Stephan Karschay is Guest Professor of English Literature at Freie Universität Berlin. He studied English, German and Pedagogy at the University of Passau and at King’s College London. He is an alumnus of the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes and of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). His monograph Degeneration, Normativity and the Gothic at the Fin de Siècle (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) won the BritCult-Award of the German Association for the Study of British Cultures in 2013, and in 2014 he received the Karl-Heinz-Pollok Memorial Prize of the University of Passau. Before joining the Freie Universität, Stephan Karschay was Associate Professor of British Literature and Cultural Studies at the University of Hamburg. After acting as Chair of Anglophone Literatures at the Freie Universität’s Peter-Szondi Institute (2022-2023), he joined the Institute for English Language and Literature in 2023.

Current reserach project

“Scandal, Censorship and the Visual Imagination in British Literature and Culture, 1740-1960”

Research interests

Scandal and censorship

Visual culture

Ecocriticism: literature and ecology

Nineteenth-century literature and science

Literature and culture at the fin de siècle

Gothic in literature, culture, media

Crime and detective fiction

History of the Anglophone novel

Monographs

Degeneration, Normativity and the Gothic at the Fin de Siècle (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) [Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture].

Edited Collections

Gothic Ecologies in British Culture: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present. Journal for the Study of British Cultures 27/2 (2020) [with Katharina Boehm].

The Politics of British Humour. Hard Times 84 (2008) [with Joanna Rostek & Gerold Sedlmayr].

Translations

Harriet Martineau, “Cousin Marshall” in Harriet Martineau: Ökonomin, Soziologin, Feministin: Kostproben ihres Schaffens. Ed. Bernd Lenz & Joanna Rostek (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2023) [with a team of students from the University of Passau].

Essays

“Decadent Echoes, the Language of Censorship and Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness”. Symbolism 21 (2021): 55-75.

“A Novel of Sex and War: The Scandal of D.H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow”. Mentalities and Materialities: Essays in Honour of Jürgen Kamm. Ed. Philip Jacobi & Anette Pankratz (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2021), 165-180.

“Gothic Ecologies from the Eighteenth Century to the Present”. Gothic Ecologies in British Culture: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present. Ed. Katharina Boehm & Stephan Karschay. Journal for the Study of British Cultures 27/2 (2020): 115-128 [with Katharina Boehm].

“Scandals in British Culture.” How to Do Cultural Studies: Ideas, Approaches, Scenarios.Ed. Jürgen Kramer & Bernd Lenz (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2020), 191-220.

“George Moore, Esther Waters”.Handbook of the English Novel, 1830-1900. Ed. Martin Middeke & Monika Pietrzak-Franger (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2020), 482-497.

“Great Britain or Little England? Brexit and the London Olympics Opening Ceremony”. Brexit and the Divided United Kingdom. Ed. Joanna Rostek & Anne-Julia Zwierlein. Journal for the Study of British Cultures 26/1 (2019): 59-72.

“Doyle and the Criminal Body”. The Cambridge Companion to Sherlock Holmes.Ed. Janice Allan & Christopher Pittard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019): 96-110.

“Jack Is Back: Murder, Detection and Victorian Attitudes to Class in Contemporary British Crime TV”. Victorian Ideologies in Contemporary British Cultures. Ed. Christina Flotmann-Scholz & Anna Lienen (Heidelberg: Winter, 2019), 47-70 [with Philip Jacobi].

“Man haf fe do wha man haf fe do: Humour and Identity (Re)Formation in Bernardine Evaristo’s Mr Loverman”. Anglistik: International Journal of English Studies 27/1 (2016): 125-136 [with Joanna Rostek].

“Laughing in Horror: Hybrid Genre and the Grotesque Body in Psychoville”. British TV Comedy: Cultural Concepts and Contexts. Ed. Jürgen Kamm & Birgit Neumann (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 341-358.

“An Epidemic of Perversions: Normativity and Deviance in Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis”. Crimes of Passion: Representing Sexual Pathology in the Early 20th Century. Ed. Oliver Böni & Japhet Johnstone (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2015), 255-276.

“The Victorian Housing of Gender: The Semiotics of Ideology and Social Reality”. Moderne Sprachen 55/1 (2011): 39-60.

“(Pre-)Destined to Fail: Atavism and Character Development in Late-Victorian Fiction”. From the Cradle to the Grave: Life-Course Models in Literary Genres. Ed. Sabine Coelsch-Foisner & Sarah Herbe (Heidelberg: Winter, 2011), 177-191 [Wissenschaft und Kunst].

“‘Only Connect!’ The Negotiation of Identities in E.M. Forster’s Howards End and Zadie Smith’s On Beauty”. Insular Mentalities: Mental Maps of Britain: Essays in Honour of Bernd Lenz. Ed. Jürgen Kamm & Gerold Sedlmayr (Passau: Stutz, 2007), 201-213.

Miscellanea

Glossary entries and prefaces

“Mental Illness”. Companion to Victorian Popular Fiction. Ed. Kevin A. Morrison (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2018), 154-157.

“Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”. Companion to Victorian Popular Fiction. Ed. Kevin A. Morrison (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2018), 239-241.

“Foreword”. Oscar Wilde – A Writer Trapped by His Own Words: An Exhibition Catalogue. Ed. Jörg W. Rademacher (Coesfeld: Elsinor, 2017), 79-82.

“Vorwort”. Oscar Wilde – Als Schriftsteller verfangen in den eigenen Worten: Ein Ausstellungskatalog. Ed. Jörg W. Rademacher (Coesfeld: Elsinor, 2017), 8-11.

Reviews

Theaterschau: Shakespeare auf deutschsprachigen Bühnen 2018/2019: “Instabile Herrscherfiguren im Norden: Zwischen nuanciertem Psychogramm und autoritärer Pose”. Shakespeare-Jahrbuch 156 (2020): 202-221 [with Ute Berns, Benjamin Kohlmann & Anca-Raluca Radu].

Review of Doris Feldmann & Christian Krug (Eds), Viktorianismus: Eine literatur- und kulturwissenschaftliche Einführung, in Anglia 133/1 (2015): 195-198.

Double review of Sara Wasson, Urban Gothic and the Second World War: Dark London & Bridget M. Marshall, The Transatlantic Gothic Novel and the Law, 1790-1860, in Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 60/2 (2012): 196-198.

Review of Renate Brosch (Ed.), Victorian Visual Culture, in Journal for the Study of British Cultures 16/2 (2007): 181-184.