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Dr Annja Neumann

Dr Annja Neumann is a Senior Research Fellow in German at Magdalene and an Isaac Newton Trust Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Cambridge Digital Humanities and CRASSH. She also holds the position of an Affiliated Lecturer at the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages and Linguistics.

She specializes in interdisciplinary and practice-based research at the intersection of the Critical Medical Humanities, Critical Digital Humanities and Theatre and Performance Studies. Her current research interests focus on medical topography by exploring the theatricality of medical spaces with DH methods across history and geography.

After studying German and Cultural Anthropology at the Universities of Heidelberg and Uppsala, Annja came to London for her PhD, which she completed at Queen Mary in 2012. Her thesis explores the notion of historicity in the late poetry of Nelly Sachs and Paul Celan. In 2013 she lectured in German language and literature at Queen Mary, before she started working on the AHRC-funded project ‘Digital Critical Edition of Middle-Period Works by Arthur Schnitzler’ in Cambridge between 2014 and 2019. Inspired by the performative dimension of time in a poem and how its form creates multi-layered temporalities Dr Neumann now works on medical places and spaces at the intersection of theatrical performance and medicine.

Alongside her new role as Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Cambridge Digital Humanities and the Centre for Research in Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) Dr Neumann also holds the position of an Affiliated Lecturer in German. This enables her to offer research-based teaching in literary studies, medical humanities and digital humanities. Recent teaching includes lectures on ‘Gender and Tragedy’ (Ge5 ‘Modern German Culture I’), the ‘Critical Theory and Practice’ seminar for students in Magdalene and Jesus College and the supervision of research projects on ‘The Spectacle of Dissection’ for medical students.

Main teaching areas within subject

  • Modern German Literature, Culture and Thought from the 1890s to the present day
  • Comparative Literature (European Film; Visual Culture)
  • Contemporary Theatre and Performance Studies
  • Medical Humanities (anatomical education; medical topographies; doctors as writers)
  • Critical Theory and Practice (Frankfurt School)
  • Critical Digital Humanities

 

Research Interests

  • Modern German and comparative literature
  • Modern poetry and poetics after 1945 (especially Paul Celan and Nelly Sachs)
  • Methodologies in literary criticism
  • Literature and Medicine (especially Arthur Schnitzler)
  • Digital Humanities
  • Digital Health Humanities
  • Editorial theory and practice

Recent research projects:

  • Medical Topographies in Arthur Schnitzler’s plays (book project)
  • Digital Critical Edition of Middle-Period Works by Arthur Schnitzler, for further details, please see the Arthur Schnitzler digital website.
  • Anglo-German Poetics of Science (ongoing)

Qualifications

PhD, Queen Mary, University of London

Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

Postgraduate Certificate of Academic Practice (awarded in November 2014)

Career/Research Highlights

2020
Co-convenor of the Cambridge Interdisciplinary Performance Network [Could you put the Hyperlink https://www.performance.group.cam.ac.uk  on “Cambridge Interdisciplinary Performance Network”]

2019
Production and Co-direction of the first public play to be staged in the Cambridge University Library, Arthur Schnitzler’s grotesque comedy The Great Wurstel [please link “first public play” to https://www.cam.ac.uk/SchnitzlerPlay]

2019
Official launch of the digital edition of Arthur Schnitzler’s middle and late period works to be hosted by the Cambridge University Library

2018
Presentation of the Schnitzler Spheres at the International Placing Schnitzler conference in London in collaboration with project leader Frederick Baker and Andrew Webber, 19 September 2018.

2018
Lead editor for the first module of the digital edition of Arthur Schnitzler’s Puppet plays. Release of first module of Marionetten in their beta version. For more information about the first releases see The Cambridge University Library Press Release

2017
‘The Poetics of Personhood’ A Cross-disciplinary workshop at Magdalene College, 22 September.

2017
Teaching ‘Critical Theory and Practice’ to students from Magdalene College & Jesus College (all levels) in collaboration with Dr Libe Garcia Zarranz and poet in residence Peter Hughes, Lent Term 2017.

2016
Literary Consultant and producer of performance of Arthur Schnitzler’s Professor Bernhardi in the Anatomy Lecture Theatre Cambridge in collaboration with clinical anatomist Dr Cecilia Brassett as part of the Festival of Ideas, 28-29 October (see right).

2014-2017
Co-director and founding-member of the Cambridge New Habsburg Studies Network.

Professional Affiliations

  • Association for German Studies in Great Britain and Ireland
  • British Society for Literature and Science
  • Cambridge Interdisciplinary Performance Network
  • Cambridge Digital Humanities
  • Cambridge New Habsburg Studies Network
  • Deutscher Hochschulverband
  • Modern Language Association of America
  • The Northern Network for Medical Humanities
  • Think German Network

Selected Publications

‘Schnitzler’s Anatomy Lesson: Medical Topographies in Professor Bernhardi’, Jahrbuch Literatur und Medizin, Bd. 8, ed. by Christa Janson and Florian Steger (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2016), pp. 31-60.

'Verbindungslinien: Nelly Sachs, Emily Dickinson und Paul Celan', Eine Schwester Kafkas? Nelly Sachs im Kontext, ed. by Florian Strob and Charlie Louth (Heidelberg: Winter 2014), pp. 179-200.

Books / Scholarly Editions

Arthur Schnitzler, Marionetten. Ed. by Annja Neumann with Gregor Babelotzky, Judith Beniston, Kaltërina Latifi, Robert Vilain, Andrew Webber. In: Arthur Schnitzler digital (Werke 1905 bis 1931). Ed. by Wolfgang Lukas, Michael Scheffel, Andrew Webber, Judith Beniston.

Durchkreuzte Zeit. Zur ästhetischen Temporalität der späten Gedichte von Nelly Sachs and Paul Celan (Heidelberg: Winter, 2013).

Related websites

Departmental Page (Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages)
Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages - German and Dutch
Arthur Schnitzler Digital
The Schnitzler Spheres