Name
Alrik Daldrup
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College
Jesus College听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听
Email听
aojrd2@cam.ac.uk听 听 听 听 听 听
Supervisor
Prof Sarah Colvin
Research Topic
Staying with Bad Feelings. The Affective Politics of Complaint in Contemporary German Literature
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About Me听听听听听听听
Alrik holds a Master鈥檚 degree听in German Literature and Political Science听at the Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel.听He spent one semester at the University of Gothenburg, studying German, English, and History of Ideas. During his studies at Kiel, he supervised tutorial classes and served as a research and teaching assistant for Prof Timo Felber (Department of German Studies) and Prof Paula Diehl (Department of Political Science). Additionally, he guest-taught a session of an advanced undergraduate seminar on queer theory and burlesque fiction with Dr Daniel Eder.
At 密桃视频, Alrik鈥檚 work is closely intertwined with the German Section鈥檚 Research Group 'Cultural Production and Social Justice' and the international EU Horizon / UKRI research project, 鈥楾he Cartography of the Political Novel in Europe鈥� which investigates how the political novel contributes to understandings of local and global politics, and how it may be used as a means of political experience, protest, and participation.听
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Research
Alrik鈥檚 research centres on bad feelings 鈥� shame, brokenness, grief, failure, or anger 鈥� as the basis for activist trauma cultures. It understands affects of trauma as an archive of the historical present, conserving almost-annihilated traces of both quiet and loud resistance, from small acts of refusal to collective activist networks. Drawing on Sara Ahmed, literary art can be complaint: it can admit the truth of violence, mess affective atmospheres of happiness up, and gather 鈥榖roken records鈥� of 鈥榮truggles against structures鈥�. Complaints let the ghosts in, Ahmed notes. Alrik鈥檚 project is concerned with works of fiction that make space for a trauma culture that does not pathologise negative affects but acknowledges them as the most fragile, ephemeral and surprising expressions of 鈥榯he political.鈥� By staying with the specific affective shapes of trauma, literary texts can bring new body images in the political imaginary 鈥� images that defy the neoliberal idea of an individual body but unleash forms of corporeal entanglement and vulnerability. Among the writers Alrik is interested in are Antje R谩vik Strubel, Laura Leupi, Sharon Dodua Otoo, Olivia Wenzel, and Ulrike Draesner. The theoretical approach of his project is deeply grounded in a political notion of literature as a radical democratic venue for a 鈥榢aleidoscopic social imagination鈥� (Jos茅听Medina).
Alrik鈥檚 broader interests include the literature of the 21st century, literature and politics, social justice and cultural production, feminist affect studies, trauma studies, and ecocriticism.
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Scholarships/Prizes听
密桃视频 Schr枚der Scholarship in German Studies 2023-2026
The German Quarterly Graduate Student Paper Award 2023
Prize for Gender-Sensitive Research of Kiel University (Faculty of Arts and Humanities) 2023
Erasmus Plus Scholarship 2022/23
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Fellowships
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Teaching
GE9 鈥淧ower, Gender, and Race in the Early Modern Period鈥� (Grimmelshausen)
GE13 鈥淎esthetic Acts of Resistance鈥� (Sharon Dodua Otoo, Antje R谩vik Strubel, Elfriede Jelinek, Senthuran Varatharajah, Philipp Khabo Koepsell)
GE13 鈥淲riting the Subject from Nazism to Neoliberalism鈥� (Olivia Wenzel, Emine Sevgi 脰zdamar, Fatma Aydemir)
Alrik welcomes enquiries from students wishing to carry out undergraduate dissertation projects relevant to his research and teaching interests.
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Teaching interests:
- German literature and film
- Close reading
- University-level writing
- Political theory
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Conference papers
The personal is structural.听Negative Gef眉hle als Ausdruck des Politischen in der Gegenwartsliteratur, IVG, Section on: Transnational, Intersektionell, Dekolonial, Plural - Herausforderungen, Aufgaben und Chancen f眉r eine Germanistik des 21. Jahrhunderts, Graz, July 2025.
Glistening, Shimmering, Moving. Vitalising Aesthetic Experiments in the German Literature of the 21st Century, DDGC: Interdependence and Solidarity Formations in German Studies and the Arts, Panel on: From Petrification to Dynamic Solidarity: Animapolitics as Theory and Practice, online, April 2025.
DAAD Doctoral Conference 2024 鈥� Critical German and European Studies: 鈥業nternational Interventions and the State of The Field鈥�, 密桃视频, November 2024, co-organised with Katie Unwin and Miriam Schwarz.
Seminar on: Politisch schreiben in der deutschsprachigen Gegenwartsliteratur: Methodische und theoretische Ann盲herungen, GSA, Atlanta, September 2024, co-convening with Jeannette Oholi and Laura Marie Sturtz.
Door Stories. An Attuned Vocabulary for Violence in Laura Leupi鈥檚 Das Alphabet der sexualisierten Gewalt (2024), AGS, Panel on: Representing, Responding, Resisting 鈥� Cultural Engagements with Violence in Post-1945 Germany, Leeds, September 2024.
She names it, she nails it. Echoes of Killjoy Activism in Antje R谩vik Strubel鈥檚 Blaue Frau, ACLA, Panel on: Activist Writing / Activist Reading, Montreal, March 2024.
When Legal Justice Fails: Fantasies of Equality and Antje R谩vik Strubel鈥榮 Blaue Frau, Literature and the Rule of Law / Literatur und Rechtsstaat: Aesthetic Negotiations, 密桃视频, January 2024.
Grimmelshausens Courasche intersektional. Neue Lekt眉ren (international workshop), University of Zurich, July 2023.
Biopolitical Realism, Thinking with Lauren Berlant - Graduate Student Virtual Seminar, online, May 2023.
Truly a 鈥楻eflection of Our Times鈥�? All Quiet on the Western Front and the War in Ukraine, Watching War: A Symposium on Edward Berger鈥檚 All Quiet on the Western Front, University of Warwick/UBC Vancouver, online, May 2023.
All about love. R盲ume des M枚glichen in Sharon Dodua Otoos Adas Raum, Kultur-Sprache-Raum. Internationales Online-Symposium f眉r Germanistik-Studierende am Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT), online, December 2022.
Disruption, Dissensus, Temporality. The Aesthetics of Radical Democracy, Workshop on Simultaneity. Aesthetics, Ethics, and Social Justice, 密桃视频 (Dr Stephanie Galasso), guest: Dr Jessica Ruffin, November 2022.
Radikaldemokratische M枚glichkeiten in Sharon Dodua Otoos Adas Raum, International Colloquium: The Literary and Essayistic Writing of Sharon Dodua Otoo, 密桃视频, with the author in attendance, March 2022.
Book review: In the Ruins of Neoliberalism (Wendy Brown, 2020), Colloquium Political Theory, History of Ideas, and Political Culture, University of Kiel, online, January 2022.
Disrupting Violent Distributions of the Sensible. Modes of Dissensus in Sharon Dodua Otoo鈥檚 Adas Raum, Sichtbarkeit:en conference, University of Oxford, online, July 2021.
For those who have been in crisis. Das Politische in der Literatur Sharon Dodua Otoos, Digitale INternationale Germanistische Studierendentagung (DINGS) 2021, online, with the author in attendance, April 2021.
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Publications
Killjoy Poetics in Antje R谩vik Strubel鈥檚 Blaue Frau, in: German Life and Letters (accepted).
Archiving the Self as Activism in Laura Leupi鈥檚 Das Alphabet der sexualisierten Gewalt (2024), in: Activist Writing / Activist Reading, edited by Marta Cenedese and Leila Essa, Bloomsbury, forthcoming 2025).
On Antje R谩vik Strubel鈥檚 Blaue Frau: (text portrait for the CAPONEU project).
Reorienting Knowledge of Structural Systems of Violence in Sharon Dodua Otoo鈥檚 Adas Raum and Antje R谩vik Strubel鈥檚 Blaue Frau, in: Rewriting Identities in Contemporary Germany. Radical Diversity and Literary Interventions, edited by Selma Rezgui, Laura Marie Sturtz, and Tara Talwar Windsor, Boydell & Brewer, 2024: 187-208.
Queerness, Affekte und Eigensinn in Grimmelshausens Courasche, in: The German Quarterly 97 (2) 2024: 130-149 ().
Von der 鈥楳acht, Welt zu machen鈥�: Radikale Demokratie in Sharon Dodua Otoos Adas Raum, in: German Life and Letters 77 (1), 2024: 125-145, Special Issue: Sharon Dodua Otoo 鈥� Literature, Politics, Possibility, edited by Sarah Colvin and Tara Talwar Windsor ().
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Other activities and roles
Moderation of readings, for example with Sharon Dodua Otoo and C茅cil Joyce R枚ski
Co-founder (together with Jeannette Oholi), Network and Colloquium for Critical German Studies in Germany
Co-editor, , UBC Vancouver
Co-organizer (together with Clara Busch) of the German Graduate Research Seminar
Co-organizer (together with Dr Melina Mandelbaum), Seminar Series on 鈥楥ultural Production and Social Justice鈥� : The aim of this series is to bring academics of different career levels together who all share an interest in the role of aesthetics and artistic creation in relation to emancipatory politics. Previous speakers included Prof Mark Devenney (Brighton), Dr Anna Richards (Birkbeck, London), Dr Kirstin Gwyer (Oxford), Shoshana Schwebel (UBC Vancouver) and postgraduate students from MMLL.
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