Christian Feser
Biographical Information
Christian Feser received a B.A. from the University of Bamberg and an M.A. in English and American Studies from the University of Bamberg and the City University of New York. His M.A. thesis investigated changes in early modern British law and the practice of physiognomy as reflected in selected works by Fielding, Hogarth, Mayhew and Dickens. In the autumn of 2017, he joined the Chair of British Literature and Culture as a research assistant (Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter). In his doctoral thesis, Christian focused on eccentricity in the works of Thomas Coryate (1577?-1617), an English writer, courtier and raconteur. Coryate published a travelogue of a proto-Grand Tour, Coryat’s Crudities: Hastily gobled up in Five Moneths Travells in 1611, and only months later, set out on an even more daring adventure: a journey, undertaken mostly on foot, which was to take him from Constantinople to Safavid Persia and eventually to the court of the Grand Mughal in Northern India. Soon after his death, Coryate sank into relative oblivion – a status which has not changed much since, but is quite unwarranted, as Christian aimed to prove. He is currently preparing the thesis for publication.
Notice Board
From May 2025 onwards, my office hour will be on Wednesdays from 12 to 1.
Geisteswissenschaften/Anglistik/Amerikanistik
45141 Essen
Functions
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Wissenschaftliche/r Mitarbeiter/in, Anglistik: Britische Kultur- und Literaturwissenschaft - British Literature and Culture
Current lectures
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SoSe 2025
Past lectures (max. 10)
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WiSe 2024
- A Survey of British Literature Gr. 3
- Music and Identity
- Grundkurs Literaturwissenschaft (Introduction to Literary Studies) Gr. 9
- Grundkurs Literaturwissenschaft (Introduction to Literary Studies) Gr. 8
- E3 - GeiWi_Angl - A Survey of British Literature Gr. 3 - Cr. 3-3
- ZAG71050 Version C: Introduction to Literary Studies, A History of American Lit. + Cult., A History of British Lit. + Cult.
- ZAG71050 Version A: Introduction to Literary Studies, A History of American Lit. + Cult.,ZAG71050 Version B: Introduction to Literary Studies, A History of British Lit. + Cult.
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SoSe 2024
The following publications are listed in the online university bibliography of the University of Duisburg-Essen. Further information may also be found on the person's personal web pages.
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Durbar Personas : Thomas Roe and Thomas Coryate at the Mughal CourtIn: India and the Traveller: Aspects of Travelling Identity / Banerjee, Rita (Eds.) 2023, pp. 45 – 71
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Thomas Coryate und sein OrientbildIn: Orientalist gazes: reception and construction of images of the ancient Near East since the 17th century / Europe and the ancient Near East. Reception and construction of images of the ancient Near East since the 17th century, 03. – 04. März 2021, online / Droß-Krüpe, Kerstin; Garcia-Ventura, Agnès; Ruffing, Kai; Verderame, Lorenzo (Eds.) 2023, pp. 1 – 17
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The Mental Optician : On the Telescope in Early Modern Literature and ArtIn: Final frontiers: exploring, discovering and conquering in the Age of Enlightenment / Münderlein, Kerstin-Anja (Eds.) 2021, pp. 147 – 164
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Conviviality and Sociability in the Long Eighteenth Century : Restoration to RomanticismTrier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier 2025
Book articles / Proceedings papers
Books, Collections, Proceedings
- Travel writing
- Early modern sociability and literary networks
- Astropoetics
- Cultural literacy
Conference papers and other contributions
"‘Chewed in the Braines of the Author, and cast up in the presse of the Printer’: Material Knowledge in Coryats Crudities (1611)", European Society for the Study of English, University of Mainz, September 2022.
"Wicked Wives and Horrible Husbands: 'True Tragedies' on the Elizabethan Stage", Captivating Criminality 8: Crime Fiction, Femininities and Masculinities, University of Bamberg, July 2022.
"Thomas Coryate und sein Orientbild", Europe and the Ancient Near East: Reception and Construction of Images of the ANE since the 17th Century, University of Kassel, March 2021 (digital event).
Short contribution on Paradise Lost, Cultural Literacy in Europe Symposium: Research in the Arts, the Arts in Research, University of Łódź, May 2020 (digital event).
“The Mental Optician: Exploring the Mind with Telescopes from Defoe to Hogarth”, Landau-Paris Symposia on the Eighteenth Century, University of Bamberg, October 2019.
“Thomas Coryate and Pre-Colonial India”, European Society for the Study of English Doctoral Symposium, University of Wrocław, August 2019.
“‘N.B. I did not visit the arsenal’: Travelling eccentrics in Coryat’s Crudities (1611) and Another Traveller! (1768-69)”, International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, University of Edinburgh, July 2019.
Conferences co-organised
with Christoph Heyl and Chandni Rampersad: LAPASEC 2025 - Class in the Long Eighteenth Century: Britain and Beyond / Les classes sociales au cours du long dix-huitième siècle (Grande-Bretagne, Europe et colonies). Essen, April 2025.
with Christoph Heyl and Chandni Rampersad: LAPASEC 2023 - Conviviality and Sociability in the Long Eighteenth Century: Restoration to Romanticism. Essen, March 2023.
Publications
See tab "Publications", and
“The Mental Optician: On the Telescope in Early Modern Literature and Art”, in: Kerstin-Anja Münderlein (ed.). Final Frontiers: Exploring, Discovering, Conquering in the Age of Enlightenment (Trier: WVT, 2021), pp. 147-164.
Grants and scholarships
2022: ESSE travel grant.
2020: DAAD travel grant (forgone due to COVID-19); 2-month scholarship at the German Historical Institute in London.
2019: DAAD travel grant; ESSE travel grant.
Public outreach
"Thomas Coryate: A Gentleman on an Elephant", VHS Essen (by invitation of the Deutsch-Britische Gesellschaft Ruhr e.V.), 18 October 2023.