Lynn L. Wolff

Dr. Lynn L. Wolff

Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung

lynn.wolff@hu-berlin.de

Lynn L. Wolff is an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation research fellow, currently on leave from Michigan State University, where she is Associate Professor of German Studies in the Department of Linguistics, Languages, and Cultures and Affiliate Faculty in the Serling Institute for Jewish Studies and Modern Israel. As a Humboldt Fellow at the Institut für Kunst- und Bildgeschichte, she is conducting research on a new book project: The Legibility of Abstraction: Knowledge and Empathy in Graphic Narratives. This monograph aims to shed light on the visual dimension of Holocaust testimony through an investigation of works that exhibit complex text-image relationships. Broadly defined as “graphic narratives,” these works offer new ways to consider how memory and trauma – experiences that challenge discursive modes of representation – are captured in visual forms and made (il)legible. The project investigates further how experience is ‘translated’ into word and image, how subjectivity and narrative voice are visualized, and how such visual texts reach a wider readership.

After receiving her PhD from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 2011, she held a postdoctoral research fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (2011-2013) and taught courses in the Department of Modern German Literature at the Universität Stuttgart. In addition to funding from the Humboldt Foundation, her research has been supported by the Fulbright Foundation, the Deutsches Literaturarchiv in Marbach, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the College of Arts and Letters at Michigan State University.

Research interests: Modern German Literature and Culture, with a focus on the 20th and 21st centuries; Holocaust and Memory Studies; Literature and/as Historiography and Literary History; Translation Studies; Comics and Graphic Novels; Visuality and Intermediality


Book

W.G. Sebald’s Hybrid Poetics: Literature as Historiography. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2014; 2016 paperback. [Interdisciplinary German Cultural Studies 14]

Edited Volumes and Journal Issues

Narrating Reality in Comics / Wirklichkeit erzählen im Comic. Special Issue of Diegesis 8.1 (2019) Eds. Christian Klein, Matías Martínez, and Lynn L. Wolff.

A Modernist in Exile: The International Reception of H.G. Adler (1910–1988). Ed. Lynn L. Wolff. Oxford: Legenda, 2019; 2021 paperback. [Studies in Comparative Literature 42]

Witnessing, Memory, Poetics: H.G. Adler and W.G. Sebald. Eds. Helen Finch and Lynn L. Wolff. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2014. [Dialogue and Disjunction: Studies in Jewish German Literature, Culture, and Thought 1]

Aisthesis und Noesis. Zwei Erkenntnisformen vom 18. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart. Eds. Hans Adler and Lynn L. Wolff. München: Fink, 2013.

Articles and Book Chapters

“Framing H.G. Adler: A Survivor, Scholar, and Author in the Wake of the Shoah.” A Modernist in Exile: The International Reception of H.G. Adler (1910–1988). Ed. Lynn L. Wolff. Oxford: Legenda, 2019. 3-21.

“Literatur als Historiografie nach W.G. Sebald.” Romanhaftes Erzählen von Geschichte: Vergegenwärtigte Vergangenheiten im beginnenden 21. Jahrhundert. Eds. Elena Agazzi, Daniel Fulda, and Stephan Jaeger. Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter, 2019. 279-302. [Studien und Texte zur Sozialgeschichte der Literatur]

“Austerlitz.” W.G. Sebald Handbuch. Leben – Werk – Wirkung. Eds. Michael Niehaus and Claudia Öhlschläger. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2017. 48-58.

“Zur Sebald-Forschung.” W.G. Sebald-Handbuch. Leben – Werk – Wirkung. Eds. Michael Niehaus and Claudia Öhlschläger. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2017. 312-317.

“‘Die Grenzen des Sagbaren’: Towards a Political Philology in H.G. Adler’s Reflections on Language.” H.G. Adler: Life, Literature, Legacy. Eds. Julia Creet, Sara R. Horowitz, and Amira Bojadzija-Dan. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2016. 273-301.

Finch, Helen and Lynn L. Wolff. “Introduction: The Adler-Sebald Intertextual Relationship as Paradigm for Intergenerational Literary Testimony.” Witnessing, Memory, Poetics: H.G. Adler and W.G. Sebald. Eds. Helen Finch and Lynn L. Wolff. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2014. 1-21

“‘Der Autor zwischen Literatur und Politik’: H.G. Adler’s ‘Engagement’ and W.G. Sebald’s ‘Restitution.’” Witnessing, Memory, Poetics: H.G. Adler and W.G. Sebald. Eds. Helen Finch and Lynn L. Wolff. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2014. 137-156.

Adler, Hans and Lynn L. Wolff. “Einleitung. Literatur in der Aisthesis-Noesis-Konstellation.” Aisthesis und Noesis. Zwei Erkenntnisformen vom 18. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart. Eds. Hans Adler and Lynn L. Wolff. Munich: Fink, 2013. 13-23.

“Literary Knowledge of the Past: Seeing/Remembering/Imagining.” Aisthesis und Noesis. Zwei Erkenntnisformen vom 18. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart. Eds. Hans Adler and Lynn L. Wolff. Munich: Fink, 2013. 145-160.

“The ‘Solitary Mallard’: On Sebald and Translation.” Journal of European Studies, Special Issue: W.G. Sebald. Ed. Richard Sheppard. 41.3-4 (2011): 323-340.

Catling, Jo, Richard Hibbitt, and Lynn L. Wolff. “W.G. Sebald: Secondary Bibliography.” Saturn’s Moons: W.G. Sebald—A Handbook. Eds. Jo Catling and Richard Hibbitt. Oxford: Legenda, 2011. 495-543.

“H.G. Adler and W.G. Sebald: From History and Literature to Literary Historiography.” Monatshefte, Special Issue: H.G. Adler. Eds. Rüdiger Görner; Klaus L. Berghahn. 103.2 (2011): 257-275.

“W.G. Sebald: A ‘Grenzgänger’ of the 20th/21st Century.” Eurostudia – Revue Transatlantique de Recherche sur l’Europe 7.1-2 (2011): 191-198.

“Literary Historiography: W.G. Sebald’s Fiction.” W.G. Sebald: Schreiben ex patria / Expatriate Writing. Ed. Gerhard Fischer. Amsterdamer Beiträge zur neueren Germanistik. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2009. 317-330.

“‘Das metaphysische Unterfutter der Realität’: Recent Publications and Trends in W.G. Sebald Research.” Monatshefte 99.1 (2007): 78-101.

“‘The Mare of Majdanek’: Intersections of History and Fiction in Bernhard Schlink’s Der Vorleser.” Internationales Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der Literatur (IASL) 29.1 (2004): 84-117.

Reviews

Comics & Archive. Ed. Felix Giese and Anna Stemmann. Berlin: Christian A. Bachmann Verlag, 2021. Closure: Kieler e-Journal für Comicforschung 8 (2021) https://www.closure.uni-kiel.de/closure8/wolff

Gwyer, Kirstin. Encrypting the Past: The German-Jewish Holocaust Novel of the First Generation. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. Monatshefte 109.2 (2017): 326-329.

A Literature of Restitution: Critical Essays on W.G. Sebald. Ed. Jeannette Baxter, Valerie Henitiuk, and Ben Hutchinson. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013. Modern Language Review 111.2 (2016): 589-592.

Finch, Helen. Sebald’s Bachelors: Queer Resistance and the Unconforming Life. Oxford: Legenda, 2013. Modern Language Review 111.1 (2016): 292-294.

Osborne, Dora. Traces of Trauma in W.G. Sebald and Christoph Ransmayr. Oxford: Legenda, 2013. Modern Language Review 111.1 (2016): 294-296.

From Kafka to Sebald. Modernism and Narrative Form. Ed. Sabine Wilke. London: Continuum, 2012. Monatshefte 105.4 (2013): 730-732.

Emerging German-Language Novelists of the Twenty-First Century. Ed. Lyn Marven and Stuart Taberner. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2011. Gegenwartsliteratur 11 (2012): 372-374.

W.G. Sebald and the Writing of History. Ed. Anne Fuchs and J.J. Long. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2007. Monatshefte 100.3 (2008): 455-457.

W.G. Sebald. History—Memory—Trauma. Ed. Scott Denham and Marc McCulloh. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 2006. Monatshefte 100.2 (2008): 313-316.

Conference Papers and Sessions (selection)

10/2021 “Intersektionalität durch Intermedialität: Die Erforschung von Subjektivität in autobiographischen Graphic Novels,” Race, Class, Gender & Beyond: Intersektionale Ansätze der Comicforschung, AG Comicforschung, Schloss Herrenhausen, Hannover

10/2021 Co-convener of Seminar: “Comics – A Transgressive Art: Theoretical Foundations and Intersections”, German Studies Association, Indianapolis

11/2019 “Translation, Modification, Visualization: Comparative Aspects of Nora Krug’s Heimat,” Translation, Localisation, Imitation, and Adaptation: Comparative Aspects in Comics Studies, 14th Annual Conference of the Gesellschaft für Comicforschung (ComFor: Society for Comics Studies), Schwarzenbach an der Saale

10/2019 “Continuity in spite of the Catastrophe: H.G. Adler’s Relationship to and Reflections on the German Language,” Sprachhandeln – Jüdische Reflexionen über Sprache in der Kriegs- und Nachkriegszeit, Internationaler Workshop im Rahmen des DFG/ANR-Kooperations-Projekts “Frühe Schreibweisen der Shoah. Wissens- und Textpraktiken von jüdischen Überlebenden in Europa (1942–1965)”, Leibniz Institut für jüdische Geschichte und Kultur, Simon Dubnow Institute, Leipzig

10/2019 Discussant on DAAD Roundtable with Nora Krug, German Studies Association, Portland

11/2018 “Remembrance through Reduction: How Memory is Abstracted in German Graphic Novels,” Comic Art and/as Remembrance in German Culture, University of Illinois, Chicago

06/2018 “Die Darstellung des Holocaust in Comics und Graphic Novels,” Universität Wuppertal

12/2017 “H.G. Adler and Max Brod in Exile: Divergent Trajectories, Literary Intersections,” Flucht, Exil und Politische Kultur, Cambridge, UK

09/2014 “De la Polémique à la Poétique: L’Hybridité chez W.G. Sebald,” W.G. Sebald: littérature et éthique documentaire, Centre Culturel International de Cerisy-la-Salle

11/2013 “Kafka in Amerika (Kafka vermitteln, Kafka übersetzen),” Weltautor Kafka, Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach

01/2013 “Inhuman Bureaucracy and Inexplicable Guilt: Echoes of Kafka in H.G. Adler’s Literary and Scholarly Works,” The Kafka Factor in Post-Holocaust Film and Literature, Roundtable Session of the Kafka Society of America, Modern Language Association, Boston, January 3-6

06/2012 “‘Ich möchte nicht gerne misverstanden werden’: Vergleichende Anatomie der Aufklärung und ‘Rasse’ bei Samuel Thomas Soemmerring,” La refonte de l’homme. Découvertes médicales et philosophie de la nature humaine. Écriture en médecine: une question de méthode, Villa Vigoni

06/2010 “Historiography and Literary Discourse: The Diachronic Journey of a Co-Dependence,” Travelling Concepts, Metaphors, and Narratives: Literary and Cultural Studies in an Age of Interdisciplinary Research, Hermes Consortium for Literary & Cultural Studies, Rauischholzhausen Castle, Justus-Liebig-University, Giessen

6/2010  “Vom Dichterporträt zum Selbstporträt: W.G. Sebalds Erinnerungen an Robert Walser,” Autobiographie und Autofiktion, Vierte Sommerakademie Schweizer Literatur im Centre Dürrenmatt, Neuchâtel

07/2006 “Literary Historiography: W.G. Sebald’s ‘Fiction,’” W.G. Sebald and Expatriate Writing, The Sydney German Studies Symposium, Sydney, Australia

https://lilac.msu.edu/lynn-wolff/
http://lynnlwolff.com/