Room: R12 S04 H08
Office hours: Please consult the official list of office hours
Tel.: 0201/183-3427
e-mail: jens.gurr@uni-due.de

Biographical Information

Areas of Teaching and Research

Classes

Publications

PLEASE NOTE:
In the summer semester of 2012, Prof. Gurr will be on leave. For the semester,
PD Dr. Karin Ikas will take over the position.

Biographical Information

Areas of Teaching and Research

Generally:

16th-21st-Century British Literature
19th and 20th-Century American Literature
Anglophone Literatures and Cultures

More specifically:

Contemporary Anglophone fiction
Literary and cultural theory
The politics of identity
Urban studies
Film and film theory
Literary and cultural history
18th-century British literature
British Romanticism

Classes

"Semesterapparate" online (DuE Publico)

Guidelines for seminar papers

SS 2011

VL: "20th-Century British Literature"

VL: "Introduction to Literary Studies"

HS: "Key Issues in Urban Studies"

Examenskolloquium

Doktorandenkolloquium (with Prof. Dr. Josef Raab)

WS 10/11 (Research Leave)

Doktorandenkolloquium (with Prof. Dr. Josef Raab)

Examenskolloquium

SS 2010

VL: "18th-Century British Literature: Selected Texts and Contexts"

VL: "Introduction to Literary Studies"

Oberseminar: "Language, Literature and Culture in the 17th Century" (with Prof. Dr. Claudia Claridge)

HS: "Representations of the Metropolis in Literature: From 17th-Century London to Postmodern New York"

Übung "Introduction to Literary Studies"

Examenskolloquium

Doktorandenkolloquium (with Prof. Dr. Josef Raab)

Organisation of Lecture Series "Herausforderung Metropole" (with contributors from seven faculties)

WS 09/10

VL: "Introduction to Literary Studies"

HS: "Literary Theory" (M.A. only)

HS: "Cultural Theory" (M.A. only)

Examenskolloquium (with Prof. Dr. Annette Kern-Stähler)

Doktorandenkolloquium (with Prof. Dr. Josef Raab, Prof. Dr. Annette Kern-Stähler and Dr. Martin Butler)

SS 09

VL: "17thCentury British Literature"

HS: "Urban Cultural Ecology: Popular Culture and the City"

PS: "Survey of British Literature"

Examenskolloquium (with Prof. Dr. Annette Kern-Stähler)

Doktorandenkolloquium (with Prof. Dr. Josef Raab, Prof. Dr. Annette Kern-Stähler and Dr. Martin Butler)

WS 08/09

HS: "Time in Literature and Film"

PS: "Survey of British Literature"

Examenskolloquium (with Prof. Dr.

Doktorandenkolloquium (with Prof. Dr. Josef Raab, Prof. Dr. Annette Kern-Stähler and Dr. Martin Butler)

SS 08

VL: "20^th-Century British Literature"

VL: "Introduction to Literary Studies"

HS: "Paul Auster in the Context of Contemporary American Fiction"

HS: "Literature and Politics in the Seventeenth Century"

PS: "Survey of British Literature"

Examenskolloquium

Doktorandenkolloquium (with Prof. Dr. Josef Raab and Dr. Martin Butler)

WS 07/08

VL: "Introduction to Literary Studies"

HS: "Postcolonial Literature: An Introduction"

HS: "Cultural Theory"

HS: "Literary Theory"

PS: "Survey of British Literature"

Examenskolloquium

SS 07

VL: "Introduction to Literary Studies"

HS: "1920-1923 in European Modernism: A Comparative Look"

HS: "Literary and Cultural Theory"

PS: "A Survey of British Literature"

Reading Course: "21st-Century Anglophone Novels"

Examenskolloquium

WS 06/07

HS: "John Milton: Paradise Lost" (Bamberg)

PS: "Postcolonial Literatures: An Introduction" (Bamberg)

Übung: "Introduction to English and American Literature" (Bamberg)

VL: "Introduction to Literary Studies" (Duisburg-Essen; with Prof. Dr. Josef Raab und HD Dr. Frank Erik Pointner)

Examenskolloquium (Duisburg-Essen)

SS 06

HS: "Film Theory and Film Analysis"

Examenskolloquium

WS 05/06

HS: "Literature and Science: Key Cultural Debates in the 19th and 20th Centuries"

Examenskolloquium [with Professor Dr. Elmar Lehmann]

Contributed to lecture on "20th-Century Anglophone Novels": "James Joyce, Ulysses", "A.S. Byatt, Possession", "Philip Roth, The Human Stain"

SS 05

VL: "An Overview of Selected Major Texts in English Literature from the Middle Ages to the 20^th Century"

HS: "Reflections on Science and Progress in the Novel: Sterne's Tristram Shandy and Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court"

HS: "Literature to Film: Principles and Classroom Use" [with Prof. Dr. Bernd Rüschoff and Prof. Dr. Erhard Reckwitz]

PS: "Introduction to Literary Studies"

Examenskolloquium [with Prof. Dr. Elmar Lehmann]

WS 04/05

VL: "British Romanticism in its Cultural and Political Contexts"

HS: "British Romanticism in Poetry and Prose"

HS: "Literature, Revolution and Civil War in Britain and the US: From the Puritan Revolution to American Independence"

Reading Course: "Literature, Revolution and Civil War"

PS: "Talking about Poetry and Poets" [literary studies and didactics, with Prof. Dr. Bernd Rüschoff]

PS: "Introduction to Literary Studies"

Examenskolloquium

SS 04

VL: "British Poetry from the Middle Ages to the 21^st Century: An Overview"

PS: "From Poe to Pynchon: The Development of American Short Fiction in the 19th and 20th Centuries"

HS: "20^th-Century American Drama: From Eugene O'Neill to David Mamet"

HS: "John Milton: Paradise Lost"

Examenskolloquium [in Duisburg and Essen]

WS 03/04

VL: "17th-Century British Literature in its Cultural and Political Contexts"

VL: "Literary Theory: Major Contemporary Trends"

VL: "Sprache und Kultur des englischen Sprachraums" [with Prof. Dr. Michael Gassenmeier and HD Dr. Frank Erik Pointner)

HS: "Current Productions of British and American Plays in Nearby Theatres: Text and Performance"

HS: "British and American Short Stories"

HS: "Reading Literary Theory: Selected Key Texts"

PS: "An Introduction to British Poetry from the Middle Ages to the 21^st Century"

Examenskolloquium

SS 03

VL: "Literary Theory: An Overview of Important Approaches"

VL: "Nothing but 'Masterpieces': Readings of Major Texts from the Renaissance to Modernism"

PS: "Romanticism? British Poetry 1780-1850"

HS: "1990s British Drama: Kane, Ravenhill, Crimp, Marber"

Examenskolloquium

WS 02/03

PS: "Epochs of English Literature: An Overview"

SS 02

PS: "The Rise of the British Novel: Bunyan, Richardson, Sterne …"

WS 01/02

PS: "Literature and Psychology: Selected Texts from Shakespeare to Joyce"

SS 99

PS: "Contemporary British Novelists: David. Lodge, Martin Amis, Ian McEwan"

HS: "Literary Utopias of the Renaissance II"

WS 98/99

HS "Literary Utopias of the Renaissance"

SS 98

PS: "Richardson's Pamela and Fielding's Rejoinders"

Übung: "Creative Writing: An Introduction to Writing Poetry in English"

WS 97/98

PS "Shakespeare's The Tempest and 20th-Century Adaptations"

HS "Modern Literary Theory II: Psychoanalysis, Approaches in Cultural Studies, New Pragmatism"

SS 97

PS: "Oscar Wilde: Aestheticism in the Context of the Late Victorian Age"

HS: "Modern Literary Theory I: Deconstruction, Political Criticism, Feminist Criticism"

WS 96/97

PS: "The Horrors of War: Poetry of World War I"

SS 96

PS: "An Introduction to British and American Drama"

PS: "Literary Theory: Hermeneutics, Deconstruction, Cultural Studies ..."

Publications 

Monographs:

Tristram Shandy and the Dialectic of Enlightenment. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 1999.

The Human Soul as Battleground: Variations on Dualism and the Self in English Literature from Chaucer to Joyce. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2003.

in preparation:

Negotiating Dichotomies: Coincidentia Oppositorum, Hegelian Aufhebung, Deconstruction … – Cultural Diagnosis through Emplotted Figures of Thought in Anglophone Literatures (working title)

Co-edited collections:

with Wilfried Raussert, eds., Cityscapes in the Americas and Beyond:Representations of Urban Complexity in Literature and Film.Trier: WVT/ Tempe, AZ: Bilingual Press, 2011.

with Martin Butler and Olaf Kaltmeier, eds., EthniCities: Metropolitan Cultures and Ethnic Identities in the Americas. Trier: WVT/ Tempe, AZ: Bilingual Press, 2011.

with Claudia Claridge and Dirk Vanderbeke, eds. "Language, Literature and Culture in the 17th Century: New Perspectives on an Under-Rated Period". Anglistentag 2010: Proceedings. Ed. Joachim Frenk and Lena Steveker. Trier: WVT, 2011. 219-287.

with Michael Gassenmeier et. al, eds., British Romantics as Readers: Intertextualities, Maps of Misreading, Reinterpretations: Festschrift for Horst Meller. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, Heidelberg, 1998.

with Michael Gassenmeier et. al, eds., The Reception of British Romanticism on the European Continent, Studies in British Romanticism, vol. 12. Essen, 1996.

In preparation:

with Hajo Neis, Gabriel Brown and J. Alexander Schmidt, eds., Generative Process, Patterns, and the Urban Challenge: Fall 2011 International PUARL Conference. Portland, OR: PUARL Press.

with Frank Erik Pointner, eds. Romantic Cityscapes. Trier: WVT.

Essays and articles:

"The Politics of Representation in Hypertext DocuFiction: Multi-Ethnic Los Angeles as an Emblem of 'America' in Norman M. Klein's Bleeding Through: Layers of Los Angeles 1920-1986", in: Screening the Americas: Narration of Nation in Documentary Film / Proyectando las Américas: Narración de la nación en el cine documental. Ed. Josef Raab, Sebastian
Thies, Daniela Noll-Opitz. Trier and Tempe, AZ: WVT and Bilingual Press. 153-171.

with Martin Butler und Olaf Kaltmeier: "Introduction: On the Intersection between Urban Environments and Ethnic Identities in the Americas". In: EthniCity: Metropolitan Cultures and Ethnic Identities in the Americas. Trier and Tempe, AZ:WVT and Bilingual Press, 2011. 1-11.

with Wilfried Raussert: "Introduction". In: Cityscapes in the Americas and Beyond: Representations of Urban Complexity in Literature and Film. Trier and Tempe, AZ:WVT and Bilingual Press, 2011. 1-9.

"The Literary Representation of Urban Complexity and the Problem of Simultaneity: A Sketchy Inventory of Strategies". In: Cityscapes in the Americas and Beyond: Representations of Urban Complexity in Literature and Film. Ed. Jens Martin Gurr/Wilfried Raussert. Trier and Tempe, AZ:WVT and Bilingual Press, 2011. 11-36.

with Martin Butler: "Against the 'Erasure of Memory' in Los Angeles City Planning: Strategies of Re-Ethnicizing L.A. in Digital Fiction", in: Selling EthniCity: Urban Cultural Politics in the Americas, ed. Olaf Kaltmeier. London: Ashgate. 145-163.

with Claudia Claridge and Dirk Vanderbeke. "Language, Literature and Culture in the 17th Century: Introduction". Anglistentag 2010: Proceedings. Ed. Joachim Frenk and Lena Steveker. Trier: WVT, 2011. 221-225.

"Urbanity, Urban Culture and the European Metropolis". Britannien und Europa - Studien zur Literatur-, Geistes- und Kulturgeschichte. Festschrift für Jürgen Klein. Ed. Michael Szczekall. Frankfurt/Main: Lang, 2010. 241-255.

"'Urbane Systeme', die Geisteswissenschaften und die Metropole Ruhr: Interdisziplinäre Metropolenforschung vor der Haustür und in aller Welt". UNIKATE 38. Essen, 2010. 8-17.

"Bourdieu, Capital and the Postcolonial Marketplace". In: Commodifying (Post)Colonialism: Othering, Reification, Commodification and the New Literatures and Cultures in English. Ed. Rainer Emig and Oliver Lindner. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010. 3-19.

"The Enlightening Powers of Night: Nocturnal Conversions in The Prelude". The Enlightenment by Night: Essays on After-Dark Culture in the Long Eighteenth Century. Ed. Serge Soupel, Kevin L. Cope, Alexander Pettit. New York: AMS Press, 2010. 379-399.

"The Taboo of Revolutionary Thought after 1660 and Strategies of Subversion in Milton's Paradise Lost and Bunyan's The Holy War, Taboo and Transgression in British Literature from the Renaissance to the Present, ed. Stefan Horlacher, Stefan Glomb & Lars Heiler. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, 99-116.

"Worshipping Cloacina in the Eighteenth Century: Functions of Scatology in Swift, Pope, Gay and Sterne", Taboo and Transgression in British Literature from the Renaissance to the Present, ed. Stefan Horlacher, Stefan Glomb & Lars Heiler. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, 117-134.

"Emplotting an Ecosystem: Amitav Ghosh's The Hungry Tide as an Eco-Narrative", Local Natures, Global Responsibilities: Ecocritical Perspectives on the New English Literatures, ed. Laurenz Volkmann, Nancy Grimm, Ines Detmers, Katrin Thomson. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010, 69-80.

"Shakey's 40 Years of Zigzag: Neil Young between Commerce and the Counter-Culture", in: Sound Fabrics: The Intermedial and Institutional Dimensions of Popular Music. Ed. Patrick Burger, Arvi Sepp and Martin Butler. Trier: WVT, 2009. 83-102.

"The Mass-Slaughter of Native Americans in Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man: A Complex Interplay of Word and Image", in: Word & Image in Colonial and Postcolonial Literatures and Cultures. Ed. Michael Meyer. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009. 353-371.

"Charles Percy Snow", Kindlers Literaturlexikon. Stuttgart/Weimar: Metzler, 2009.

"Charles Percy Snow: The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution" Kindlers Literaturlexikon. Stuttgart/Weimar: Metzler, 2009.

"Charles Percy Snow: Strangers and Brothers", Kindlers Literaturlexikon. Stuttgart/Weimar: Metzler, 2009.

"The Multicultural Marketing of Urban Fiction: Temporality, Language, Genre, and Readership(s) in Luis J. Rodriguez’s The Republic of East L.A. and Music of the Mill", in: Hybrid Americas: National and Transnational Identites in the Americas. Ed. Josef Raab. Tempe, Arizona: Bilingual Press, 2008, 263-276

"Philip Roth, The Human Stain", in: Teaching Contemporary Novels, ed. Susanne Peters, Klaus Stierstorfer & Laurenz Volkmann. Trier: WVT, 2008, vol. II, 443-462.

with Martin Butler: "The Poetics and Politics of Metafiction: Reading Paul Auster’s Travels in the Scriptorium", English Studies 89:2 (2008), 195-209.

"The ‘Native’ Cites Back: Post-Colonial Theory and the Politics of Jim Jarmusch's Western Dead Man"; in: Anglistentag 2006, Proceedings; ed. Sabine Volk-Birke & Julia Lippert. Trier: WVT, 2007, 191-202.

"Neue Entwicklungen in der Populärliteratur: Nick Hornby", in: Handbuch Englischer Roman der Gegenwart: Genres, Entwicklungen, Modellinterpretationen. Ed. Vera Nünning. Trier: WVT, 2007. 181-196.

"'Let's Impeach the President': Protest und Ideologie in Neil Youngs Living With War (2006)", in: "Da habt Ihr es, das Argument der Straße": Kulturwissenschaftliche Studien zum politischen Lied. Eds. Martin Butler & Frank Erik Pointner. Trier: WVT, 2007. 207-226.

"Zweierlei Entdeckungen: Verdrängte kanadische Geschichte als Familiengeschichte im Werk von George Elliott Clarke", Flandziu 5 [Halbjahresschrift für Literatur und Kultur der Moderne der Internationalen Wolfgang-Köppen-Gesellschaft]. 2007. 131-143.

"Two 'Romantic' Fragments?: Bürger and Shelley on Revolution", in: British and European Romanticisms: Selected Papers from the Munich Conference of the German Society for English Romanticism. Eds. Christoph Bode & Sebastian Domsch. Trier: WVT, 2007. 239-256.

"Functions of Intertextuality and Metafiction in J.M. Coetzee's Slow Man", Anglistik 18:1 (2007). 95-112.

"Geschichte(n) erzählen: Zeitstrukturen und narrative Sinnstiftung in Laurence Sternes Tristram Shandy zwischen Aufklärungs- und Metahistorie", Das achtzehnte Jahrhundert 30:2 (2006). 193-206 [spezial issue: Kulturen der Zeitlichkeit].

"Mark Ravenhill: Mother Clap's Molly House", in: Teaching Contemporary Drama. Eds. Susanne Peters, Klaus Stierstorfer & Laurenz Volkmann. Trier: WVT, 2006, vol. II. 423-440.

"Postmodernism in the 18th Century?: Enlightenment Intellectual Contexts and the Roots of 20th-Century Concerns in Tristram Shandy", RSÉAA XVII-XVIII: Revue de la Société d'Études Anglo-Américaines des XVII^e et XVIII^e Siècles 63 (2006). 19-40.

"Morality versus Poetics: Conflicting Evaluations of Sense Perceptions in The Prelude", in: Romantic Voices, Romantic Poetics: Selected Papers from the Regensburg Conference of the German Society for English Romanticism. Eds. Christoph Bode & Katharina Rennhak. Trier: WVT, 2005. 57-68.

"'Let me suppose thee for a Ship a-while': Nautical Metaphors and Contemporary Politics in Eighteenth-Century Translations of Horace's 'Ode I, xiv'", Swift Studies 20 (2005). 70-81.

with Michael Gassenmeier: "Burke's Conservatism and its Echoes on the Continent and in the United States", in: Non-Fictional Romantic Prose: Expanding Borders, ed. Stephen P. Sondrup & Virgil Nemoianu, Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins, 2004), 117-139.

"Charles Percy Snow", in: Metzler Lexikon englischsprachiger Autorinnen und Autoren. Eds. Eberhard Kreutzer & Ansgar Nünning. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2002. 542f.

with Michael Gassenmeier: "The Experience of the City in British Romantic Poetry", in: Romantic Poetry, ed. Angela Esterhammer, Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins, 2002. 305-331.

"Shelley's Misreading of Aeschylus' Prometheus", in: British Romantics as Readers: Intertextualities, Maps of Misreading, Reinterpretations: Festschrift for Horst Meller. Ed. Michael Gassenmeier et al. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 1998. 71-81.

with Michael Gassenmeier: "Über das Versagen und die Versagung der Toleranz, oder vom Lernprozeß des entmannten und verkannten Autors in Laurence Sternes Tristram Shandy, Gentleman", in: Toleranz: Das Fremde, Macht, Identität. Eds. Josef Fellsches & Werner L. Hohmann. Essen: Blaue Eule, 1998. 23-40.

with Michael Gassenmeier: "Statik+Mechanik+Ballistik=Komposition oder Literatur als Technikfolgenkompensation in Laurence Sternes Tristram Shandy", Literatur für Leser 21:2 (1998). 107-120.

"James Thurber: 'The Secret Life of Walter Mitty'", in: Amerikanische Short Stories des 20. Jahrhunderts. Ed. Michael Hanke. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1998. 36-43.

"Peter Taylor: 'Promise of Rain'", in: Amerikanische Short Stories des 20. Jahrhunderts. Ed Michael Hanke. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1998. 122-129.

"'Now more than ever seems it rich to die': Morbidity and English Romanticism in Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus", LWU 30:4 (1997). 287-297.

"'Bad is the world and all will come to nought': History and Morality in More's and Shakespeare's Richard III", Litteraria Pragensia 7 (1997). 51-78.

In press or accepted for publication:

"Sofia Coppola: Lost in Translation". Teaching Contemporary Film.Ed. Susanne Peters, Klaus Stierstorfer, Dirk Vanderbeke, Laurenz Volkmann. Trier: WVT, forthcoming.

"'Dung, guts and blood': Stadt- und Aufklärungskritik in Jonathan Swifts London-Dichtung". Hygiene & Kultur. Ed. Sabine Dittrich und H.W. Ingensiep. Essen: Oldib-Verlag.

with Olaf Kaltmeier: "Conflicting Constructions of Cross-Border Regional Identities in the Cascadia Region (Seattle/Vancouver)", in: New World Colors: New World Colors: Ethnicity, Belonging, and Difference in the Americas, ed. Josef Raab. Tempe, AZ: Bilingual Press und Trier: WVT.

"What can one do with a justly forgotten poem?, or: When China's trade all Europe overflows: Edward Young's Naval Lyrics, Critical (Mis)Fortune and the Discourses of Free Trade, Mercantilism, and Globalisation", in: The Sea in the Enlightenment, ed. Kevin Cope & Serge Soupel. New York: AMS Press.

"Conceptualizing the Field of Identity Politics in the Americas: Lessons from the Rigoberta Menchú Controversy". Ethnic Identity Politics in the Americas. Ed. Josef Raab, Sebastian Thies, Olaf Kaltmeier.

Reviews and Conference Reports:

Franziska Schmitt, Method in the Fragments: Fragmentarische Strategien in der englischen und deutschen Romantik, Anglistik 18:2 (2007), 213-217.

Conference Report: "British and European Romanticisms", 11th International Conference of the Gesellschaft für Englische Romantik, München, Oktober 2005, in: Anglistik 17:1 (2006). 221-224.

Stefan Glomb & Stefan Horlacher, eds. Beyond Extremes: Repräsentation und Reflexion von Modernisierungsprozessen im zeitgenössischen britischen Roman, in: Anglia 123:4 (2005). 765-768.

Dirk Vanderbeke, Theoretische Welten und literarische Transformationen: Die Naturwissenschaften im Spiegel der 'science studies' und der englischen Literatur des ausgehenden 20. Jahrhunderts, in: Anglistik 16:1 (2005). 173-176.

Michael Tratner, Modernism and Mass Politics: Joyce, Woolf, Eliot, Yeats, in: Anglia 117:2 (1999). 297-302.

Doris Bachmann-Medick (Hrsg.), Übersetzung als Repräsentation fremder Kulturen, in: Translation and Literature 7:1 (1998). 137-139.

Julian Wolfreys and William Baker (eds.), Literary Theories: A Case Study in Critical Performance, in: LWU, 30:4 (1997). 361-362.

Marina McKay, Modernism and World War II, in: Anglia.