Univ.-Prof. Dr. Stephan Karschay
Stephan Peter Karschay, University Professor Dr
- Phone
- +49 3641 9-44511
- Link to download vCard
- vCard
About
I am Full Professor and Chair of English Literature and Cultural Studies at the Department of English and American Studies at FSU Jena. Before coming to Jena, I taught at the University of Passau, the University of Hamburg, and at Freie Universität Berlin.
My research areas are the relationship between literature, media and other fields of knowledge in the nineteenth century, the history of literary scandal and censorship since the eighteenth century, and the Gothic from its inception to the present. A developing research interest of mine is the relationship between ecocritical modes of reading and the affordances of literary forms. I’m working on a monograph provisionally entitled “Scandal, Censorship and the Visual Imagination, 1740-1960” and, together with Gero Guttzeit, I will edit the Handbook of Gothic Literature for de Gruyter.
I am the author of Degeneration, Normativity and the Gothic at the Fin de Siècle (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). Together with Katharina Boehm, I have edited a special issue of the Journal for the Study of British Cultures on Gothic Ecologies from the Eighteenth Century to the Present (2020). With Franziska Quabeck, I am editing a special issue for Humanities on Scandal and Censorship. I have published articles and book chapters on works by Arthur Conan Doyle, Oscar Wilde, George Moore, D. H. Lawrence, Radcliffe Hall and, most recently, Samuel Richardson.
Research
Current Projects
Monograph: “Scandal, Censorship and the Visual Imagination, 1740-1960”
Editorship: “Handbook of Gothic Literature” (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2028) [mit Gero Guttzeit]
Research Areas
- Scandal and censorship
- Visual culture
- Ecocriticism: literature and ecology
- Nineteenth-century literature and science
- Literature and culture of the Victorian fin de siècle
- Gothic literature, culture and media
- Crime and detection in literature and film/TV
- History of the English novel
Employment
- since 2025: Full Professor and Chair of English Literature and Cultural Studies, Department of English and American Studies, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena
- 2023–2025: Guest Professor of English Literature, Institute for English Language and Literature, Freie Universität Berlin
- 2022–2023: Guest Professor of Comparative and Anglophone Literature, Peter-Szondi-Institute, Freie Universität Berlin
- 2015–2023: Associate Professor (Juniorprofessor) of British Literature and Cultural Studies, Institute of English and American Studies, University of Hamburg (2022–2023: on leave)
- 2008–2015: Lecturer / Assistant Professor, Chair of English Literature and Culture (Prof. Dr. Jürgen Kamm), Universität Passau
Education
- 2008–2013: PhD in English Literature and Cultural Studies (supervisor: Prof. Dr. Bernd Lenz), University of Passau
- 2011: Teaching certificate for higher education “ProfiLehre”, University of Passau
- 2004–2005: International studies funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), King’s College London, UK
- 2001–2008: MA programme in British Cultural Studies, English Literature and Modern German Literature and teacher training programme in English and German, University of Passau
Awards
- 2014: Presidential Memorial Prize of the University of Passau for Deviant Subjects: Degeneration, Normativity and the Gothic at the Fin de Siècle
- 2013: BritCult-Award of the German Association for the Study of British Cultures for Deviant Subjects: Degeneration, Normativity and the Gothic at the Fin de Siècle
- 2004–2008: Scholarship of the German Academic Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes)
- 2004–2005: European Excellence Scholarship of the German Academic Exchange Service (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, DAAD)
Selected Publications
Monograph
Degeneration, Normativity and the Gothic at the Fin de Siècle (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) [Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture].
Editorships
Scandal and Censorship. Special issue of Humanities 14/15 (2025/2026) [with Franziska Quabeck]. https://www.mdpi.com/journal/humanities/special_issues/6BI8272Y34External link.
Gothic Ecologies from the Eighteenth Century to the Present. Journal for the Study of British Cultures 27/2 (2020) [with Katharina Boehm].
Articles and Book Chapters
“Writing to the Moment / Moments of Reading: Pamela, the Epistolary Complex and Eighteenth-Century Reading Practices”. Social Reading. Ed. Dorothee Birke & Helga Schwalm. AAA: Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik 50.1 (2025): 19-34.
“Decadent Echoes, the Language of Censorship and Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness”. Symbolism 21 (2021): 55-75.
“A Novel of Sex and War: The Scandal of D. H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow”. Mentalities and Materialities: Essays in Honour of Jürgen Kamm. Ed. Philip Jacobi & Anette Pankratz (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2021), 165-180.
“Scandals in British Culture.” How to Do Cultural Studies: Ideas, Approaches, Scenarios. Ed. Jürgen Kramer & Bernd Lenz (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2020), 191-220.
“George Moore, Esther Waters”. Handbook of the English Novel, 1830-1900. Ed. Martin Middeke & Monika Pietrzak-Franger (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2020), 482-497.
“Great Britain or Little England? Brexit and the London Olympics Opening Ceremony”. Brexit and the Divided United Kingdom. Ed. Joanna Rostek & Anne-Julia Zwierlein. Journal for the Study of British Cultures 26/1 (2019): 59-72.
“Doyle and the Criminal Body”. The Cambridge Companion to Sherlock Holmes. Ed. Janice Allan & Christopher Pittard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019): 96-110.
“Jack Is Back: Murder, Detection and Victorian Attitudes to Class in Contemporary British Crime TV”. Victorian Ideologies in Contemporary British Cultures. Ed. Christina Flotmann-Scholz & Anna Lienen (Heidelberg: Winter, 2019), 47-70 [with Philip Jacobi].
“Man haf fe do wha man haf fe do: Humour and Identity (Re)Formation in Bernardine Evaristo’s Mr Loverman”. Anglistik: International Journal of English Studies 27/1 (2016): 125-136 [with Joanna Rostek].
“Laughing in Horror: Hybrid Genre and the Grotesque Body in Psychoville”. British TV Comedy: Cultural Concepts, Contexts and Controversies. Ed. Jürgen Kamm & Birgit Neumann (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 341-358.