Kathrin Bartha-Mitchell is a Postdoctral Researcher (DFG Walter Benjamin Fellow) at the NELK Department of the Institute of English and American Studies. She holds degrees from Freie Universität Berlin (B.A. and M.A.) and earned her PhD as part of the joint program between Monash University (Melbourne, Australia) and Goethe University. Her postdoctoral project explores intergenerational crises in transcultural Anglophone texts.

Research Interests
 

• Intergenerational Justice
• Ecocriticism and the Environmental Humanities
• Postcolonial and Transcultural Studies
• Australian and South Pacific Literature
• Gothic Studies
• Queer Studies
• Shakespeare

 
Current research

Post-doctoral project: “Imagining Intergenerational Justice: Reassessing Generational Crisis in Transcultural Anglophone Literature and Film from the 20^th to the 21^st century”

 
Selected publications

Monographs

2023. Cosmological Readings of Contemporary Australian Literature: Unsettling the Anthropocene. London, New York: Routledge. (Open Access)

• 2020. Unsettling the Anthropocene: Cosmological Readings of Contemporary Australian Literature. (Dissertation, Monash University).

Edited Volume

• 2024. With Frank Schulze-Engler and Pavan Malreddy: "Contested Solidarities: Agency and Victimhood in Anglophone Literatures and Cultures." Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Press (Forthcoming)

Articles and Book Chapters

• 2024. With Michelle Stork: “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).
• 2022. “‘Apocalyptic Climate Fiction in the Third Media Revolution: Briohny Doyle’s The Island Will Sink". Australian Literary Studies Vol. 37, No.2.
• 2021. “Cosmos vs. Anthropocene: Multi-scalar Praxis for Socio-Environmental Justice with Adrienne Maree Brown’s Emergent Strategy. Narratives of Scale in the Anthropocene: Imagining Human Responsibility in an Age of Scalar Complexity", edited by Gabriele Dürbeck and Philip Huepkes. London/New York: Routledge.
• 2016. “The Specter of Landscape: The Postcolonial Gothic, Preternatural, and Aboriginal Spiritual in Alexis Wright’s Plains of Promise.” Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural.
• 2015. Grotesque Encounters: Reading Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice along the principles of the Sublime, Beautiful and Grotesque. CERAE: An Australasian Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies.

Book Reviews / Literary Essays / Encyclopaedic Entries

• 2024. "Review of Christine Winter’s Subjects of Intergenerational Justice", Journal of Ecohumanism (forthcoming).
• 2023. "Review of The Cambridge Companion to Literature and the Anthropocene", edited by John Parham. Ecozon@ Vol. 14 No.1.
• 2017. "Review of Bruno Latour’s Facing Gaia: Eight Lectures on the New Climatic Regime" , Australian Book Review (December).
• 2017. “Must Miranda Go?” The 50^th anniversary of Picnic at Hanging Rock, and a campaign to recognise Indigenous local history takes shape. Kill Your Darlings.
• 2016. "Environmental Justice." Keywords for Transcultural English Studies, Goethe University.
• 2016. "Postcolonial Ecocriticism." Keywords for Transcultural English Studies, Goethe University.

Translations

• 2014. “Otto von Ottenburg” (Translation from Romanian into German). Das Leben wie ein Tortenboden: Neue Rumänische Prosa. Duca, Pfeifer, Stancu (eds.) Berlin.

Teaching

• “Energy in Transcultural Anglophone Fiction” (co-taught with Michelle Stork), Summer 2024 (in preparation)
• "'Unable to Perceive the Shape of You, I Find You all Around Me’: The Blue Humanities & Transcultural Readings of Water”, Hauptseminar, Winter 2023/24, Goethe University Frankfurt
• "Transcultural Ecocriticism: Moving Cultures in Times of Ecological Crisis”, Hauptseminar, Winter 2022/23, Goethe University Frankfurt
• “‘Running from Both the Living and the Dead’: Climate and Mobility Justice in Contemporary Transcultural Anglophone Literature and Film”, Summer 2022, Goethe University Frankfurt (co-taught with Michelle Stork)
• "Welcome to the Anthropocene? Australian Film and Literature at the End of Nature," Proseminar, Winter 2019/20, Goethe University Frankfurt
• Academic English, Theory and Practice, “English Connect”, 2017-2021, Monash University

 
Selected presentations

• “Cosmology in Motion: Aquatious Mobilisation of Indigenous Sovereignty: Melissa Lucashenko’s Too Much Lip,” German Association of Australian Studies “Australian Mobilites”, Duisburg-Essen, 2023.
• "Expanding Generationality: Kazuo Ishiguro’s An Artst of the Floating World & Alexis Pauline Gumb’s Undrowned”, ASLE-UKi Conference “Transitions”, Liverpool, U.K., 2023.
• "Imagining Intergenerational Justice in Transcultural Anglophone Literature”, Harvard School of World Literature, Cambridge, MA., 2023.
• “Cosmology as Counter-Narrative to the Anthropocene: The Fractal Consciousness of Scale”, International Anthropocene Conference, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, 2019.
• “Uncanny Anthropocene: Australian Literature at the End of Nature”, Harvard School of World Literature, Tokyo, 2018.
• “Uncanny Australia”, Environmental History Workshop, Australian National University, Canberra, 2018.
• “Reading Apocalypse as an Unethical Future in Briohny Doyle’s The Island Will Sink”, (Un)ethical Futures: Utopia, Dystopia and Science Fiction, Monash University, Melbourne, 2017.
• “The Ecogothic and Peter Weir’s The Last Wave”, German Association of Australian Studies: Nature and Environment in Australia, Cologne,2016.
• “The (Post)colonial Gothic and Reconciliation in Alexis Wright’s Plains of Promise”, International Gothic Association, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, 2015.
• “Grotesque Encounters: Reading the Sublime, Beautiful, and Grotesque in Post-War German Productions of The Merchant of Venice”, Conference of the Australian and New Zealand Shakespeare Association and the ACR Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions, University of Western Australia, Perth, 2012.

Awards / Grants / Scholarships (selection)

• 2023. Johanna Quandt R3 Career Award
• 2023. Goethe University Library Grant
• 2022. Winner of the inaugural award of the Scientific Association of Goethe University for Emerging Scholars
• 2021-present. DFG (German Research Foundation) Postdoctoral Fellowship "Walter Benjamin"
• 2016-2020. Monash International Postgraduate Research Scholarship (MIPRS) + Monash Graduate Scholarship (MGS)
• 2013-2014. DAAD (PROMOS) scholarship to study at the University of Melbourne, Australia

Professional Memberships

• Member of EASCLE (European Association for the Study of Literature, Culture, Environment)
• Member of GAPS (German Association of Postcolonial Studies)
• Member of EACLALS (The European Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies)
• Member of GASt + EASA (German and European Association of Australian Studies)
• Member of IGA (International Gothic Association)
• Member of GRADE (Goethe Graduate Academy)

 
Links

• Find me on Academia.edu, Linkedin, Research Gate and ORCID-ID.