Maxim Braun

Research Associate in the Junior Research Group „Kulturtechnik Imagination“

Maxim Braun

Professorship of Cultural History
Portrait Maxim Braun
Image: Maxim Braun
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About

  • PhD Project
    Ludwig Richter, Woodcut (Detail)

    Ludwig Richter, Woodcut (Detail)

    Image: Gesammeltes. 15 Bilder für's Haus, 1869, MDZ

    Media and Material Practices of Social Imagining in the 19th Century. A Study of „Hänsel und Gretel“ and „Rotkäppchen“

    What counts as a "Märchen" or fairy tale today rests on a repertoire of images, figures, and narrative patterns that does not simply follow from the long tradition in which these stories were transmitted. Rather, it took shape from the nineteenth century onward, as a hetegrogeneous body of stories was consolidated into the stock of images and expectations that we recognize today. My project asks how social imagining works in the media and material practices that produced and circulated these tales. Processes such as editing, rewriting, illustrating, printing, and staging determine what the stories look like, or ought to look like. The same decisions made in these practices also fix how, for example, childhood, gender relations, domestic order, or class ar socially imagined.

    Subproject of the Junior Research Group „Kulturtechnik Imagination“ de (part of the Cluster of Excellence "Imaginamics. Practices and Dynamics of Social Imagining" de)

  • Vita

    Since 2024
    Research Associate in the Junior Research Group „Kulturtechnik Imagination“ de of Dr. Adriana Markantonatos at the Institute of Arts and Cultural Sciences of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (part of the Cluster of Excellence "Imaginamics. Practices and Dynamics of Social Imagining" de)

    2023–2024
    Research Assistant at the Klassik Stiftung Weimar (Project Goethe Live 3D / Cross-sectional Directorate for Digital Transformation and Innovation Management)

    2023
    Teaching Assistant (Tutor) at the Faculty of Philosophy, Friedrich Schiller University Jena

    2022–2023
    Teaching Assistant at the Institute of German Literary Studies, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, under Prof. Dr. Nina Birkner

    2016–2024
    Studies in German Studies, Philosophy, and General and Comparative Literary, Art, and Cultural Studies at the Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg, the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, and Friedrich Schiller University Jena

  • Research Interests
    • European fairy tale collections of the 18th and 19th centuries
    • Enchanted imagination in the interplay and tension between image and text
    • Literary configurations of space and liminality
    • Otherness and alienation as literary motifs
    • Repressed female literary history
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Publications and Lectures

  • Publications

    Das Hexenhaus als visuelle Chiffre: "Vom Brothäuslein" zum Pfefferkuchenhaus. In: Volume based on the Workshop "Visuelle Chiffren in Bildender Kunst, Literatur, Film und anderen Medien", Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing (open-access-series of CRC 1671 "Home(s)"). [forthcoming]

    Alternative Realities in Enlightenment Fairy Tales: Wieland and Naubert’s Literary Experiments. In: Alma Mater - Journal of Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies, 2:3 (2025), 37-50. https://doi.org/10.29329/almamater.2025.1360.4External link

  • Lectures

    Der gezähmte Zauberwald. Die visuelle Aushandlung von Wildnis und Kulturraum in illustrierten Fassungen von "Rotkäppchen" und "Hänsel und Gretel", as part of: Der Wald als Lebens- und Naturraum, international conference, Literary Archive Saar-Lor-Lux-Elsass of the Saarland University, 17-18 February 2027

    The Poetics of Concealment in Algernon Blackwood's "The Willows", as part of: Hiddentity. Concealment and Invisibility. Interdisciplinary Investigations Into the Hidden, international graduate conference, University of Naples "L'Orientale", 12-13 November 2026

    Erinnerung als Verfahren der Fantasie - Erinnerungspoetik in E.T.A. Hoffmanns Fantasiestücken, as part of: E.T.A. Hoffmanns Fantasie- und Nachtstücke. Genre und Gestaltung, workshop, University of Cologne, 9-10 October 2026

    The Manufacturing of the 'Bad Mother' - Editorial Revision and the Problem of Illustrating "Hansel and Gretel", as part of: Bad Mothers? (Re)Writing Motherhood, workshop, University of Augsburg, 17-18 September 2026

    Learning to Read Images: How Fairy Tale Publications Shaped Literary Practices in 19th-Century Europe, as part of: Made in Class. Literary Education in Nineteenth- and Twentieth- Century Europe, conference organized by the research program Learning Modern Literature: Literary Education in Western Europe (1880-1940), KU Leuven, 3-5 December 2025

    The Fairy-Tale in the European Visual Imaginary: Examining Lilian Lancaster's Figurative Cartography, as part of: Europe through the Arts. Entangled histories of culture and identity(ies) - XVI Annual conference of the Research Network on the History of Idea of Europe, University of A Coruña, 17-18 Juli 2025

  • Workshops

    Changing Stories of Change: Storytelling und soziales Imaginieren in Transformationsprozessen, Workshop at University of Jena, 22-23 October 2026 (Co-Organisation)

    Figures, Types, and Images of the Social in the 19th and 20th Century: Practices of Social Imagining in the History of Knowledge and the Sciences, Workshop at University of Erfurt, 20–21 November 2025 (Co-Organisation) (Programpdf, 486 kb · de)

  • Exhibitions

    Ins Bild gesetzt. Soziales Imaginieren (in) der Großstadt. Illustrierte Journale. Paris, London & Wien. 1830-1860. Exhibition from 13.4.-11.6.2026 in the Thuringian University and State Library in Jena (ThULB) (Co-Organisation) (Link de)

  • Student Dissertations
    • 2024. Master dissertation at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena: „Wahrheiten, die sich nicht gerne ohne Schleier zeigen“ – Integration von Wunderbarem und Wirklichkeit in deutschsprachigen Märchensammlungen des 18. Jahrhunderts. (Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Stefan Matuschek)
    • 2021. Bachelor dissertation at the Julius Maximilians University Würzburg: Die ambivalenten Funktionen von Grenzen und deren Beitrag zu Entfremdungsprozessen im Werk von Marlen Haushofer. (Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Julian Schröter)
      The work was made available on marlenhaushofer.chExternal link and can be read online: ...External link