
Prof. Dr. Dirk Wiemann
Chair of English Literature
Chair of English Literature
Am Neuen Palais 10
Building 19, Room 0.28
14469 Potsdam
http://dirkwiemann.online
Sprechzeiten
For study-related queries please try to avoid e-mails but see me during my consulting hour:
Wednesday 10.45-11.45
(and on appointment)
about
I graduated from Oldenburg University where I read English, German, and Political Science. In 1998, I received my PhD in Comparative Literature for a dissertation on Anglophone exilic literature in Great Britain 1933-1945, funded by a grant from the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. On behalf of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), I spent three years as a Visiting Lecturer at the English and Foreign Languages University Hyderabad (India) and the University of Delhi, teaching Literature, Media Studies and European Studies. From 2001 to 2006, I held the post of an Assistant Professor at the University of Magdeburg where I completed my postdoctoral thesis (Habilitation) on contemporary Indian novels in English. Before joining the English and American Studies Department at Potsdam University in 2008, I was a Senior Reader at the University of Tübingen.
I am member of the DFG-funded Research Training Group (Graduiertenkolleg) “Minor Cosmopolitanisms”. For further information, please visit http://www.uni-potsdam.de/minorcosmopolitanisms
I was also the director of the bilateral research and exchange network "Writing the Cosmopolitan Imagination: Genre Transactions in World-Literary Space" with the University of Delhi. For further information, please visit https://dirkwiemann.online/research/genre-transactions-in-world-literary-space/
international research and exchange module
Information and instruction regarding the International and Research module can be found here or at
research and teaching interests
- genre transformations in world literary space
- South Asia studies
- theories and practices of cosmopolitanism
- English renaissance republicanism in literature, politics and aesthetics
- literature and the British Empire
- cultural and literary theory
- postcolonialism
publications and projects
monographs
- Anglophone Verse Novels as Gutter Texts: Postcolonial Literature and the Politics of Gaps. New York (Bloomsbury Academic) 2023.
- Postcolonial Literatures in English: An Introduction. With Anke Bartels, Lars Eckstein and Nicole Waller. Stuttgart (Metzler Publishers) 2019.
- Genres of Modernity: Contemporary Indian Novels in English. Amsterdam & New York (Rodopi) 2008.
- Exilliteratur in Großbritannien 1933 – 1945. Opladen (Westdeutscher Verlag) 1998.
edited volumes
- Postcolonial World Literature: Narration, Translation, Imagination. Thesis Eleven 162.1 (2021) (with Ira Raja and Shaswati Mazumdar).
- The Return of Politics. HARD TIMES vol. 101 (2018) (with Anke Bartels).
- Postcolonial Justice. Amsterdam: Brill, 2017 (with Anke Bartels, Lars Eckstein and Nicole Waller). For more details see http://www.brill.com/products/book/postcolonial-justice
- Perspectives on English Revolutionary Republicanism. London & New York: Routledge, 2014 (with Gaby Mahlberg). For more details see www.routledge.com/products/isbn/9781409455677
- European Contexts for English Republicanism. London & New York: Routledge, 2013 (with Gaby Mahlberg). For more details see www.routledge.com/products/isbn/9781409455561
- The Politics of Passion: Reframing Affect and Emotion in Global Modernity. Frankfurt: Lang, 2013 (with Lars Eckstein).
- The White Backlash: Conservatism in Contemporary British Writing. = Hard Times vol. 89 (2011) (with Lars Eckstein).
- Transcultural Britain. = Journal for the Study of British Cultures, 15.1 (2008) (with Bernd-Peter Lange).
- Only Connect: Texts – Places – Politics. A Festschrift for Bernd-Peter Lange. Frankfurt: Lang, 2008 (with Anke Bartels & Reinhold Wandel).
- Global Fragments: (Dis-)Orientation in the New World Order – ASNEL Papers 10; Amsterdam / New York: Rodopi, 2007 (with Anke Bartels).
- Discourses of Violence – Violence of Discourses: Critical Interventions, Transgressive Readings, Post-National Negotiations. Frankfurt/Main: Lang. 2005 (with Agata Stopinska, Anke Bartels & Johannes Angermüller).
- Reflexive Representations: Politics, Hegemony and Discourse in Global Capitalism. Münster: LIT, 2004 (with Johannes Angermüller, Raj Kollmorgen & Jörg Meyer).
- Reflexive Repräsentationen: Diskurs, Macht und Praxis der Globalisierung. Münster: LIT, 2004 (with Johannes Angermüller, Raj Kollmorgen & Jörg Meyer).
- At Longitude and Latitude: Essays in Honour of Bernd-Peter Lange. Magdeburg 2003 (with Anke Bartels & Hans-Werner Breunig).
articles and book chapters
- "Capitalist Realism | Network Realism". Realism: Origins, Challenges and Politics. Ed. Jens Elze.New York (Bloomsbury Academic) 2022.
- "Layer after Layer: Aerial Roots and Routes of Translation". Thesis Eleven 162.1 (2021), 33-45. doi.org/10.1177/0725513621990772
- "Postcolonial World Literature: Narration, Translation, Imagination". With Shaswati Mazumdar and Ira Raja. Thesis Eleven 162.2 (2021), 3-17. doi.org/10.1177/0725513621994707
- "Being Taught Something World-Sized: 'The Detainee's Tale as Told to Ali Smith' and the Work of World Literature". Cultural Inquiry 19: The Work of World Literature. Ed. Francesco Giusti and Benjamin Lewis Robinson. Berlin (ICI Press) 2021, 149-172. doi.org/10.37050/ci-19_07
- "Doing Minor Cosmopolitanisms in an Anti-Cosmopolitan World" (with Lars Eckstein). The Minor on the Move. Ed. Kylie Crane, Lucy Gasser, Sara Morais dos Santos Bruss and Anna Rath. Münster (edition assemblage) 2021, 250-261.
- "The Postdialogic Imagination: Brexit Friction, Brexit Fiction". Frictions: Europe, America and Global Transformations. CITAS Regensburg. April 2021. doi.org/10.15457/frictions/0005
- "'Too Poor for Debt': Deleuze's First-World Problems". Coils of the Serpent 5.2 (2020), 100-110. urn:nbn:de:bsz:15-qucosa2-728571
- "Grenzen der Transplantation: Die mobile Immobilität des ficus benghalensis". Kulturwissenschaftliche Konzepte der Transplantation. Ed. Uwe Wirth. Berlin (De Gruyter) 2019, 241-255.
- "The Essence of Politics is Collective: Interview with Alia Amir Ali". Hard Times 103.1 (2019), 27-35.
- "Minor Cosmopolitanisms". With Lars Eckstein. Global Citizenship: Perspectives of a World Community. Ed. Roland Bernecker & Roland Grätz. Göttingen (Steidl) 2018.
- "Make English Sweet Again! Refugee Tales, or, How Politics Comes Back to Literature". Hard Times 101 (2018), 68-76.
- "Editorial: The Return of Politics". Hard Times 101 (2018), i-x.
- "'...saying what was previously unthinkable': An Interview with Yannis Stavrakakis". Hard Times 101 (2018), 15-23.
- "The Burdens of Representation: Reflections of Class and Ethnicity in the 20th-Century British Novel". Handbook of the English Novel, 1900 – 2015. Ed. Christoph Reinfandt. Berlin (De Gruyter) 2017, 108-129.
- "David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas (2004)". Handbook of the English Novel, 1900 – 2015. Ed. Christoph Reinfandt. Berlin (De Gruyter) 2017, 500-519.
- "Indian Writing in English and the Discrepant Zones of World Literature". Anglophone World Literatures. Ed. Birgit Neumann & Gabriele Rippl. Anglia 135/1 (2017), 122-139.
- "Grenzen des Kulturellen -- Grenzen der Kulturwissenschaften?" Kulturwissenschaft(en): Bilanz - Kritik - Perspektiven. Ed. Eugen Kotte. Frankfurt (Lang) 2017, 55-75.
- "The Great Unread: The Shadow Canon of Indian Writing in English". Reading the Canon. Literary History in the 21st Century. Ed. Philipp Löffler. Heidelberg (Winter) 2017, 293-311.
- "Postcolonial Justice: An Introduction". With Anke Bartels, Lars Eckstein & Nicole Waller. Postcolonial Justice. Ed. Anke Bartels, Lars Eckstein, Nicole Waller and Dirk Wiemann. Amsterdam (Brill) 2017, vii-xixx.
- "Kleine Kosmopolitismen". With Lars Eckstein. Global Citizenship / Weltbürgertum. Ed. Roland Bernecker & Ronald Grätz. Göttingen (Steidl) 2017, 44-53.
- "Passive Voice: Democratic Indifference and the Vibrant Matter of Literature". Theory Matters: The Place of Theory in Literary and Cultural Studies Today. Ed. Martin Middeke & Christoph Reinfandt. New York (Palgrave) 2016, 167-180.
- "Transformations of 'Culture’ in Post-WWII Europe: From Antifascism to Antitotalitarianism". With Helmut Peitsch. Comparative Critical Studies 13.2 (2016), 173–192.
- "Tropen der Aufklärung: Postkoloniale Neubewertungen". With Tania Meyer. Das Achtzehnte Jahrhundert 2.2016, 165-174.
- "Placing 'America' on the Map of World Literature". Crossroads in American Studies: Transnational and Biocultural Encounters. Ed. Frederike Offiizier, Marc Priewe & Ariane Schröder. Würzburg (Winter) 2016, 305-324.
- "Unrentabel und von gestern: Großbritannien und die Kampagne gegen den Sklavenhandel". Auf den Ruinen der Imperien: Geschichte und Gegenwart des Kolonialismus. Ed. Dorothee D'Aprile. Berlin (Edition Le Monde diplomatique) 2015, 32-33.
- "(Not) Readily Available: Kiran Nagarkar in the Global Market". Indian Writing in English and the Global Literary Market. Ed. Om Prakash Dwivedi & Lisa Lau. New York (Palgrave) 2014, 180-197.
- "Tolkien's Baits: Agonism, Essentialism and the Visible in The Lord of the Rings". Politics in Fantasy Media: Essays on Ideology and Gender in Fiction, Film, Television and Games. Ed. Gerold Sedlmayr & Nicole Waller. Jefferson, NC (McFarland) 2014, 191-204.
- "Vom Globus zum Planeten: Derek Walcott ‘nach der Hybridität’ lesen". Nach der Hybridität: Zukünfte der Kulturwissenschaften. Ed. Ottmar Ette & Uwe Wirth. Berlin (tranvía) 2014, 167-183.
- “Introduction: Perspectives on English Revolutionary Republicanism”. With Gaby Mahlberg. Perspectives on English Revolutionary Republicanism. Eds. Dirk Wiemann & Gaby Mahlberg. Farnham (Ashgate) 2014, 1-12.
- "World Literary Spacing: Contemporary Verse Novels Across the Anglosphere". Across Literary and Linguistic Diversities: Essays on Contemporary Literature. Ed. Shaswati Mazumdar & Madhu Sahni. Oxford (Lang) 2014, 45-62.
- “On (Not) Missing Links: Reading Conan Doyle with Mahasweta Devi”. Afrofictional In[ter]ventions. Eds. Susan Arndt & Nadja Ofuatey-Alazard. Berlin (edition assemblage) 2014, 269-282.
- "A Little Piece of the Shire: Some Versions of the Hobbit Garden”. Hard Times 95 (Spring 2014), 24-27.
- “Spectacles of Astonishment: Tragedy and the Regicide in England and Germany, 1649-1663.” European Contexts for English Republicanism. Eds. Gaby Mahlberg & Dirk Wiemann. Farnham (Ashgate) 2013, 33-48.
- “Introduction” (with Gaby Mahlberg). European Contexts for English Republicanism. Eds. Gaby Mahlberg & Dirk Wiemann. Farnham (Ashgate) 2013, 1-9.
- “… What Will Count as the World: Indian Short-Story Cycles and the Question of Genre”. Locating Postcolonial Narrative Genres. Eds. Walther Goebel & Saskia Schabio. London & New York (Routledge) 2013, 155-168.
- "'Cubism' as Intersectionalism: John Berger's Figures of Masculinity". Post-World War II Masculinities in British and American Literature and Culture: Towards Comparative Masculinity Studies. Ed. Stefan Horlacher & Kevin Floyd. Farnham (Ashgate) 2013, 113-127.
- “Eventalism: Singularity and the sensus communis.” Text or Context: Reflections on Literary and Cultural Criticism. Eds. Rüdiger Kunow & Stephan Mussil. Würzburg (Königshausen & Neumann) 2013, 43-58.
- “Cities of the Mind – Villages of the Mind: Imagining Urbanity in Contemporary India.” ZAA 61.1 (2013): 59-72.
- “Undead or Immortal? Red Army Faction Afterlives”. The Politics of Passion: Reframing Affect and Emotion in Global Modernity. Eds. Dirk Wiemann & Lars Eckstein. Frankfurt et al. (Lang) 2013, 135-54.
- “The Politics of Passion: An Introduction” (with Lars Eckstein). The Politics of Passion: Reframing Affect and Emotion in Global Modernity. Eds. Dirk Wiemann & Lars Eckstein. Frankfurt et al. (Lang) 2013, 7-31.
- “Distant Reading: Cosmopolitanism as Unconditional Reception”. Postcolonial Translocations. Eds. Marga Munkelt et al. Amsterdam & New York (Rodopi) 2013, 45-60.
- “Gleichheit (égalité).” Rousseau und die Moderne: Eine kleine Enzyklopädie. Eds. Iwan-Michelangelo D’Aprile & Stefanie Stockhorst. Göttingen (Wallstein) 2013, 114-25.
- “Mira Nair, Salaam Bombay!”. Teaching Contemporary Literature and Culture: Film (Vol. 2). Eds. Susanne Peters, Klaus Stierstorfer, Dirk Vanderbeke & Laurenz Volkmann. Trier (WVT) 2013, 563-77.
- “Mundus senescit: Is Tolkien’s Medievalism Victorian or Modernist?” Hither Shore: Journal of Modern Fantasy 8 (2012), 24-38.
- “Capital on Stage – David Hare and Lucy Prebble Dramatize ‘the Crisis’”. Hard Times 91 (Spring 2012), 17-24.
- “The Boomerang Effect of Colonial Practice: Free-Born Englishmen and Cavalier Slaves”. Kulturelle Mobilitätsforschung: Themen – Theorien – Tendenzen. Eds. Norbert Franz & Rüdiger Kunow. Potsdam (Universitätsverlag) 2011, 353-76.
- “Achievers, Clones and Pirates: Indian Graphic Novels”. Proceedings of the Annual English Studies Conference. Eds. Joachim Frenk & Lena Steveker. Trier (WVT) 2011, 157-69.
- “Michael Arditti and the Return of ‘Totalitarianism’.” Backlash: Current Trends in British Fiction. Eds. Lars Eckstein & Dirk Wiemann. (Hard Times 2011)
- “Grenzüberschreitende Provinzialität: Richardsons Pamela und die verborgenen Ressourcen des europäischen Romans”. Brennpunkte kultureller Begegnungen auf dem Weg zu einem modernen Europa: Identitäten und Alteritäten eines Kontinents. Eds. Cornelia Klettke & Ralf Pröve. Göttingen (v&r unipress) 2011, 213-30.
- “A Russian Romance 1930s British Writers as Wishful Participants in the Soviet Revolution”. Facing the East in the West. Images of Eastern Europe in British Literature, Film and Culture. Eds. Barbara Korte, Eva Ulrike Pirker & Sissy Helff. Amsterdam (Rodopi) 2010, 95-110.
- “Zeit”. Wie Rassismus aus Wörtern spricht: (K)Erben des Kolonialismus im Wissensarchiv der deutschen Sprache. Ed. Susan Arndt & Nadja Ofuatey-Alazard. Berlin (Unrast) 2011, 563-569.
- "Empire and Freedom: William Davenant's 'Republican' Plays". The Workings of the Anglosphere: Contributions to the Study of British and US-American Cultures, Presented to Richard Stinshoff. Eds. Anton Kirchhofer & Jutta Schwarzkopf. Trier (WVT) 2009, 41-54.
- "Wilber's Force: Abolitionism and the Power of Sensibility in Michael Apted's Amazing Grace", in Hard Times 26.2 (Spring 2009), 24-28.
- "Bashing the Bishop: The Rowan Williams Row and the Incomplete Secularisation of Britain". Journal for the Study of British Cultures 16.2 (Fall 2009), 151-163.
- "A Global Village Sketch: Rana Dasgupta's Tokyo Cancelled and the Re-Placement of Non-Places". Muse India 24 (March-April 2009). Ed. Dieter Riemenschneider. museindia.com/showfocus13.asp?id=1204
- "Midnight's Victims: Adivasis on the Cultural Map of India" (with Tania Meyer). Culture – History – Globalization 4 (2009), 45-59.
- "Im Angesicht der Majestät: Geschichte, Mythos und Transnationalität in Shekhhar Kapurs Elizabeth-Filmen" (with Satish Poduval). Film Transnational: Europäische und amerikanische Perspektiven. Eds. Ricarda Strobel & Andreas Jahn- Sudermann. München (Fink) 2009, 73-91.
- “The Times of India: Transcultural Temporalities in Theory and Fiction”. Transcultural English Studies. Eds. Frank Schulze-Engler & Sissy Helff. Amsterdam (Rodopi) 2009, 103-116.
- "Keep the Pterodactyl Flying: Prehistory in Post-Historic Times". Only Connect: Texts – Places – Politics. A Festschrift for Bernd-Peter Lange. Eds. Anke Bartles, Reinhold Wandel & Dirk Wiemann. Frankfurt (Lang) 2008, 42-53.
- "Transcultural Britain: An Introduction" (with Bernd-Peter Lange). Journal for the Study of British Cultures 15.1 (2008), 3-10.
- "Screen Memories – Screen Fictions: Historical Films of the English Civil War". Anglistik 19.1 (Spring 2008), 101-112.
- "It Ain't Me Babe: Bob Dylan's Chronicles between Disclosure and Concealment". Germinal 5 (Spring 2008), 124-35.
- “Bodies in Collision: Hobbes, Milton and the Body Politic”. Proceedings of the Conference of the German Association of University Teachers of English. Ed. Sabine Volk-Birke. Trier (WVT) 2007, 171-80.
- "From Forked Tongue to Forked Tongue: Rushdie and Milton in the Postcolonial Conversation". Journal of Commonwealth Literature 42.2, June 2007, 47-63.
- "Britain at War with Itself: The English Civil War re-enacted, re-called and re-visited”. Journal for the Study of British Cultures 14.1 (Spring 2007), 65-76.
- "Teaming Multitudes: Lagaan and the Nation in Globality". Global Fragments: (Dis-)Orientation in the New World Order. Eds. Anke Bartels & Dirk Wiemann. Amsterdam/New York (Rodopi) 2007, 153-169.
- "Mountaineering with Hobbes and Milton: (R)Enunciations of Agency and Seeing in Restoration England". Re-Defining the Matrix: Reflections on Time, Space and Agency. Eds. Anke Bartels & Agata Stopinska. Frankfurt (Lang) 2006, 131-148.
- “German Exile Literature of the Nazi Period – World Literature?” World Literature: Contemporary, Postcolonial and Post-Imperial Literatures. Ed. Nilufer E. Bharucha. New Delhi (Prestige) 2006, 321-36.
- “Back to Back Stories: Salman Rushdie's Fury as Escape from Freedom". Mediating Indian Writing in English: German Perspectives. Eds. Bernd-Peter Lange & Mala Pandurang. Delhi (Rawat) & Münster (LIT) 2005, 141-65.
- "News from Nowhere: Vikram Seth's An Equal Music". Transgressions: Interventions in the Global Manifold. Eds. Renate Brosch & Rüdiger Kunow. Trier (WVT) 2005, 127-141.
- "Globalization and the Crisis of Interpretation – Between the Social Sciences and the Humanities” (with Johannes Angermüller). Reflexive Representations: Politics, Hegemony and Discourse in Global Capitalism. Eds. Johannes Angermüller et al. Münster (LIT) 2004, 1-9.
- "Off the Record: Pop Music and the War on Iraq". Reflexive Representations: Politics, Hegemony and Discourse in Global Capitalism. Eds. Johannes Angermüller et al. Münster (LIT) 2004, 101-14.
- "Bollywood – The Greatest Showbiz on Earth". India - Unity in Diversity. Ed. Reinhold Wandel. Berlin (Cornelsen) 2004, 87-90.
- "Masks of Identity: Power and Performativity in Leonard Cohen". At Longitude and Latitude: Essays in Honour of Bernd-Peter Lange. Eds. Anke Bartels. Magdeburg 2003, 87-102.
- "Unpeaceful Coexistences: Marlowe's Doctor Faustus and Goethe's Faust". Yearbook of the Goethe Society of India. Ed. B. Subramanian. Chennai 2000, 32-52.
- "Exile and Cunning: Ernest Borneman's The Face on the Cutting-Room Floor and Its Literary Antecedents". The Art of Murder: New Essays on Detective Fiction. Eds. H. Gustav Klaus & Stephen Knight. Tübingen (Stauffenburg) 1998, 126-138.
- "Große Worte, kleine Dinge: Arundhati Roys The God of Small Things". Hard Times 63 (Spring 1998), 4-8.
reviews
- “Rosemary Marangoly George, Indian English and the Fiction of National Literature”. ZAA 62.4 (2014), 385–388.
- "Susanne Bach (ed), Gewalt - Geschlecht - Fiktion Gewaltdiskurse in zeitgenoessischen englischsprachigen Romanen, Dramen und Filmen". Anglistik 23.1 (2012), 205-207.
- "Michael Chanan, The Politics of Documentary". Journal for the Study of British Cultures 17.1 (2010), 81/82.
- "Knut A. Jacobsen & Selva J. Raj, South Asian Christian Diaspora: Invisible Diaspora in Europe and North America". South Asian Diaspora 1.1 (2009), 197-199.
- "Sudesh Mishra, Diaspora Criticism". ZAA 56.3 (2008), 206-207.
- "Astrid Erll, Prämediation – Remediation: Repräsentationen des indischen Aufstands in imperialen und post-kolonialen Medienkulturen (von 1857 bis zur Gegenwart). Anglistik 19.1 (2008), 85-87.
- "Carmen Ulrich, Sinn und Sinnlichkeit des Reisens". German Studies in India 1.2008, 45-47.
- "Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri, Empire". Journal for the Study of British Cultures 7.2 (2000), 81-82.
encyclopedia contributions
- "Pam Gems Biogram", in Heinz Ludwig Arnold (ed.), Kindlers Literatur Lexikon. Stuttgart (Metzler) 2009.
- "Pam Gems, Queen Christina", in Heinz Ludwig Arnold (ed.), Kindlers Literatur Lexikon. Stuttgart (Metzler) 2009.
- "Aravind Adiga Biogram", in Heinz Ludwig Arnold (ed.), Kindlers Literatur Lexikon. Stuttgart (Metzler) 2010.
- "Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger", in Heinz Ludwig Arnold (ed.), Kindlers Literatur Lexikon. Stuttgart (Metzler) 2010.
forthcoming/work in progress
- "Time of the Seasons: Ali Smith's Seasonal Quartet as Crisis Literature". Temporalities in/of Crisis. Ed. Sibylle Baumbach and Birgit Neumann. London and New York: Routledge (forthcoming 2023).
- "Segments of a Larger Narrative: Political Formalism and Working-Class Story Cycles". Political Uses of Literature. Ed. Benjamin Kohlmann and Ivana Perica. New York: Bloomsbury Academic (forthcoming 2024).
For an updated list of publications and more information on current projects, please see: https://dirkwiemann.online