Contact Details

Dr Helen Bridge
	Senior Lecturer in German
	Department(s): Modern Languages (German)
	Room: 314 (Queen's Building)
	Telephone: +44 (0)1392 264330 (Internal Ext. 4330)	This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it

Research Specialisms

Dr Helen Bridge welcomes enquiries about postgraduate supervision (MRes, MPhil and PhD degrees) on literature in German around 1900, the relationship between literature and visual art, and GDR literature .

Literature in German around 1900

My current research is focused on Rainer Maria Rilke. My interests also include the literary culture of the 1890s, Stefan George, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Thomas Mann and Franz Kafka.

The Relationship between Literature and Visual Art

My current projects explore how the relationship between poetry and painting/sculpture was formulated in the decades around 1900, with particular reference to the work of Rilke, George, Hofmannsthal and Paul Klee. My work also involves research into art historiography, art criticism and art theory in Germany in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I have a particular interest in art journals of the 1890s and 1900s.

Literature and Historiography in the GDR

My book on women's writing and historiography in the GDR explores how literature by East German women became a forum for critical approaches to history which challenged the official state discourse. Examining texts by both prominent and less established writers, my work highlights the plurality of literary developments.

Current Research Project

My current projects include a study of the influence of visual art and writings about art on Rilke's poetry. A key aspect of my research involves reading Rilke in relation to literary, cultural and intellectual contexts of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Publications

Publications in Print

Authored Book

• Women's Writing and Historiography in the GDR (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), viii + 280 pp. ISBN 0-19-925592-X

Chapters in Books (since 2001)

• 'Biographical Fiction by GDR Women Writers: Reassessing the Cultural Heritage', in Travellers in Time and Space: The German Historical Novel, ed. by Osman Durrani and Julian Preece (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2001), ISBN 90-420-1405-9 pp. 155-165.

Articles in Refereed Journals (since 2001)

• 'Rilke and the Modern Portrait', Modern Language Review, 99 (2004), 681-95.
• 'Christa Wolf's Kassandra and Medea: Continuity and Change', German Life and Letters, 57 (2004), 33-43.
• 'Place into Poetry: Time and Space in Rilke's Neue Gedichte', Orbis Litterarum, 61 (2006), 263-90.

Forthcoming Publications

Chapters in Books

• 'Das Problem der Abstraktion: Rilkes späte Dichtung und die moderne bildende Kunst', in volume on Rilke's late poetry, ed. by Robert Vilain and Karen Leeder (Göttingen: Wallstein, forthcoming in 2008).
• 'Rilke and the Visual Arts', in The Cambridge Companion to Rilke (Cambridge: CUP, forthcoming in 2008).
• ‘Rilke's Neue Gedichte and the Visual Arts', in Critical Exchange: European Art Criticism of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, ed. by Carol Adlam and Juliet Simpson (Oxford: Legenda, forthcoming).
• ‘Empathy Theory and Art History', in Art History and German Philosophy: A Systematic Legacy, ed. by Daniel Adler, Mitchell Frank and Richard Woodfield (forthcoming)
• ‘Perception, Form and Feeling: German Theories of Visual Knowledge in the Late Nineteenth Century', in Patterns of Knowledge in the Nineteenth Century, ed. by Ricarda Schmidt and Gert Vonhoff

Conferences

Conference Papers Given (since 2001)

• ‘Rilke's Art Critical Writings and New Poems'
  September 2003, University of Exeter, ‘Art Criticism, 1700-1900: Emergence, Development, Interchange in Eastern and Western Europe'
• ‘Rilke's Neue Gedichte and the Visual Arts'
  April 2004, University of Liverpool, Conference of University Teachers of German
• ‘The Problem of Abstraction: Rilke's Late Poetry and Modern Visual Art' February 2006, University of Oxford, ‘After Duino: The Late Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke'
• ‘Perception, Form and Feeling: German Theories of Visual Knowledge in the Late Nineteenth Century' September 2008, University of Exeter, ‘Patterns of Knowledge in the Nineteenth Century'
• ‘Empathy Theory and Art History October 2008, University of Glasgow, ‘Art History and German Philosophy: A Systematic Legacy'

Teaching

Undergraduate Teaching in 2008-09

• MLG 1009 Introduction to German Literature (contribution to team-taught module)
• MLG 1010 German and Austrian History and Culture: From 1500 to Today (contribution to team-taught module)
• MLG 2001 German Language, Written and Oral (convenor and contribution to team-taught module)
• MLG 2039 German Lyric Poetry (convenor and sole teacher)
• MLG 3021 Literary Modernism in German-Speaking Europe (convenor and sole teacher)

Postgraduate Teaching in 2008-09

• MA in European Languages and Cultures (convenor)
• SML M120 Postgraduate Core Module in Research Methods and Methodologies (joint convenor and teacher)

Postgraduate Supervision since 2001

• PhD thesis, ‘Arthur Schnitzler and His Critics: A Question of Jewish Identity', Holly Sayer, 2002-2006 (passed December 2006), Exeter GTA
• PhD thesis, comparative study of Salman Rushdie and Franz Kafka, Laura Balomiri, 2002-2003, jointly supervised with University of Vienna (supervision arrangements changed in 2003), Exeter GTA
• 1 MA dissertation supervised.