Staff in the Department of German
Professor Jonathan Long, BA Oxon, MA, PhD Nottingham
Contact Professor Jonathan Long (email at j.j.long@durham.ac.uk)
Biography
Since being appointed to Durham in 1997, I have worked extensively on twentieth-century German and Austrian literature, publishing on Thomas Bernhard, Wolfgang Hildesheimer, Monika Maron, Gerhard Fritsch, Hans Lebert, Dieter Kühn, and others. Latterly, I have also worked extensively on photography and visual culture.
In 2005 I was awarded a £50,000 Philip Leverhulme Prize in recognition of international research achievement and the Max Kade Prize for Best Article in Modern Austrian Literature. I am currently a member of the editorial board of Modern Austrian Literature, and a founder member of the Durham Centre for Advanced Photography Studies. I am external examiner for undergraduate programmes in German at University College London. In October 2010, I took over the role of Deputy Head of Faculty (postgraduate) in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities.
My current research focuses on three main areas.
The first is the photographic book in the Weimar Republic. The profound social and political upheavals of Weimar are well-documented, as is the response to these upheavals in the cultural sphere. The photographic book, made possible in part by technical improvements in printing and image reproduction, was a significant cultural form by means of which Weimar photographers, artists, writers, and editors sought to address the problems facing Weimar society. While many producers of photographic books are canonical figures in Weimar cultural history (Moholy-Nagy, Kurt Tucholksy, Ernst Jünger, Albert Renger-Patzsch, Erich Mendelssohn, and August Sander, to name just a few), the genre has itself received little scholarly attention, but provides uniquely illuminating insights into the culture and politics of inter-war Germany.
The second is German literature and photography from Peter Altenberg to the present. Looking at writers who have not merely thematised photography but have incorporated it physically into their work, the project seeks to read a series of works by writers such as Tucholsky, Jünger, Brecht, Kluge, and Maron as responses to the changing social function of photography over the course of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
The third is an ongoing engagement with W. G. Sebald and questions of modernity and photography in his work.
Conferences Organised
September 2009: Humanising Photography (with Andrea Nobel and Edward Welch). International Conference at Durham University.
June 2007: Locating Photography: Between the Regional, the National, and the Global (with Andrea Noble and Edward Welch). International Conference at Durham University.
July 2005: Thinking Photography - Again (with Andrea Noble and Edward Welch). International Conference at University of Durham.
March 2004: Photography and Conflict (with Andrea Noble and Edward Welch). Workshop at the University of Durham.
July 2002: Fakes and Forgeries, Conmen and Counterfeits (with Peter Knight, University of Manchester). Interdisciplinary conference at Durham Castle
Research Groups
- Culture and Difference
- Literature/History/Theory
- Visual and Performance
Research Interests
- Literary theory
- Theory of photography and visual culture
- Twentieth-century German literature
- Writers and photography
Selected Publications
Books: authored
- 2007 W. G. Sebald: Image, Archive, Modernity, Edinburgh University Press, 210 pp.
- 2001 The Novels of Thomas Bernhard: Form and its Function, Camden House, 232 pp.
Books: edited
- 2009 (co-edited with Noble, Andrea & Welch, Edward) Photography: Theoretical Snapshots, Routledge.
- 2005 (co-edited with Knight, Peter) Fakes and Forgeries, Conmen and Counterfeits, Cambridge Scholars Press, 233 pp.
- 2004 (co-edited with Whitehead, Anne) W. G. Sebald: A Critical Companion, Edinburgh University Press, 256 pp.
Books: sections
- 2006 'Disziplin und Geständnis: Ansätze zu einer Foucaultschen Sebald-Lektüre', in Öhlschläger, Claudia & Niehaus, Michael (eds.), W.G. Sebald. Politische Archäologie und melancholische Bastelei, Erich Schmidt, pp. 217-237
- 2006 'The Austrian Novel since 1945', in Kohl, Katrin & Robertson, Ritchie (eds.), A History of Austrian Literature, Camden House, pp. 223-245
- 2006 'Thomas Bernhard's Die Macht der Gewohnheit', in Hutchinson, Peter (ed.), Landmarks in German Comedy, Lang, pp. 211-226
- 2005 'Von Gesellschaftskritik zur Darstellungskritik: Frauengestalten in den biografischen Texten Dieter Kühns', in von Zimmermann, Christian & von Zimmermann, Nina (eds.), Frauenbiographik: Lebensbeschreibungen und Porträts, G. Narr, pp. 323-335
- 2003 'Narration and Repetition in the Late Novels of Thomas Bernhard', in Fetz, Gerald (ed.), Thomas Bernhard: Retrospective Essays, Ariadne Press.
- 2002 'The Lost Gender Politics of Katharina Blum; or, Wie Gewalt entstehen und wie sie verführen kann', in Schwartz, Agatha & de Diego, Fernando (eds.), Rethinking Violence and Patriarchy for the New Millennium, University of Ottawa Press, pp. 45-61
- 2002 'Ungleichzeitigkeiten: Class Relationships in Thomas Bernhard's Fiction', in Konzett, Matthias (ed.), Companion to Thomas Bernhard, Camden House, pp. 187-208
- 2000 'Bernhard Schlink's Der Vorleser and Binjamin Wilkomirski's Bruchstücke: Two Best-Selling Responses to the Holocaust', in Parkes, Stuart, Preece, Julian & Williams, Arthur (eds.), German Language Literature Today: International and Popular?, Peter Lang, pp. 49-66
- 1999 'Dieter Kühn and the Speculative Biography: N, Die Präsidentin, Josephine', in Thomas, Neil E. (ed.), German at the Millennium, Durham Modern Languages Series, pp. 243-269
- 1998 'History as Biography as Fiction: Wolfgang Hildesheimer's Marbot: Eine Biographie', in Parkes, Stuart,, Preece, Julian & Williams, Arthur (eds.), Whose Story? Continuities in Contemporary German-language Literature, Peter Lang, pp. 31-50
Edited works: contributions
- 1999 'Jean Améry; Dieter Hildebrandt; Wolfgang Hildesheimer and Dieter Kühn', in Sandford, John (ed.), Encyclopedia of Contemporary German Culture, Routledge.
Essays in edited volumes
- 2010 'Bernhard, Frost', in Hutchinson, Peter & Minden, Michael (eds.), Landmarks in the German Novel (2), Peter Lang, pp. 7-24
- 2010 'W. G. Sebald: The Anti-Tourist', in Zisselsberger, Markus (ed.), The Undiscover'd Country: W. G. Sebald and the Poetics of Travel, Camden House, pp. 63-91
- 2009 'W. G. Sebald: The Ambulatory Narrative and the Poetics of Digression', in Fischer, Gerhard (ed.), W. G. Sebald: Schreiben ex patria/ Expatriate Writing, Rodopi, pp. 61-71
- 2006 'Monika Maron's Pawels Briefe: Photography, Narrative, and the Claims of Postmemory', in Fuchs, Anne., Cosgrove, Mary. & Grote, Georg. (eds.), German Memory Contests: The Quest for Identity in Literature, Film and Discourse since 1990, Camden House, pp. 147-165
- 2004 (co-authored with Musolff, Andreas, Manz, Stefan & Saric, Liljiana) 'Discourses of Identity in Britain, Germany and Eastern Europe', in (ed.), Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, Multilingual Matters, pp. 361-368
Journal papers: academic
- 2012 'Photography/Topography: Viewing Berlin, 1880/2000', New German Critique 39, pp. 25-45
- 2011 'In the Contact Zone: W.G. Sebald and the Ethnographic Imagination', Journal of European Studies 41, pp. 413-430
- 2008 'Paratextual Profusion: Photography and Text in Bertolt Brecht's War Primer', Poetics Today 29, pp. 197-224
- 2004 'Intercultural Identities in Norbert Gstrein's Die englischen Jahre and W. G. Sebald's Die Ausgewanderten', Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 25, pp. 512-528
- 2003 'Casual Brutalities: Hans Lebert's Die Wolfshaut, Gerhard Fritsch's Fasching, and Austrian Collective Memory', Austrian Studies 11, pp. 85-101
- 2003 'History, Narrative, and Photography in W. G. Sebald's Die Ausgewanderten', Modern language review 98, pp. 117-137
- 2002 ''Die Teufelskunst unserer Zeit?' Photographic Negotiations in Thomas Bernhard's Ausloschung', Modern Austrian Literature 35, pp. 1-17
- 2001 'Compensation for History? Dieter Kühn's Beethoven und der schwarze Geiger', Amsterdamer Beiträge zur neueren Germanistik 54, pp. 111-127
- 2001 'Power, Desire, Performance: Narrative Exchanges in Wolfgang Hildesheimer's Masante', Neophilologus 85, pp. 601-619
- 2001 'Resisting Bernhard: Women and Violence in Das Kalkwerk, Ja and Auslöschung', Seminar 37, pp. 33-52
- 1999 'Time and Narrative: Wolfgang Hildesheimer's Tynset and Masante', German Life and Letters 52, pp. 457-474
- 1997 'Einsamer alter Vulkan: Versuch über Wyndham Lewis und Die Rache für Liebe', Sprache im technischen Zeitalter 35, pp. 382-392
- 1996 'Veracity, Mendacity, Absurdity: Form and its Function in Thomas Bernhard's Der Stimmenimitator', Forum for Modern Language Studies 32, pp. 343-353
Translated: Chapter in Edited Book
- 1998 (trans.). Ujma, Christina, 'Der Stille und der schwärmende Ton: Notes on Block and Brecht in the Twenties and Thirties (Der Stille und der schwärmende Ton.)'. In Bertold Brecht Centenary Essays. Giles, Steve & Livingstone, Rodney (ed.). Amsterdam: Rodopi. pp.
Grants Awarded
- 2006: AHRC Research Leave Award
- 2006: British Academy Overseas Conference Grant
- 2005: British Academy Conference Grant
- 2005: Max Kade Prize for best article in Modern Austrian Studies
- 2005: Philip Leverhulme Prize
- 2000: British Academy Small Research Grant
- 2000: ERASMUS Award for Guest Lectureship at University of Heidelberg
- 2000: University of Durham Early Career Award
- 1996: British Academy Award
- 1996: DAAD 'Forschungskurzstipendium' for archival research at the Akademie der Künste, Berlin