Dr. Robert Craig

Research Assistant

C.V.:

BA (First Class Hons with Distinction) - Modern & Medieval Languages (French & German), University of Cambridge (2007-2011)

MPhil (Distinction) - European Literature & Culture, University of Cambridge (2011-2012: AHRC Award)

PhD - 'The Dialectic of Nature and the Self in Alfred Döblin's Work before 1933', University of Cambridge (2012-2016: AHRC Award)

DAAD Postdoctoral Researcher, Freie Universität Berlin (July - October 2016)

Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter (January 2017 - )

Current Projects

‘Bodies, Embodiment, and Environment in German and British Modernism: A Comparative Exploration' (postdoc-project)

‘Posthumanism and the Posthuman: Chances and Challenges in German and European Literature and Culture' (with colleagues at the Universities of Cambridge and London (KCL))

Publications, Conferences, and Conference Papers

Books:

Alfred Döblin: Monsters, Cyborgs and Berliners, 1900-1933 (Cambridge: MHRA, 2021), 218 pp.

Ed. with Ina Linge, Biological Discourses: The Language of Science and Literature around 1900 (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2017), 428 pp.

Articles and chapters:

‘Rainer Maria Rilke’s Dark Ecology’, in Daniela Dora and Katie Ritson (eds), Ecology in German Literary Criticism, Oxford German Studies, 51:3 (2022), 256-71.

“Learning from Psychiatry? Gottfried Benn, Alfred Döblin, and the Limits of ‘Narrative Medicine’”, Open Library of Humanities, 8:2 (2022). You can find this (open-access) article here.

"Monsters and other cyborgs: the 'post-human' in Alfred Döblin's Berge Meere und Giganten", in: Steffan Davies and David Midgley (eds.), Internationales Alfred-Döblin-Kolloquium Cambridge 2017: Natur, Technik und das (Post-)Humane in den Schriften Alfred Döblins (Bern: Peter Lang, 2019), pp. 243-59.

(with Ina Linge), "Introduction: Can Science and Literature Share a Language?", in: Robert Craig and Ina Linge (eds.), Biological Discourses: The Language of Science and Literature around 1900 (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2017), pp. 1-30.

"The City as Creature: Reconfiguring the Creaturely Self in Alfred Döblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz", in: Robert Craig and Ina Linge (eds.)., Biological Discourses: The Language of Science and Literature around 1900 (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2017), pp. 397-422. 

"'Ist die Schwarze Köchin da? Jajaja...': Mimesis and Günter Grass's Die Blechtrommel", Monatshefte, 108:1 (2016), 99-119.

"Dilthey, Gadamer, and Facebook: Towards a New Hermeneutics of the Social Network", The Modern Language Review, 110:1 (2015), 184-203.

(with Holger Sievert), "Using International Corporate Communication Theory for the Strategic Practice of Merger Communication - Why the Globally Oriented DaimlerChrysler Deal Had to End Up in Conflict Because of a Failure to Take Communicational Issues Into Account", in Z.C. Li and C.A. Spaulding (eds.), 15th International Public Relations Research Conference - Using Theory for Strategic Practice Through Global Engagement and Conflict Research: March 8-10, 2012, pp. 584-613.

Reviews:

Ailsa Henderson and Richard Wyn Jones: Englishness: The Political Force Transforming Britain. Ailsa Henderson and Richard Wyn Jones: Englishness: The Political Force Transforming Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, 259:1(2022), 185-87.

The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Science, Ed. Steven Meyer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, 257:2 (2020), 172-73.

Podcasts und radio interviews:

'Charles III. in Deutschland: "Eindruck einer Annäherung"', Interview, WDR 5 Morgenego, 29.03.23.

'Tod der Queen: Wichtiger Wendepunkt für das Land', Interview, WDR 5 Morgenecho,19.09.22.

'Tagesgespräch: Queen Elizabeth ist tot. Was wird fehlen?', Tagesgespräch, Bayern 2, Friday 9 September 2022, 12:05-13:00.

'Ecology in German Literary Criticism: Recent Developments and Approaches', DAAD-Cambridge Hub, Januar 2021.

Organized conferences & workshops:

'Ringing the changes? Literary and Cultural responses to the Anthropocene': conference panel & panel discussion, Annual Conference of the Association for German Studies in Great Britain and Ireland, Swansea University, September 2021.

'Ecocriticism and the Anthropocene in German Literature': conference panel & panel discussion (co-organized with Dr Nicola Thomas (Oxford)), Annual Conference of the Association for German Studies in Great Britain and Ireland, University of Bristol, September 2019.

Biological Discourses: The Language of Science and Literature around 1900 (co-organized with Dr Anja Neumann and Dr Ina Linge (Cambridge)), University of Cambridge, April 2015.

Selected talks & conference papers:

'The British School System: Entrenched Inequality?'. BaTEG Thementag „Schulsysteme weltweit“/ "School systems around the world“ 2023, University of Bamberg, July 2023.

'Shadows of Empire: How (not) to remember Britain's tricky past', live-recorded public lecture at the Volkshochschule Bamberg (Further Education College, Bamberg), 20 June 2023.

"Must Rhodes fall?" Collective Memory and Cancel Culture in the UK. Invited talk & seminar at the Friedrich Naumann Stiftung student conference, '"Wir müssen reden": Cancel Culture', Theodor-Heuss-Akademie, Gummersbach, 12-13 November 2022.

‘Just Another Brick in the Wall? British Education and its Discontents’. Thementag – Seminar Day: Schulsystem Weltweit 2022 – School Systems Worldwide 2022, University of Bamberg, July 2022.

'Rainer Maria Rilke and Dark Ecology'. Workshop: Ecology in German Literary Criticism: Recent Developments and Approaches, DAAD-Cambridge Research Hub for German Studies, University of Cambridge, December 2020. [You can find the podcasting recording of a post-workshop podium discussion here.]

'Learning from Psychiatry? Alfred Döblin between medicine and literature'. Symposium: The Pathological Body. European Literary and Cultural Perspectives, Institute of Modern Languages Research, University of London, September 2019.

'Cyborgs and Other Monsters: the "post-human" in Berge Meere und Giganten. Conference: Internationales Alfred-Döblin-Kolloquium, University of Cambridge, September 2017.

'Strange New World: Döblin's Dystopian Utopia.' Conference: Annual Conference of the Association for German Studies in Great Britain and Ireland, University of Warwick, September 2017. 

'The Creaturely Carnival: Alfred Döblin's Strange Hermeneutics of the Everyday.' Conference: Fortieth German Studies Association Annual Conference, San Diego, CA, September 2016.

'"I looked for myself... but found the world": Looking for a New Hermeneutics in Alfred Döblin's Literary Anthropologies and Biologies.' Conference: Biological Discourses: The Language of Science and Literature around 1900, University of Cambridge, April 2015.

'"Langsam, langsam singt der Tod": Life, Death, and Redemption in Alfred Döblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz.' Colloquium: Death and the Afterlife in German Literature and Culture: Cambridge -- Chicago -- Berlin Graduate Workshop, University of Chicago, July 2014.

'"Wir wissen, was wir wissen": Rethinking the Metropolitan Subject in Alfred Döblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz.' Conference: Annual Conference of the Association for German Studies in Great Britain and Ireland, University of Manchester, April 2014.

'"Man lerne von der Psychiatrie": The Case of Alfred Döblin.' Symposium: German Literature and Biological Thought around 1900.The Institute of Modern Languages Research, University of London, March 2014.

'"Vom Leben mehr verlangen als das Butterbrot": The normal, the strange, and the metaphysical in Alfred Döblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz.' Conference: Norms, Normality, and Normalization: DAAD Postgraduate Conference & Summer School. University of Nottingham, July 2013.