PhD-Project: Gesine Wegner, M.A.

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Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin

Name

Gesine Wegner, M.A.

Research and Teaching

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Contact Information

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Visitor Address:

Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Room 3.22 Wiener Straße 48

01219 Dresden

work Tel.

+49 351 463-34918

fax Fax

+49 351 463-37733

gesine.wegner@​tu-dresden.de

Office Hours:

by appointment

Weitere Informationen zur Person

Becoming Disabled: Multi-Modal Mediations of Disability and Trauma in 21st Century American Literature

Over the past decade the graphic novel has become the fastest-growing of all publishing categories, challenging more traditional perceptions of what a literary text is – and is not. Focusing more broadly on texts that can be joined under the umbrella term "multi-modal narratives", my dissertational project aims to examine the interrelatedness between these so called "innovative" forms of storytelling and the content of trauma and disability they often negotiate. In light of the new academic enthusiasm for different image-text forms, multi-modal narratives are often said to have succeeded in reshaping trauma narratives in so far unimaginable ways. Indeed, multi-modal narratives seem to be most frequently acknowledged for their experimental mode, making as Edward Brunner argues, "the unseen and unspoken visible and audible" to the reader. As a critical contribution to this argument, this project intends to question whether such a reshaping of narratives can be traced and described in more detail. Through examining the "new" narrative possibilities which multi-modal narratives appear to offer to their readers, I further aim to discuss their effects on contemporary narratives of trauma and disability. In doing so, this project intends to close a gap within the field of literary disability studies. Despite the fact that, etymologically, the word "trauma" directly refers to the wounded body, trauma theory seems to have received only little attention within disability studies. While disability studies scholars have rightfully put great emphasis on the premise that everyone can and eventually will become disabled if they just live long enough, the (potentially) traumatic experience of becoming disabled and its literary negotiation has yet to be analyzed much closer. Engaging with textual-visual negotiations of disability and trauma in contemporary American literature, this project is designed to shed light on the close entanglement of both of these human experiences. 

Research Visits linked to this Project

Presentations/Papers linked to this Project
 

• "'Before I Got My Leg...' The Fragmented Female Body in Chris Ware‘s Building Stories." American Studies Colloquium TU Dresden. Dresden, January 8, 2018.
• "Affective/Effective Images? The Aesthetics of Representing Disability Experiences in Comics."Seminar Series "Disability and the Emotions", Centre for Culture and Disability Studies, Liverpool Hope University, UK, March 7, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvUwXs4Kw6U
• "Bridging the Divide: Deafness and the Role of Community in Brian Selznick's Wonderstruck." American Studies Colloquium TU Dresden. Dresden, August 8, 2018.
• "'Surely this is not me!’ - Recapturing the Tragic Model of Disability through the Lens of Trauma Theory." International Conference "Disability and Disciplines: The International Conference on Educational, Cultural, and Disability Studies", Liverpool Hope University, July 6, 2017. 
• "Becoming Disabled, Becoming the "Other": Tragedy and Trauma in Transitional Disability Narratives." American Studies Colloquium TU Dresden. Dresden, May 8, 2017.
• "Between Challenging and Reinforcing the Stare: Trauma and Disability in David's Small's Stitches." American Studies Colloquium TU Dresden. Dresden, May 23, 2016.
• "Visualizing the Failed Body: Physical Disability and Trauma in American Multi-Modal Narratives." Post-Graduate Workshop with Rosemarie Garland-Thomson at the international conference "The Failed Individual", University Mannheim, November 12, 2015.
• "Making the Unspeakable Seen? Disability and Trauma in David Small’s Stitches and Brian Selznick’s Wonderstruck." Post-Graduate Forum GAAS, University Bamberg, November 8, 2015.
• "Enabling the Traumatized Body- Contemporary Depictions of Psychological Trauma and Physical Disability in American Multi-Modal Narratives." Regional Colloquium for North American Studies (Erfurt, Leipzig, Halle, Chemnitz, Dresden). University Erfurt, January 30, 2015. 
• "Contemporary Negotiations of Psychological Trauma and Physical Disability in American Visual Narratives." American Studies Colloquium TU Dresden. Dresden, December 8, 2014.

Publications linked to this Project

Wegner, Gesine. "Making the Unspeakable Seen?" COPAS—Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies 17.1 (2016). URL >http://copas.uni-regensburg.de/article/view/260/342<. May 2016.