Alexandra Ksenofontova hat Germanistik an der Lomonossow-Universität Moskau und der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin studiert. Ihren Master in Literaturwissenschaft, Philosophie und Ästhetik schloss sie 2016 an der Europa-Universität Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder) mit einer Arbeit zum deutschsprachigen Drehbuchschreiben der 1920er Jahre ab. In der Zwischenzeit arbeitete sie als freiberufliche Dolmetscherin, Nachrichten-Redakteurin und Deutschlehrerin. Seit 2016 ist sie Stipendiatin der Friedrich Schlegel Graduiertenschule mit einem Promotionsprojekt zur Geschichte des Drehbuchs als literarische Gattung in Frankreich, Deutschland und Russland. 2018 hat sie das Forschungsnetzwerk Drehbuchforschung mitbegründet; 2019-20 vertritt sie die Interessen der NachwuchswissenschaftlerInnen als Early Career Representative auf dem Exekutivrat des internationalen Screenwriting Research Network.

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Alexandra Ksenofontova studied German philology at the Lomonosov Moscow State University and the Humboldt University of Berlin. She completed her MA in literary studies, philosophy and aesthetics in 2016 at the European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder) with a thesis on German screenwriting of the 1920s. In the meantime, she has worked as freelance interpreter, news editor and German teacher. She is currently a doctoral candiate at the Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School with a project on the history of screenplay as a literary genre in France, Germany and Russia. In 2018, she co-founded the German research network Drehbuchforschung; in 2019-20 she is serving as Early Career Representative on the Executive Council of the Screenwriting Research Network.

My doctoral project Experimental Screenplay: The Modernist In-Between explores screenwriting for silent film as experimental literary practice. By analyzing a broad corpus of French, German and Russian texts from the first third of the 20^th century, it attempts filling a niche in the historiography of screenwriting; at the same time, it demonstrates, how literary authors, screenwriters, graphic artists and filmmakers discovered in the screenplay a tool for approaching the dualisms equally characteristic of the modernist and contemporary culture: the pragmatic and the poetic, the verbal and the visual, the processual and the static.

The study is guided by two main questions: what is the specific sociocultural function of the screenplay as modernist literary genre, and how does it interact with the contemporaneous literary field? The readings of experimental scripts offered in the project paint a broad picture of the screenplay’s visible presence across the creative practices of the historical avant-gardes, at the same time detailing the connections between the screenplays and other artworks, film theories and further sociocultural contexts.

Publikationen

2019. "Once again into the cabinets of Dr. Caligari: Evil spaces and hidden sources of the Caligari screenplay." Journal of Screenwriting 10 (3), 261–277. 

2018. "The screenplay/film relationship bifurcated: Reading Carl Mayer’s Sylvester (1924)." Journal of Screenwriting 9 (1), 25–39.

Vorträge

Das publizierte Drehbuch: Zwischen Sichtbarmachen und Verbergen der Prozessualität. Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Medienwissenschaft: Medienmaterialitäten. Universität zu Köln, 25.-28. November 2019.

Order and Chaos in Screenwriting (Studies): Reconciling “the screen idea” with “literature”. 12th Annual Conference of the Screenwriting Research Network: Screen Narratives: Order and Chaos. Porto, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, 12.-14. September 2019.

Graphic Time? Graphing Present-tense Narration in the Modernist Novel. Annual Conference of the Modernist Studies Association 2019: Graphic Modernisms. Columbus, Ohio, 08.-11. November 2018.

Experimental Screenwriting: The Beginnings. 11th Annual Conference of the Screenwriting Research Network: Writing for cinema, writing for TV. Catholic University of Milan, 13.-15. September 2018.

Film Texts – Countertexts: The "Screenplay as Literature" Debate Revisited. The Second CounterText Conference: The Post-Literary. University of Malta, 6.-8. April 2018.

Present Tense in Contemporary Novels. Narrating Female Identities. Jahrestagung der Friedrich Schlegel Graduiertenschule 2017: Fabrics of Time. Freie Universität Berlin, 29.-30. September 2017.

Screenplay in Dialogue with German literature of the 1920s: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Waxworks, and The New Year’s Eve. 9th Annual Conference of the Screenwriting Research Network: Screenwriting Between Artistic Freedom & Norms. Leeds Beckett University in partnership with Leeds University, 08.-10. September 2016.

Lehre

Proseminar „Transmediale und medienspezifische Konzepte in der neueren Narratologie“, Freie Universität Berlin, SoSe 2017.

Tutorium „Einführung in die Literaturwissenschaft“, Europa Universität Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), WiSe 2014-15.

(Ko-)Organisierte Veranstaltungen

Auftakt-Workshop des Forschungsnetzwerkes Drehbuchforschung. Freie Universität Berlin, 22. November 2019.

Jahrestagung der Friedrich Schlegel Graduiertenschule: Vielleicht: Formen literarischer Eventualität / Maybe: Forms of Literary Eventuality. ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry, 09.-10. November 2018.

Masterclass mit Prof. Dr. Martin Puchner: Die Ismen der literarischen Avant-Garden / The ‘isms’ of the 20th Century Avant-Gardes. Friedrich Schlegel Graduiertenschule an der Freien Universität Berlin, 02.-04. Juli 2018. 

Summer School: Rhetorik(en) der Literaturwissenschaft / The Rhetoric(s) of Literary Studies. Friedrich Schlegel Graduiertenschule an der Freien Universität Berlin, 23.-30.  Juli  2017.