of the Cesario identity for the vast majority of the play, to the conflict between Malvolio and Sir Toby over social advancement, hereditary rank, and meritocracy. This talk, emerging from my research for the new Cambridge Shakespeare Edition of Twelfth Night, argues that the two threads of song and identity are in fact closely entwined within the play, with each holding the key to a deeper understanding of the other. Looking in particular detail at key scenes including 2.3, 2.4 and 5.1, and drawing on the play's rich stage history that is yet to be fully researched, this talk will suggest ways of reading the play closely in light of the wider themes of identity and song, and suggest outward connections, too, with other plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries.

https://fzhg.org/termine/termin/10-simon-smith

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English Studies

Mär 13 2024

16:00

Essays in Honor of Frank Schulze-Engler

Book Launch - The Many Worlds of Anglophone Literature

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