M.A. (Leipzig), MSc (Edinburgh), PhD (Edinburgh)

PgCAP (Edinburgh), FHEA

Dr Frauke Matthes has been a Lecturer in German since September 2010. After studying for an M.A. (Magistra Artium) in German and English at the University of Leipzig (Germany), she completed an MSc in Comparative and General Literature and a PhD in Comparative Literature at Edinburgh. Dr Matthes taught as a temporary teaching fellow (2007-08) and held a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship (2008-10) in German at Edinburgh before taking up her current post as lecturer. She was promoted to Senior Lecturer in August 2016.

In August 2018 she held a Visiting Professorship (via the Erasmus+ staff mobility programme) at the University of São Paulo, and in August 2019 she was Visiting Scholar at the University of Trier (International Research Training Group ‘Diversity – Mediating Difference in Transcultural Spaces’).

Dr Matthes was the Conference Officer for the Association for German Studies in Great Britain and Ireland (2013-19).

Dr Matthes' research interests include gender and masculinity studies, transcultural literature and culture, postcolonial studies, travel/migration writing, and comparative literature. Her doctoral research investigated representations of Islam in contemporary German and English transcultural literature. She explored how German- and English-language authors, both Muslim and non-Muslim, approach migration and travel, how they 'translate' between cultures, and the significance for them of Islam, of ideas of home, and of gender constructions.  This study was published as Writing and Muslim Identity: Representations of Islam in German and English Transcultural Literature, 1990-2006 (London: Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, 2011).

Dr Matthes is currently working on 'new' masculinities in contemporary German literature and culture. This monograph project, which was funded by the Leverhulme Trust in 2008-10, examines the problematic issue of constructions and discourses of masculinity both within contemporary migrant cultures in Germany and in the interaction of these cultures with the 'native mainstream'. She asks how conceptions of the masculine are reshaped in the German context by ethnically and culturally non-German influences and how these are reflected in literary texts and film. - On 31 October 2009, she hosted the colloquium 'The German Masculine and “the Other"'.

More recently, Dr Matthes has become interested in questions of ethics and literature and politics and litertaure. She co-edited (with Emily Jeremiah) volume 7 of the Edinburgh German Yearbook on Ethical Approaches in Conteporary German Litertaure and Culture (2013) and (with Dora Osborne, Katya Krylova, and Myrto Aspioti) volume 14 of the Edinburgh German Yearbook on Politics and Culture in Germany and Austria Today (2021).

Dr Matthes also co-edited (with Lizzie Stewart) a special issue of Oxford German Studies on Emine Sevgi Özdamar at 70 (45.3, September 2016) and has published several articles and presented papers on writers such as Ferdiun Zaimoğlu, Navid Kermani, Clemens Meyer, Maxim Biller, Fatih Akin, Ilija Trojanow, Saša Stanisić, Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Leila Aboulela, and V. S. Naipaul.

Dr Matthes is the general editor of the Edinburgh German Yearbook and on the editorial boards of Forum for Modern Language Studies and the book series European Connections: Studies in Comparative Literature, Intermediality and Aesthetics (Peter Lang). She has also peer-reviewed articles for, amongst others, Gegenwartsliteratur: Ein germanistisches Jahrbuch, Oxford German Studies, Modern Language Review, Forum for Modern Language Studies, Seminar, Focus on German Studies, and for the Online Gender Glossar based at the University of Leipzig (https://gender-glossar.de/).

Supervision

Dr Matthes is happy to discuss supervision of topics in 20th and 21st-centrury German literature, gender and masculinity studies, transcultural literature and culture, postcolonial studies, travel and migration writing, and comparative literature with German.

Dr Matthes has been involved in the supervision of PhD theses on a number of topics, including: contemporary German-Turkish theatre; masculinity and Islam in British transcultural literature and film; neo-Orientalism in European and North Amercia fiction; Scandinavian and German migrant writing; contemporary masculinities in post-Soviet Russian literature; and memory and trauma. She was also mentor to a visiting PhD student who works on Swiss migrant writing by women. Dr Matthes has also supervised MSc dissertations on a number of topics related to comparative literature and theatre studies such as ecofeminist criticism, German-Turkish theatre, North African life-writing, Orientalism/Occidentalism, travel writing, gender and myth, literature and the subaltern, and the Arab Spring.

Postgraduate Courses

Dr Matthes was the Programme Director of the MSc in Comparative and General Literature (2011-15) and coordinated the Comparative and General Literature core course 'Theories and Methods of Literary Study'.

She teaches the MSc option 'World Literature' and taught several topics on the Comparative Literature core course (What Is Comparative Literature?, World Literature and Postcolonial Criticism, Cultural Translation and Exchange, and Feminist/Gender Theories).

Undergraduate Courses

• Dr Matthes teaches German language and literature to undergraduates at all levels. 
• Her specialisms include an Honours Option on 'Deutscher Buchpreis: Trends in Contemporary German Literature' (and 'Germany and Islam' until 2017), plus German-Turkish literature and film (first year), and gender and masculinity studies (second year).
• Dr Matthes has also initiated and organised several workshops and study afternoons such as the German 4 Dissertation Conference in 2016 and 'Islam at the Edge of Words' (with Lizzie Stewart), which involved undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as early career researchers, in 2013.

Dr Matthes is on research leave in semester 2 (2020-21) and therefore does not offer office hours at the moment. Please send her an email ([email protected]) to arrange an appointment.