Susanne Zepp | Universität Duisburg-Essen (original) (raw)
Books by Susanne Zepp
Introduction This volume is dedicated to the rich multilingualism and polyphonyo fJ ewish literar... more Introduction This volume is dedicated to the rich multilingualism and polyphonyo fJ ewish literarywriting.Itoffers an interdisciplinary array of suggestions on issues of research and teachingr elated to further promotingthe integration of modern Jew-ish literary studies into the different philological disciplines. It collects the proceedings of the Gentner Symposium fundedb yt he Minerva Foundation, which was held at the Freie Universität Berlin from June 27 to 29,2 018. During this three-days ymposium at the Max Planck Society'sH arnack House, more than fifty scholars from aw ide rangeo fd isciplines in modern philologyd iscussed the integration of Jewish literature into research and teaching. Among the participants weres pecialists in American, Arabic, German, Hebrew,H ungarian, Romance and LatinA merican,S lavic, Turkish, and Yiddish literature as well as comparative literature. The symposium was conceiveda nd carried out in cooperation between the Freie Universität Berlin,the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, TelA vivUniversity,the University of Haifa, and the University of Duisburg-Essen. One point of departure for the joint initiative resulting in the publication of this volume was ac onversation about the fact that there is no permanent chair for Hebrew literature in Germany. While Hebrew literature is asubjectatuniver-sities worldwide, it surprisingly seems to be somewhat neglected in Germany. When we conducted as ample examination of the course catalogues from the last ten semesters at the fifteen largest German universities in German,S lavic, American, Romance, and comparative literarystudies, we discovered thatJewish literatures weren ot adequatelyr epresented in academict eaching. As ar esult, studentsa re neither givent he chance to study key texts of world literature nor the literary works in which manyo ft he challenges of our present moment are negotiated. Further discussion with European colleagues made it evident that this is not aphenomenonrestricted to Germany:major modern Jewishtexts written in Arabic, French, German, Hungarian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, and Yiddish do not form an integralp art of their respective national philologies in Germany, Europe, Israel, Latin America,o rt he United States.A third issue under discussion was the state of diasporic literatures in courses on Hebrew literature in Israel. More generally, we observed that in our current BA and MA courses,the focus on teachingthe basic gist of relevant understudied texts leavesv ery little room to introduce our studentst oafuller rangeo fw orld literature. Similarly, our day-today teachingr outine sometimes neglects more profound methodological reflections. Thus, the editors of this volume have joined forces with scholars from different philological disciplines drawing on different historical focuses and methodological approachesinorder to develop con-OpenAccess. ©2 020, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative CommonsA ttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110619003-001 cretep roposals on how to address this lacuna, basedo nc ase studies from various languagec ultures. Despite its inherent transnationality,m uch of the researchi nto Jewish liter-atures continues to unfold within an ational framework-an approach thati s also traceable in hyphenated terms such as "Jewish-American" or "German-Jew-ish".I na ddition, the significance of analyzinga nd comparingw hat constitutes "Jewishness" in aGerman or Turkish, Christian or Muslim, literarycontext must be taken into account.The fact thatI slam has now become the second largest religious community in Europe shifts the discourse on Jewishl iteratures in unprecedented ways.Wem ust react to this.The process of modernization that Ju-daism has undergone, and which can be traced in its literaryh istory,o ffers ample opportunityt oc onnect with the challenges that Muslim cultures are facing .P reciselyb ecause our studentsh aved iverse backgrounds,wen eed to emphasize the numerous connections in ah istoricizing perspective rather thane s-sentializingc ulturald ifferences. Seeking to redefine and explore the sociological and culturalc onditions of different migrant experiences, diasporas tudies has unfolded new perspectives across disciplines in recent decades,a nd yet, as ystematic inclusion into the respective philological disciplines in Germany and Israel remains a desideratum. The volume at hand aims to develop ideas and concepts for bringing together different epistemological and textual approaches into the curricula and research programs of the corresponding departments of literary studies in Europe, Israel, and the States.J ewishl iteraturesf rom their ancient traditions to modernity-from the Bible, Mishna and Talmud, Kabbalah and Hasidism and beyond-chal-lengeour very notion of literature. Even works by authorsofJewish belongingin modernism alone-from Marcel Proust to Osip Mandelstam, from Bruno Schulz to Bernardo Kucinski, from Natalia Ginzburgt oH élène Cixous, from Paul Celan to Dan Pagis-not to mention contemporaryH ebrew,R ussian, and Pales-tinian writing in Israel, challengescholars to transcend the strict confines of national philologies and theirr espective disciplines. In his book From Continuity to Contiguity,D an Miron acknowledgest he fact that most authorsi nt he history of Jewish literary thinking came from multilingual environments and were deeplyi mmersed in the respective lingua franca in the literatures and cultures of their time.Such an observation is not without significance .M iron suggests the mappingo fa" modernJ ewish literaryc omplex" which is "vast,d isorderly,a nd somewhat diffuse",a nd which is "characterized by dualities,p arallelisms, occasional intersections, marginal overlapping, hybrids , similarities within dissimilarities, mobility, changeability" and more. While we share Miron'sp oly-perspectival conception of Jewish literatures, which challenges amonolithic, national understanding of what Jewish literature VI
Disseminating Jewish Literatures, 2020
The multilingualism and polyphony of Jewish literary writing across the globe demands a collabora... more The multilingualism and polyphony of Jewish literary writing across the globe demands a collaborative, comparative, and interdisciplinary investigation into questions regarding methods of researching and teaching literatures. Disseminating Jewish Literatures compiles case studies that represent a broad range of epistemological and textual approaches to the curricula and research programs of literature departments in Europe, Israel, and the United States. In doing so, it promotes the integration of Jewish literatures into national philologies and the implementation of comparative, transnational approaches to the reading, teaching, and researching of literatures. Instead of a dichotomizing approach, Disseminating Jewish Literatures endorses an exhaustive, comprehensive conceptualization of the Jewish literary corpus across languages. Included in this volume are essays on literatures in Arabic, English, French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Turkish, as well as essays reflecting the fields of Yiddish philology and Latin American studies. The volume is based on the papers presented at the Gentner Symposium funded by the Minerva Foundation, held at the Freie Universität Berlin in June 2018.
An Early Self. Jewish Belonging in Romance Literature, 1499-1627, 2014
What role has Jewish intellectual culture played in the development of modern Romance literature?... more What role has Jewish intellectual culture played in the development of modern Romance literature? Susanne Zepp seeks to answer this question through an examination of five influential early modern texts written between 1499 and 1627: Fernando de Rojas's La Celestina, Leone Ebreo's Dialoghi d'amore, the anonymous tale Lazarillo de Tormes (the first picaresque novel), Montaigne's Essais, and the poetical renditions of the Bible by João Pinto Delgado. Forced to straddle two cultures and religions, these Iberian conversos (Jews who converted to Catholicism) prefigured the subjectivity which would come to characterize modernity.
Papers by Susanne Zepp
Geschichtsoptimismus und Katastrophenbewusstsein: Europa nach dem Holocaust, 2022
Literaturkritik.de, 2024
This paper examines the writings of Peter Rosenthal, focusing on his reflections of historical ex... more This paper examines the writings of Peter Rosenthal, focusing on his reflections of historical experience and their implications for understanding the multicultural reality of Cologne. Rosenthal's work offers insights into the challenges and resilience of Jewish communities in Romania throughout history, highlighting their cultural dynamics. By drawing parallels between the Jewish Romanian experience and the multiculturalism of Cologne, Rosenthal historicizes the city's diverse social fabric, emphasizing the interconnectedness of cultures and the importance of acknowledging historical legacies in shaping contemporary discourse on belonging. Through a critical analysis of Rosenthal's writings, this short essay explores the intersection of history, culture, and multiculturalism, shedding light on the complexities of societal diversity and the significance of historical perspective in understanding modern urban landscapes.
ubnow Institute Yearbook XVIII , 2022
The essay explores the unique manner in which Clarice Lispector inscribed her various historical ... more The essay explores the unique manner in which Clarice Lispector inscribed her various historical experiences of Jewishness and Brazilianness into her literary works. The essay reveals that Lispector was always opposed to essential¬ist understandings of belonging. Instead, she created a literary language that aimed to demonstrate the inapplicability of static concepts of identity on the basis of historical experience.
Gegen / Gewalt / Schreiben, 2020
Stanford University Press, Jul 20, 2020
Disseminating Jewish Literatures, 2020
Le Regard du Siècle, 2017
Romanistisches Jahrbuch, 2011
The essay investigates a striking, but not yet explored phenomenon in the poems of the Spanish No... more The essay investigates a striking, but not yet explored phenomenon in the poems of the Spanish Nobel laureate Vicente Aleixandre (1898–1984) and the Portuguese poet Eugénio de Andrade (1923–2005): At the end of the 1940s and especially in the 1950s, both poets turned to the genre of elegy as a primary mode of their poetic expression. The re-appropriation of the elegiac form in the writing of Eugénio de Andrade and Vicente Aleixandre is understood as closely linked to their respective experience of history, although the references to empirical reality in their poems are multilayered, at times also covert or encoded. Both writers turned in the leaden silence of the 1950s toward lyrical remembrance. Despite all differences, the conception of a new strong state unified the authoritarian structures in Spain and Portugal, which put forward a vision of progress against a past marked by political chaos. Both Franco and Salazar conceived themselves as the defenders of an emphatically Christi...
Romanistisches Jahrbuch, 2006
This book chapter draws on the 1935 Paris Writers’ International Congress for the defense of cult... more This book chapter draws on the 1935 Paris Writers’ International Congress for the defense of culture as a historical legacy, which documents how European intellectuals in the mid-1930s deliberated on the nature of Europe as a cultural entity and as an historical region. The congress is presented as an important chapter in transnational intellectual and literary history, and a European historical case in developing awareness to the importance of agency beyond the confines of the nation state. Exploring the different epistemological perspectives located in the writers’ congress as a central documentation of the history of the idea of Europe as a cultural region is interpreted as in important impulse to reflect on the historicity of a conception of Europe, not as an association of nationalities but rather as a community of different regions with manifold cultural traditions. The congress is presented as a critical juncture for understanding Europe as a trans-regional cultural constellation, both at the reflective and empirical levels, as its participants engaged with key questions related to dynamics of regions. The 1935 Congress in Paris is, at the same time, an important historical source and a lieu de mémoire for the development of an open concept of regions that understands cultural regions as spaces for transformation and innovation.
Theater as Metaphor, 2019
Introduction This volume is dedicated to the rich multilingualism and polyphonyo fJ ewish literar... more Introduction This volume is dedicated to the rich multilingualism and polyphonyo fJ ewish literarywriting.Itoffers an interdisciplinary array of suggestions on issues of research and teachingr elated to further promotingthe integration of modern Jew-ish literary studies into the different philological disciplines. It collects the proceedings of the Gentner Symposium fundedb yt he Minerva Foundation, which was held at the Freie Universität Berlin from June 27 to 29,2 018. During this three-days ymposium at the Max Planck Society'sH arnack House, more than fifty scholars from aw ide rangeo fd isciplines in modern philologyd iscussed the integration of Jewish literature into research and teaching. Among the participants weres pecialists in American, Arabic, German, Hebrew,H ungarian, Romance and LatinA merican,S lavic, Turkish, and Yiddish literature as well as comparative literature. The symposium was conceiveda nd carried out in cooperation between the Freie Universität Berlin,the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, TelA vivUniversity,the University of Haifa, and the University of Duisburg-Essen. One point of departure for the joint initiative resulting in the publication of this volume was ac onversation about the fact that there is no permanent chair for Hebrew literature in Germany. While Hebrew literature is asubjectatuniver-sities worldwide, it surprisingly seems to be somewhat neglected in Germany. When we conducted as ample examination of the course catalogues from the last ten semesters at the fifteen largest German universities in German,S lavic, American, Romance, and comparative literarystudies, we discovered thatJewish literatures weren ot adequatelyr epresented in academict eaching. As ar esult, studentsa re neither givent he chance to study key texts of world literature nor the literary works in which manyo ft he challenges of our present moment are negotiated. Further discussion with European colleagues made it evident that this is not aphenomenonrestricted to Germany:major modern Jewishtexts written in Arabic, French, German, Hungarian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, and Yiddish do not form an integralp art of their respective national philologies in Germany, Europe, Israel, Latin America,o rt he United States.A third issue under discussion was the state of diasporic literatures in courses on Hebrew literature in Israel. More generally, we observed that in our current BA and MA courses,the focus on teachingthe basic gist of relevant understudied texts leavesv ery little room to introduce our studentst oafuller rangeo fw orld literature. Similarly, our day-today teachingr outine sometimes neglects more profound methodological reflections. Thus, the editors of this volume have joined forces with scholars from different philological disciplines drawing on different historical focuses and methodological approachesinorder to develop con-OpenAccess. ©2 020, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative CommonsA ttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110619003-001 cretep roposals on how to address this lacuna, basedo nc ase studies from various languagec ultures. Despite its inherent transnationality,m uch of the researchi nto Jewish liter-atures continues to unfold within an ational framework-an approach thati s also traceable in hyphenated terms such as "Jewish-American" or "German-Jew-ish".I na ddition, the significance of analyzinga nd comparingw hat constitutes "Jewishness" in aGerman or Turkish, Christian or Muslim, literarycontext must be taken into account.The fact thatI slam has now become the second largest religious community in Europe shifts the discourse on Jewishl iteratures in unprecedented ways.Wem ust react to this.The process of modernization that Ju-daism has undergone, and which can be traced in its literaryh istory,o ffers ample opportunityt oc onnect with the challenges that Muslim cultures are facing .P reciselyb ecause our studentsh aved iverse backgrounds,wen eed to emphasize the numerous connections in ah istoricizing perspective rather thane s-sentializingc ulturald ifferences. Seeking to redefine and explore the sociological and culturalc onditions of different migrant experiences, diasporas tudies has unfolded new perspectives across disciplines in recent decades,a nd yet, as ystematic inclusion into the respective philological disciplines in Germany and Israel remains a desideratum. The volume at hand aims to develop ideas and concepts for bringing together different epistemological and textual approaches into the curricula and research programs of the corresponding departments of literary studies in Europe, Israel, and the States.J ewishl iteraturesf rom their ancient traditions to modernity-from the Bible, Mishna and Talmud, Kabbalah and Hasidism and beyond-chal-lengeour very notion of literature. Even works by authorsofJewish belongingin modernism alone-from Marcel Proust to Osip Mandelstam, from Bruno Schulz to Bernardo Kucinski, from Natalia Ginzburgt oH élène Cixous, from Paul Celan to Dan Pagis-not to mention contemporaryH ebrew,R ussian, and Pales-tinian writing in Israel, challengescholars to transcend the strict confines of national philologies and theirr espective disciplines. In his book From Continuity to Contiguity,D an Miron acknowledgest he fact that most authorsi nt he history of Jewish literary thinking came from multilingual environments and were deeplyi mmersed in the respective lingua franca in the literatures and cultures of their time.Such an observation is not without significance .M iron suggests the mappingo fa" modernJ ewish literaryc omplex" which is "vast,d isorderly,a nd somewhat diffuse",a nd which is "characterized by dualities,p arallelisms, occasional intersections, marginal overlapping, hybrids , similarities within dissimilarities, mobility, changeability" and more. While we share Miron'sp oly-perspectival conception of Jewish literatures, which challenges amonolithic, national understanding of what Jewish literature VI
Disseminating Jewish Literatures, 2020
The multilingualism and polyphony of Jewish literary writing across the globe demands a collabora... more The multilingualism and polyphony of Jewish literary writing across the globe demands a collaborative, comparative, and interdisciplinary investigation into questions regarding methods of researching and teaching literatures. Disseminating Jewish Literatures compiles case studies that represent a broad range of epistemological and textual approaches to the curricula and research programs of literature departments in Europe, Israel, and the United States. In doing so, it promotes the integration of Jewish literatures into national philologies and the implementation of comparative, transnational approaches to the reading, teaching, and researching of literatures. Instead of a dichotomizing approach, Disseminating Jewish Literatures endorses an exhaustive, comprehensive conceptualization of the Jewish literary corpus across languages. Included in this volume are essays on literatures in Arabic, English, French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Turkish, as well as essays reflecting the fields of Yiddish philology and Latin American studies. The volume is based on the papers presented at the Gentner Symposium funded by the Minerva Foundation, held at the Freie Universität Berlin in June 2018.
An Early Self. Jewish Belonging in Romance Literature, 1499-1627, 2014
What role has Jewish intellectual culture played in the development of modern Romance literature?... more What role has Jewish intellectual culture played in the development of modern Romance literature? Susanne Zepp seeks to answer this question through an examination of five influential early modern texts written between 1499 and 1627: Fernando de Rojas's La Celestina, Leone Ebreo's Dialoghi d'amore, the anonymous tale Lazarillo de Tormes (the first picaresque novel), Montaigne's Essais, and the poetical renditions of the Bible by João Pinto Delgado. Forced to straddle two cultures and religions, these Iberian conversos (Jews who converted to Catholicism) prefigured the subjectivity which would come to characterize modernity.
Geschichtsoptimismus und Katastrophenbewusstsein: Europa nach dem Holocaust, 2022
Literaturkritik.de, 2024
This paper examines the writings of Peter Rosenthal, focusing on his reflections of historical ex... more This paper examines the writings of Peter Rosenthal, focusing on his reflections of historical experience and their implications for understanding the multicultural reality of Cologne. Rosenthal's work offers insights into the challenges and resilience of Jewish communities in Romania throughout history, highlighting their cultural dynamics. By drawing parallels between the Jewish Romanian experience and the multiculturalism of Cologne, Rosenthal historicizes the city's diverse social fabric, emphasizing the interconnectedness of cultures and the importance of acknowledging historical legacies in shaping contemporary discourse on belonging. Through a critical analysis of Rosenthal's writings, this short essay explores the intersection of history, culture, and multiculturalism, shedding light on the complexities of societal diversity and the significance of historical perspective in understanding modern urban landscapes.
ubnow Institute Yearbook XVIII , 2022
The essay explores the unique manner in which Clarice Lispector inscribed her various historical ... more The essay explores the unique manner in which Clarice Lispector inscribed her various historical experiences of Jewishness and Brazilianness into her literary works. The essay reveals that Lispector was always opposed to essential¬ist understandings of belonging. Instead, she created a literary language that aimed to demonstrate the inapplicability of static concepts of identity on the basis of historical experience.
Gegen / Gewalt / Schreiben, 2020
Stanford University Press, Jul 20, 2020
Disseminating Jewish Literatures, 2020
Le Regard du Siècle, 2017
Romanistisches Jahrbuch, 2011
The essay investigates a striking, but not yet explored phenomenon in the poems of the Spanish No... more The essay investigates a striking, but not yet explored phenomenon in the poems of the Spanish Nobel laureate Vicente Aleixandre (1898–1984) and the Portuguese poet Eugénio de Andrade (1923–2005): At the end of the 1940s and especially in the 1950s, both poets turned to the genre of elegy as a primary mode of their poetic expression. The re-appropriation of the elegiac form in the writing of Eugénio de Andrade and Vicente Aleixandre is understood as closely linked to their respective experience of history, although the references to empirical reality in their poems are multilayered, at times also covert or encoded. Both writers turned in the leaden silence of the 1950s toward lyrical remembrance. Despite all differences, the conception of a new strong state unified the authoritarian structures in Spain and Portugal, which put forward a vision of progress against a past marked by political chaos. Both Franco and Salazar conceived themselves as the defenders of an emphatically Christi...
Romanistisches Jahrbuch, 2006
This book chapter draws on the 1935 Paris Writers’ International Congress for the defense of cult... more This book chapter draws on the 1935 Paris Writers’ International Congress for the defense of culture as a historical legacy, which documents how European intellectuals in the mid-1930s deliberated on the nature of Europe as a cultural entity and as an historical region. The congress is presented as an important chapter in transnational intellectual and literary history, and a European historical case in developing awareness to the importance of agency beyond the confines of the nation state. Exploring the different epistemological perspectives located in the writers’ congress as a central documentation of the history of the idea of Europe as a cultural region is interpreted as in important impulse to reflect on the historicity of a conception of Europe, not as an association of nationalities but rather as a community of different regions with manifold cultural traditions. The congress is presented as a critical juncture for understanding Europe as a trans-regional cultural constellation, both at the reflective and empirical levels, as its participants engaged with key questions related to dynamics of regions. The 1935 Congress in Paris is, at the same time, an important historical source and a lieu de mémoire for the development of an open concept of regions that understands cultural regions as spaces for transformation and innovation.
Theater as Metaphor, 2019
Múltiples identidades, Dec 31, 2012
This paper examines the challenges of teaching Medieval convivencia from two different perspectiv... more This paper examines the challenges of teaching Medieval convivencia from two different perspectives: in the first part, Susanne Zepp introduces the complexities of Medieval and Early Modern Jewish history on the Iberian Peninsula and suggests the use of literary representations in class as a means for building critical historical understanding. In the second part, Daniela Caspari discusses this subject in the light of the controversy between content- and competence-oriented foreign language teaching and elaborates on its contribution to higher education (Bildung).
Erfahrung und Referenz, 2016
... 14 l. Der Skeptizismus in der philosophischen Tradition Benannt ist die pyrrhonische Skepsis ... more ... 14 l. Der Skeptizismus in der philosophischen Tradition Benannt ist die pyrrhonische Skepsis nach Pyrrho, der um 365 v. Chr. ... Genauso stellt sich die pyrrho-nische Skepsis gegen den Epikureismus, der Lust als jederzeit verfügbar und Un-lust als jederzeit vermeidbar erachtet. ...
... historisches Umfeld (1.11. Jh.), Frankfurt a. M./Wien 41999. Page 17. 16 Einleitung Nach der... more ... historisches Umfeld (1.11. Jh.), Frankfurt a. M./Wien 41999. Page 17. 16 Einleitung Nach der Niederlage von Roderich 711 gegen Tariq Ibn Ziyad begann die Zeit von Al-Andalus. Das Nebeneinander von Juden, Muslimen ...