Prof. Dr. Jens Elze
Institute:
Subject:
Literaturwissenschaft
Professor
Room JK29/225
14195 Berlin
Office hours
Thursdays from 1:30 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. Feel free to drop by without an appointment.
Vita
Academic Activities
| 04/2026 -currently | Visiting Professorship (W3) in Literary Studies at Freie Universität Berlin |
| 10/2017 - 03/2026 | W1 Professor of English Literature and Cultural Studies at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen |
| 09/2022 - 08/2024 | Adjunct Professor of English (Prof. Dr. Susanne Rupp) at Universität Hamburg |
| 08/2013 - 09/2017 | Director of the “Multiple Modernen” Research Group at the Graduate School of Humanities at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen |
| 10/2012 - 08/2013 | Research Assistant at the Institute of English Philology at Freie Universität Berlin (Chair of Prof. Dr. Andreas Mahler) |
| 09/2008 - 06/2009 | Staff member of the DFG project “Frontier Skirmishes: Half-Castes, Hoaxes, and White Aboriginals in Contemporary Australian Paraliterary and Literary Discourse” at Freie Universität Berlin (led by Prof. Dr. Dr. Russell West-Pavlov) |
| 10/2007 - 10/2008 |
Student Assistant at the Department of Postcolonial Studies at Freie Universität Berlin (Prof. Dr. Dr. Russell West-Pavlov) |
| 10/2005 - 04/2006 |
Student Assistant at the Chair of Non-European Literatures at the Universität Potsdam (Prof. Dr. Mark Stein) |
| 08/2004 - 12/2004 |
Graduate Research Assistant in the Department of 19th-Century Literature at Georgia State University (Prof. Elisabeth West) |
| 08/2004 - 05/2005 |
Membership Administration and Conference Organization for the South Atlantic Modern Language Association, Atlanta |
Academic Education
| 12/2021 |
George-August-Universität Göttingen: “English Literature and Cultural Studies.” Habilitation thesis: The Legitimacy and Illegitimacy of the Modern Age: Shakespeare and the Politics of Immanence |
| 02/2013 |
Freie Universität Berlin: Dissertation defense: The Picaresque: Literatures of Precarity / Precarious Literatures (overall grade: summa cum laude); Advisors: Prof. Dr. Dr. Russell West-Pavlov, Prof. Dr. Andrew Johnston, Prof. Dr. Joachim Küpper |
| 08/2008 |
Freie Universität Berlin: Master’s in English Studies. Thesis: Picaresque Structures/Postcolonial Strategies (Grade: 1.0); Advisors: Prof. Dr. Dr. Russell West-Pavlov, Prof. Dr. Manfred Pfister |
| 04/2001 - 03/2008 |
University of Potsdam: Studies in English, Romance Languages, Political Science, and General and Comparative Literature |
Experience abroad
| 11/2015 |
Jawaarlal Nehru University. Dehli: Research visit as part of the DAAD project “Polycoloniality in India” |
| 04/2011 - 07/2011 |
Cambridge University, St. John's College: Visiting Ph.D. student at the Faculty of English |
| 04/2011 |
University of Pennysylvania, Philadelphia: Research Fellowship at the Department of English and Comparative Literature |
| 02/2009 - 05/2009 |
University of Cape Town, South Africa: Research visit and exploratory trip (funded by the Center for International Cooperation / FU Berlin) |
| 04/2004 - 06/2005 |
George State University, Atlanta: Research visit and exploratory trip (funded by the Center for International Cooperation / FU Berlin) |
Scholarships and Awards
| 12/2014 |
Award Ceremony of the Ernst Reuter Prize by Freie Universität Berlin for the Best Dissertation in the Humanities (5000 Euro) |
|
10/2009-09/2012 |
External Funding Scholarship for a Ph.D. at the Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School (funded by the DFG’s Strategy for Excellence) |
|
06/2009 - 09/2009 |
Elsa-von-Neumann Doctoral Fellowship from the State of Berlin |
Conference Organization
|
05.- 06. July 2018 |
Realisms. Georg-August-Universität Göttingen (with Nasrin Babakhani) |
|
15.- 16. September 2016 |
Hybridität, Kulturelle Übersetzung und Multiple Modernen. Georg-August-Universität Göttingen (with Sarah Alam and Nina Härter) |
| 01.- 05. September 2014 | International Summer School: Multiple Modernities. Georg August-Universität Göttingen (with Julia Hauser) |
| 16. - 18. November 2012 | TheEnigmaofthePicaresque.Freie Universität Berlin (with Sarah Wollin) |
| 01. - 03. July 2010 |
Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der Philologie. Second International Graduate Conference of the Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School in cooperation with Johns Hopkins University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Cambridge. (with Zuzanna Jakubowski; Lore Knapp, Stefanie Orphal, Heidrun Schnitzler) |
Board activities
|
Since 02/2022 |
Georg-August-Universität Göttingen Alternate Member of the Structural and Budget Committee of the Faculty of Arts |
| Since 10/2018 |
Georg-August-Universität Göttingen Member of the Academic Committee of the Faculty of Arts |
| Since 10/2017 |
Georg-August-Universität Göttingen Member of the Board of the Department of English |
| 12/2022 - 08/2024 |
Universität Hamburg Member of the Committee on Teaching and Academic Affairs of the Department of Language, Literature, and Media II |
| 10/2019 - 04/2020 |
Georg-August-Universität Göttingen Member of the Faculty of Arts' Equal Opportunity Commission |
| 01/2015 - 12/2015 |
Georg-August-Universität Göttingen Postdoctoral Representative and Member of the Board of the Graduate School of Humanities |
| 10/2010 -11/2011 |
Freie Universität Berlin Ph.D. student representative and member of the board of the Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies |
Memberships
- Gesellschaft für Anglophone Postkoloniale Studien (Society for Anglophone Postcolonial Studies)
- Deutsche-Shakespeare-Gesellschaft (German Shakespeare Society)
- Deutscher Anglistikverband (German Association of English Studies)
COURSE CATALOG
Summer semester 2024, Universität Hamburg
S Reading Ulysses (MA)
S Postcolonial Literature (BA/MA)
S Introduction to British Literature and Culture (BA)
V Key Concepts in British Literature and Culture: The 19th Century (BA/MA)
Examenskolloquium (BA/MA)Winter semester 2023/24, Universität Hamburg
S Victorian Poetry (MA/BA)
S Anglophone Pakistani Literature (MA/BA)
S Thomas Middleton and Jacobean Drama (MA/BA)
S Introduction to British Literature and Culture, Ph.D. Student Seminar (with Prof. Dr. Astrid Böger)Summer semester 2023, Universität Hamburg
S Fictions of Neoliberalism (MA/BA)
S Marginal Modernisms: Literature ofthe 1930s (BA/MA) S Early Modern City Comedy (MA/BA)
S Introduction to British Literature and Culture (BA)
VL Key Concepts in British Literature and Culture: The Early Modern Period (BA/MA; with Prof. Dr. Ute Berns)Winter semester 2022/2023, Universität Hamburg
S Black British Literature (MA)
S Naturalism and the English Novel (BA/MA)
VL Key Concepts in British Literature and Culture: The Twentieth Century (BA/MA)
S Introduction to British Literature and Culture (BA)
Examenskolloquium (BA/MA)Summer semester 2022, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
VL London in Literature (BA/MA)
S Introduction to Cultural Studies (BA)Winter semester 2021/2022, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
VL The Early Modern Period (BA/MA)
S lntroduction to the Study of British Literature (BA)
Summer semester 2021, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
S lnfrastructuralism (MA)
S Hamlet: Modernity, Adaptation, Globalisation (BA)Winter semester 2020/2021, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
VL The Twentieth Century I: 1900-1968 (BA/MA)
S lntroduction to the Study of British Literature (BA)Summer semester 2020, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
VL The Victorian Period (BA/MA)
S lntroduction to Cultural Studies (BA)Winter semester 2019/20, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
S World-Literature as Postcolonial Literature (MA) )
S Introduction to the Study of British Literature (BA)Summer semester 2019, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
VL Poetics of Drama: From Antiquity to Postmodernism (BA/MA)
S Poetics of Drama: From Antiquity to Postmodernism (MA)Winter semester 2018/19, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
VL The Early Modern Period (BA/MA)
S Introduction to the Study of British Literature (BA)Summer semester 2018, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
S Introduction to the Study of British Literature (BA)
S Scottish Literature / British Crisis (BA/MA)Winter semester 2017/18, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
S Introduction to the Study of British Literature (BA)
S Charles Dickens's Bleak House (BA/MA)Winter semester 2015/16, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
ldeology (Ph.D. Student Seminar)Summer semester 2015, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
Multiple Modernities (Ph.D. Student Seminar)Winter semester 2014/15, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
S Shakespeare's Tragedies (MA)Winter semester 2013/14, Freie Universität Berlin
S Late Victorian Literature and the Fiction of Development (MA)Summer semester 2013, Freie Universität Berlin
S Space and Theory (BA)Winter semester 2012/2013, Freie Universität Berlin
S Introduction to Literary Studies (BA)Winter semester 2011/2012, Freie Universität Berlin
S Working with Literary Texts (BA)Winter semester 2009/10, Freie Universität Berlin
S English Modernisms (BA)Summer semester 2009, Freie Universität Berlin
S The 18th Century and the Rise of the Novel (BA)
The Legitimacy and Illegitimacy of the Modern Age: Shakespeare and the Politics of Immanence.
(postdoctoral dissertation)
Postcolonial Modernism and the Picaresque Novel: Literatures of Precarity (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017)
Realism: Aesthetics, Experiments, Politics (London: Bloomsbury, 2022).
(with Kai Wiegandt) ,,Canonization in Times of Globalization and Digitization," in Anglistik 31.2 (2020), 11-68. (Section editorship)
The Enigma of the Picaresque / Das Enigma des Pikaresken (Heidelberg: Winter, 2018).
(with Annika McPherson) ,,Multiple Modernities/Multiple Modernisms," in 22. Proceedings Anglistentag Paderborn 2015 (Trier: WVT, 2016), 171-243. (Section editorship)
(with Zuzanna Jakubowski, Lore Knapp, Stefanie Orphal, Heidrun Schnitzler) Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der Philologie. Philologische Forschung in internationaler Perspektive. Document server GiNDok 2011.
(with Russell West-Pavlov) Australian Literature in German Translation: A Catalogue of Titles, Translators, and Trends 1789-2010 (Freie Universität Berlin: Department of English Language and Literature, 2010)
Book chapters and journal articles
„From Social Mapping to Urban Assemblage: Thomas Middleton's A Chaste Maid in Cheapside and the End(s) of City Comedy" (submitted for review to Comparative Drama)
„Reproductive Measures: Calculating Power in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure" (under revision for Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900).
„Assemblage, Worldmaking, Commonwealth: Reading for Infrastructure in Mohsin Hamid's Exit West," Contemporary Literature 64.4 (2024): 473-498.
,,lntroduction: Realism, Political Aesthetics, and (New) Materialism," in Realism: Aesthetics, Experiments, Politics, Ed. Jens Elze (London: Bloomsbury,·2022), 1-26.
„Geld stinkt nicht: Lazarillo de Tormes als (utopisches) Finanznarrativ," in Finanznarrative als Krisennarrative: Literarische und filmische Modellierungen ,kapitaler' Erschütterungen, Eds. Kurt Hahn & Marita Liebermann (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2021), 49-65.
„Imperial Representations - Romantic Dis/Enchantments - Modernist Aesthetics: Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim and the Lives of Adventure," in The Pleasures of Peril: Rereading Anglophone
Adventure Fiction, Then and Now, Eds. Tobias Döring, Kathrin Härtl & Martina Kühler (Tübingen:. Narr/Francke, 2021), 237-258.
(with Kai Wiegandt) ,,lntroduction: Canonization in Times of Globalisation and Digitisation," in Anglistik: International Journal of English Studies 31.2 (2020), 11-18.
,,William Dalrymple, Selected Works (1989,1997)," in Handbook of British Travel Writing, Ed. Barbara Schaff (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020), 535-554.
„Virile Maturity, Female Linearity, and the Transformation of the Picaresque Novel: Tobias Smollett's Roderick Random and Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders," in Transgression and Subversion: Gender in the Picaresque Novel, Eds. Maren Lickhardt, Gregor Schuhen & Hans Rudolf Velten (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2018), 201-217.
„Postcolonial Theory and Globalized Empathy: From Development to Difference," Journal for Interdiscipinary Studies. 43.2 (2018), 1-11.)
,,Narrative Modes of the Global South: the Picaresque," in The Global South and Literature, Ed. Russen West-Pavlov (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 223-34
„Diebstahl, Koloniale Expansion und die Möglichkeit des Romans: Defoes Moll Flanders und Dickens' Great Expectations," in Diebstahl! Zur Kulturgeschichte eines Gründungsmythos, Eds. Andreas Gehrlach & Dorothee Kimmich. (München: Fink, 2018), 159-78.
,,lntroduction: Enigmas of the Picaresque," in The Enigma of the Picaresque, Ed. Jens Elze. (Heidelberg: Winter, 2018), 9-27.
„Sincerity, Authenticity, and Criminality: Moll Flanders and the Enigmatic Signifier," in The Enigma of the Picaresque, Ed. Jens Elze (Heidelberg: Winter, 2018), 69-87.
,,Cosmopolitan Space, Postcolonial Time, and the Politic of Modernism in Teju Cole's Open City," Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 65.1 (2017), 85-104.
(with Annika McPherson) ,,Multiple Modernities/Multiple Modernisms," in Proceedings Anglistentag Paderborn 2015, Ed. Christoph Ehland etal. (Trier: WVT, 2016), 71-76.
„Contained Immanence: Shakespeare's Timon of Athens between Tragedy and Romance," Anglia 134.1 (2016): 1-24.
,,Postkoloniale Pikareske," Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 43.2 (2015): 130- 49.
,,Deixis and Performativity in Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children," in Border Crossings: Narrative and Demarcation in Postcolonial literatures and Media, Eds. Russen West-Pavlov & Jennifer Wawrzinek. Heidelberg: Winter, 2012), 269-78.
„Einleitung," in Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der Philologie. Philologische Forschung in internationaler Perspektive, Eds. Jens Elze et al. GiNDok 2011.
(with Russell West-Pavlov) ,,Translation History as a Provocation for Literary Studies. A Case Study on the Translation of Australian Literature into German," Anglistik. International Journal of English Studies 21. 1 (2011): 189-204.
„Precarity and the Picaresque: An Exemplary Reading of Ben Okri's The Famished Raad," in Negotiating Afropolitanism: Critical Rejlections on Borders and Spaces in Contemporary African Literature, Eds. Justus Siboe Makhoka & Jennifer Wawrzinek (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2011), 47-61.
„Urbanidad, Espacio y Movimiento en Horacio Castellanos Mayas Donde no esten ustedes, La diabla en el espejo y EI arma en el hombre," Revista Cultura 101 (2009): 88-96.
Reviews
„lsabell Karremann (ed.). Shakespeare/ Space: Contemporary Readings in Spatiality, Culture, and Drama (2024)" ((published in the Shakespeare Yearbook 2025)
,,Marion Gymnich et al. (eds). Representing Poverty and Precarity in a Postcolonial World (2021)," Anglia 142.2 (2024): 405-9'.
,,Bernhard Malkmus. The German Pícaro and Modernity. Between Shapeshifter and Underdog," The German Quarterly 86.1 (2014): 109-10.