Aleida Assmann Former Senior Fellow

Aleida Assmann
November 2013 - February 2014

Vita

Aleida Assmann, born 1947, is holding a chair of English Literature at the University of Konstanz. Having studied English Literature and Egyptology at the Universities of Heidelberg and Tübingen, she started to participate in archaeological excavations in 1968. Finishing her dissertation in English Literature and Egyptology in 1977, Aleida Assman had already taught at the English Department at the University of Heidelberg since 1973. Continuing her teach-ing profession in Mannheim, she wrote her habilitation in Heidelberg, which she completed in 1992. She holds her current position since 1993. Over the past decades, she has been a visiting professor at numerous universities (Chicago, Princeton, Vienna, Yale). Aleida Assman re-ceived numerous honours and awards (Max-Planck Research Award, Paul-Watzlawick Ring of Honour, etc.) and formed part of various advisory boards and juries of institutions such as the Senate Commission on Cultural Studies at the German Research Council (DFG), the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes or the Advisory Council for Education at the Ministry for Cultural Affairs, Youth and Sport in Baden-Wuerttemberg. She is currently a member of the Award Commission of the Goethe Institute,the Advisory Board of the Jahrbuch für Poli-tik und Geschichte (JPG), the DFG-Research Training Group “Schriftbildlichkeit” at FU Ber-lin, and of the international Advisory Board of the Research Project Time, Memory and Rep-resentation of Södertörn University in Huddinge, Sweden.

Dated from 2014

Fields of research

Theory of cultural memory; history and theory of generations in literature and society; German history of remembrance after World War 2nd; historical anthropology

Publications

Monographs

Geschichte im Gedächtnis. Von der individuellen Erfahrung zur öffentlichen Inszenie-rung. München: Beck 2007.
Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit. Erinnerungskultur und Geschichtspolitik. München: Beck 2006.
Erinnerungsräume. Formen und Wandlungen des kulturellen Gedächtnisses. München: Beck 1999.

Edited Books

mit Linda Short: Memory and Political Change. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2012.
mit Jan Assmann: Vollkommenheit. Archäologie der literarischen Kommunikation X. München: Wilhelm Fink 2010.
mit Sebastian Conrad: Memory in Global Age. Discourses, Practices and Trajectories, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2010.

Articles

Impact and resonance – towards a theory of emotions in cultural memory. Plenary lecture at Södertörn University 2011.
From Collective Violence to a Common Future: Four Models for Dealing with a Traumatic Past. In: Helena Gonçalves da Silva: Conflict, memory transfers and the reshaping of Europe. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars 2010, pp. 8-23.
Transformations between History and Memory. In: Social Research, Vol. 75, No. 1: Collective Memory and Collective Identity. New York: New School 2008, pp. 49-72.
Two Forms of Resentment: Jean Améry, Martin Walser and German Memorial Culture. In: New German Critique, No. 90: Taboo, Trauma, Holocaust. Durham: Duke University Press 2003, pp. 123-133.
Text, Traces, Trash: The Changing Media of Cultural Memory. In: Representations, No. 56, Special Issue: The New Erudition. Ewing: University of California Press 1996, pp. 123-134.