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Dr. Stefanie John

Research Associate

Adresse: Am Neuen Palais 10
Building 1, room 0.16
14469 Potsdam

About

I am Principal Investigator of the DFG-funded project Decorative Materialities: Textiles and the Fabrication of Abundance in British Literature at the Fin de Siècle. Before joining the University of Potsdam, I held positions as Interim Professor of Teaching English as a Foreign Language (2025) and Lecturer in English Literary and Cultural Studies (2017-2025) at Technische Universität Braunschweig.

I received my PhD in English Literature from the University of Münster in 2017, as a member of the DFG-funded Research Training Group Literary Form. Prior to that, I earned a BA in English Studies and the Study of Religions/Ethics and an MA in Advanced Anglophone Studies, both from Leibniz Universität Hannover. My academic profile has also been shaped by my time abroad: I was a visiting student at the University of Bristol and Durham University and taught German as a DAAD Teaching Assistant at University College Cork. Archival research for my current book project has taken me to New York City, Boston, and London. My work has been funded by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), Fritz Thyssen Stiftung, Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD), and the William Morris Society in the United States.

I am a member of Deutscher Anglistikverband, German Society for the Study of British Cultures (Britcult), German Society for English Romanticism (GER) and the British Association for Victorian Studies (BAVS). I am also active in the DACH Victorianists and MADS (Modernism, Aestheticism Decadence Studies) networks.

Research

Research Interests:

  • British and Irish literature and culture (1800-present), in particular:
  • Victorian literature and culture, the fin de siècle
  • Romanticism and post-Romanticism
  • Environmental humanities, nature writing, women's writing
  • Material Culture Studies, intermediality, intertextuality

Book Project

Decorative Materialities: Textiles and the Fabrication of Abundance in British Literature at the Fin de Siècle

Funded by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) – Project number 556119088

My research project investigates interrelations between literature and textiles in the British late nineteenth century (c. 1870 – 1900). Drawing on discourses such as Aestheticism and Decadence, the Arts and Crafts Movement, and the New Woman, as well as the environmental and colonial entanglements of nineteenth-century textile culture, it examines text-textile relationships within the thematic nexus of the decorative arts and the domestic interior, and in a literary marketplace that saw a resurgence of short forms and hybrid genres. It discusses lyric, narrative, and nonfictional works by canonical writers like William Morris, Vernon Lee, Oscar Wilde, and Sarah Grand and by lesser-known poets, design critics and art workers, such as Alfred Hayes, Mary Eliza Haweis, Rosamund Marriott Watson, Lucy Orrinsmith, and May Morris. Approaching textiles as models of literary form, image, and material artefact, the project argues that textual encounters with embroideries, tapestries, and other decorative materials reflect and shape ambiguous late Victorian attitudes to abundance and wealth. While firmly situated in the fields of Victorian studies and fin-de-siècle scholarship, the project also emphasises the topicality of this period to our present moment. Key debates of the Aesthetic and Arts and Crafts Movement resonate in twenty-first-century concerns with the material, ethical, and environmental implications of the handmade (art) object in post-industrial, digital societies.

Publications 

Monograph

  • Post-Romantic Aesthetics in Contemporary British and Irish Poetry. New York: Routledge, 2021. Shortlisted for the ESSE Book Award for Junior Scholars 2022.

Editorial Work

  • With Jennifer Leetsch. Ecocritical Perspectives on the Long Nineteenth Century: Form, Materiality, Politics. Research Cluster. Anglia: Journal of English Philology 142.1 (2024).
  • With Lennart Andres, Christian Badura, Yulia Marfutova et al. Formen des Wissens: Epistemische Funktionen literarischer Verfahren. Heidelberg: Winter, 2017.

Journal Articles

  • With Jennifer Leetsch. "Introduction: Disturbing the Sedimentations of Nineteenth-Century Environments." Research Cluster: Ecocritical Perspectives on the Long Nineteenth Century: Form, Materiality, Politics. Ed. Stefanie John and Jennifer Leetsch. Anglia: Journal of English Philology 142.1 (2024): 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1515/ang-2024-0001
  • "Fibres, Folds, and Trimmings: The Decadent Materials of Sarah Grand’s Emotional Moments." Volupté: Interdisciplinary Journal of Decadence Studies 6.2 (2023): 28-45. Open access: https://doi.org/10.25602/GOLD.v.v6i2.1753.g1864
  • "Fashioning Wealth: Morris & Company’s Greenery Tapestry and the Aesthetics of Abundance." Journal for the Study of British Cultures 30.1 (2023): 79-99.
  • "Furnishing Nature: Textile Materiality and the Victorian Home in Alfred Hayes’s The Vale of Arden and Other Poems." Victorian and Edwardian Interiors. Ed. Catherine Delyfer et Amélie Dochy. Special issue of Cahiers Victoriens et Édouardiens 97 (Spring 2023). Open access: https://doi.org/10.4000/cve.12849
  • “Forms in Motion: The Poetic Prose of Robert Macfarlane and Kathleen Jamie.” English 70.269 (2021): 105-126. https://doi.org/10.1093/english/efaa028
  • With Sandra Dinter. "Legacies of the Romantic Child: Teaching Post-Romantic Constructions of Childhood in Contemporary British Fiction." Teaching Romanticisim with the Contemporary. Ed. D. B. Ruderman and Rachel Feder. Special issue of Romantic Circles PedagogyCommons. March, 2017. Open access: https://romantic-circles.org/praxis/teaching_contemporary/dinter-john.html
  • "Precision Instruments for Dreaming: Anatomizing Keats in Pauline Stainer's The Wound-Dresser's Dream." Romanticism 22.2 (2016): 230-241. https://doi.org/10.3366/rom.2016.0277

Book Chapters

  • "'but river – / what have you left us?' Treibgut als Material und Modell in der schottischen und englischen Gegenwartslyrik." Poesie der Ströme: Flussläufe in Literatur und Geowissenschaften. Ed. Jan Röhnert and Christoph Seelinger. Berlin: Springer, 2025. 157-174. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-71330-3_12
  • "Romantic Childhood, Education, and Activism in Dara McAnulty's Diary of a Young Naturalist." Romantic Ecologies. Ed. David Kerler and Martin Middeke. Trier: WVT, 2023. 185-200.
  • "A 'Feverish Restlessness': Dance as Decadent Mobility in Late Victorian Poetry." Medicine and Mobility in 19th-Century British Literature, History, and Culture. Ed. Sandra Dinter and Sarah Schäfer-Althaus. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023. 165-186. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17020-1_8
  • "Wild Verse: The Art of Nature in the Poetry of Ann Batten Cristall." The Lost Romantics: Forgotten Poets, Neglected Works and One-Hit Wonders. Ed. Norbert Lennartz. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. 75-92. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35546-3_5
  • "Umweltmärchen in Pixar-Welten: Ecocriticism und Naturdarstellungen bei Findet Nemo und WALL-E." Moderne Märchen: Populäre Variationen in jugendkulturellen Literatur- und Medienformaten der Gegenwart. Ed. Maren Conrad. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2020. 101-125. 
  • "Contesting and Continuing the Romantic Lyric: Eavan Boland and Kathleen Jamie." Poem Unlimited: New Perspectives on Poetry and Genre. Ed. David Kerler und Timo Müller. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019. 31-46. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110594874-003

Reviews

  • Review of This Strange Loneliness: Heaney’s Wordsworth, by Peter Mackay (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2021), Review of Irish Studies in Europe 5.1 (2022): 114-116. https://doi.org/10.32803/rise.v5i1.2944
  • Review of Sackgasse Brexit: Reportagen aus einem gespaltenen Land, by Peter Stäuber (Rotpunktverlag, 2018), Journal for the Study of British Cultures 26.1 (2019): 109-112.
  • Review of Drama in the Classroom: Dramenarbeit im Englischunterricht der Sekundarstufe I im Hinblick auf Gendersensibilisierung und interkulturelle Kommunikation, by Jessica Nowoczien (Peter Lang, 2012), Scenario 7.1 (2013). https://doi.org/doi:10.33178/scenario.7.1.11

Public Outreach and Other Projects

Recent Conference Papers & Talks:

  • “Vernon Lee’s Tapestries: Textiles as Vibrant Matter in ‘Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady.’” Vernon Lee and the European Cultural Heritage: Reciprocal Influences and Intermedial Dialogue, Université Paris Cité, September 2025.
  • “‘Furniture is a kind of dress, dress is a kind of furniture’: Textiles and Home Decoration in Late Victorian Domestic Advice Manuals.” Guest lecture, Universität Hamburg, July 2025.
  • "'Modern oriental objects in sufficiently small quantities': Appropriations of Material Culture in Mary Eliza Haweis’ The Art of Decoration." MADS 2024: Global Encounters. Centre for British Studies, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, September 2024.
  • "Teaching Aestheticism and Decadence in Germany." Teaching Modernisms. Online event, hosted by Modernist Studies Association et al., August 2024.