Academic & Teaching staff

Dr Helen Finch

Academic Fellow

Dr Helen Finch

0113 343 3510

Research interests

  • Literary representations of the Holocaust
  • W. G. Sebald
  • H. G. Adler
  • Günter Grass
  • Queer identities and poetics in German literature and film
  • Gender in contemporary German literature
  • Elfriede Jelinek
  • Antje Rávic Strubel
  • Hybrid Irish identities

Current research projects

Dr. Finch is completing a monograph on masculine identities in the works of W. G. Sebald.

She is embarking on a major research project, entitled 'Holocaust Literature in German: Canon, Witness, Remediation', starting from July 2012. This project is mentored by Professor Frank Finlay.

In connection with this project, she is organising a British academy-funded conference, in collaboration with Dr. Lynn Wolff of the University of Stuttgart, entitled 'H. G. Adler/W. G. Sebald: Witnessing, Memory, Poetics', to be held at the IGRS on 11 October 2012.

Potential areas of supervision

Dr. Finch would welcome approaches from students interested in researching the following areas:

  • The works of W. G. Sebald and H. G. Adler
  • Queer identities and poetics in German culture
  • Gender and politics in contemporary German literature
  • The representation of the Holocaust in literature

Biography

Helen Finch is a native of Dublin. She holds a B.A. in German and Russian from Trinity College, Dublin (1998), an M. Phil in Modern German Thought from the University of Glasgow (2001) and an IRCHSS-funded PhD from Trinity College, Dublin, comparing W. G. Sebald's novels with works by his contemporaries Botho Strauß and Peter Handke, (2007).

She has also worked in the dot.com industry in Dublin, San Francisco and Jena, taught as an assistant lecturer at the universities of Ulster and Liverpool, and rejoined the German Department at Leeds in 2009.

Teaching

In 2011-12, Dr. Finch teaches on the following modules:

MODL5124M: Specialised German-English Translation B

GERM 3090/1/2: Advanced Translation German-English

GERM 3100: W. G. Sebald and the Politics of Literature

GERM 3110: German Dissertation

GERM 2600/1: The Shock of the New: Culture and Power in Germany from the Second to the Third Reich

From August 2012-August 2013, Dr. Finch will be on research leave.

Publications

Books

In preparation: Das merckwürdige Faktum der Liebe': melancholy bachelors, queer desires and Oedipal formation in the works of W. G. Sebald (monograph)

Journal Articles

  • "'Everything Nowadays Has to be Queer and Gender': Gender, Identity, and Memory in the Novels of Antje Rávic Strubel', in Women in German Yearbook 28 (forthcoming 2012)

Chapters

  • '"Like refugees who have come through dreadful ordeals": The Theme of the Anglo-Irish in The Rings of Saturn', in W. G. Sebald: A Literature of Restitution, eds Ben Hutchinson, Valerie Henitiuk, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, forthcoming 2012)
  • 'Elfriede Jelinek, Gier', in The Novel in German since 1990, ed. Stuart Taberner, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 151-164
  • 'Recalling the goddess Pandora: From Utopia to Resignation, from Goethe to Peter Hacks in Irmtraud Morgner's Amanda', in Edinburgh German Yearbook vol. 3 (2009): Contested Legacies - Constructions of Cultural Heritage in the GDR, pp. 218-232
  • 'Günter Grass and Gender', in: The Cambridge Companion to Günter Grass, ed. Stuart Taberner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) pp. 81-95
  • 'Günter Grass's account of German Wartime Suffering in Beim Häuten der Zwiebel: Mind in Mourning or Boy Adventurer?', in: 'Germans as Victims' in The Literary Fiction of the Berlin Republic, eds Karina Berger, Stuart Taberner, (Rochester: Camden House, 2009) pp. 170-191
  • '"Die irdische Erfüllung": Peter Handke's Poetic Landscapes and W. G. Sebald's Metaphysics of History in W. G. Sebald's work', in: W. G. Sebald and the Writing of History, eds Anne Fuchs, Jonathan Long (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2007), pp. 179-197

Reviews

  • Review of John R.W. Speller, Bourdieu and Literature (OpenBook Publishers, 2012) Journal of European Studies (forthcoming)

  • Review of Gert Hofmann, Rachel MacShamhráin, Marko Pajevic & Michael Shields (eds), German and European Poetics after the Holocaust: Crisis and Creativity (Camden House, 2011), Forum for Modern Language Studies (forthcoming)
  • Review of Markus Zisselsberger (ed.) The Undiscover'd Country. W.G. Sebald and the Poetics of Travel (Camden House, 2010), Journal of European Studies (forthcoming)
  • Review of J. J. Long, W. G. Sebald: Image, Archive, Modernity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), Studies in Twentieth- and Twenty-First Century Literature
  • Review of Monika Shafi, ed., Approaches to Teaching Grass's The Tin Drum (New York: MLA, 2008), Journal of European Studies 2009 39: 256-258
  • Review of Günter Grass, Beim Häuten der Zwiebel, in Focus on German Literature 16
  • Review of Bruce Duncan, Goethe's Werther and the Critics (Camden House, 2005), in Goethe Yearbook 14, pp. 224-226
  • Review of Gisela Febel; Cerstin Bauer-Funke, eds. Menschen-Konstruktionen - Künstliche Menschen in Literatur, Film, Theater und Kunst des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2004), in: Focus on German Literature, Summer 2005, pp. 164-167

Conference Presentations

  • 11-12 November 2012: Invited Speaker: 'H. G. Adler: Life, Literature, Legacy', hosted by the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Center for Jewish Studies and the Department of English at York University in Toronto
  • 5 November 2011: 'Translating Trauma: the fiction of H. G. Adler', held at 11th Portsmouth Translation/British Comparative Literature Association conference
  • 9 April 2011: Invited speaker: 'Transnationalism, Memory and Virtual Spaces: Larissa Boehning and the Berlin Generation', held at Larissa Boehning and Contemporary Literature symposium, University of Liverpool
  • 24 February 2011: 'Authenticity, Translation and Modernism: H. G Adler's Eine Reise / The Journey as a Limit Case of Holocaust Translation' (co-presented with Professor Frank Finlay), held at Holocaust Writing and Translation conference, Institute of Romance and Germanic Studies London
  • 17 December 2010: Invited speaker: 'Some problems in translating Holocaust-specific vocabulary: Adler's Eine Reise', held at Holocaust Writing and Translation Workshop, University of East Anglia
  • 13 November 2010: 'Representations of genderqueer friendship in Antje Ravic Strubel's Fremd Gehen', held at Women in German Studies conference, Swansea
  • 9 July 2010: 'Daniel Kehlmann's Die Vermessung der Welt: Writing Enlightenment, Nation and Empire', held at Leeds-Swansea Symposium on Empire and the German-Speaking World
  • 26 March 2010: 'Queer Transnationalism in Recent German Literature and Culture', held at Representing and Experiencing Transnationalism: Germanic Languages and Cultures in Global Perspective International conference in co-operation with the Max Kade Institute University of Wisconsin-Madison
  • Autumn 2009: Invited participant in two workshops: The Novel in German since 1990 at Leeds, and Translating Gender at Nottingham
  • 8 April 2009: 'Hugo Hamilton's Disguise and W. G. Sebald's Austerlitz: constructed memories, imagined identities', held at AGS (CUTG) History and Remembrance Panel, University of Ulster
  • 7 July 2008: 'Over the , held at INTERSECTIONS: Feminist & Queer Geographies conference, University of Leeds
  • 22 June 2008: "'It seems to me sometimes that we never got used to being on this earth': W. G. Sebald and the Anglo-Irish diaspora". Held at the World Universities Network conference on Diaspora and Cosmopolitanism in Madison, Wisconsin
  • 26 March 2008: "'Die Vermessung der Weimarer Klassik': Daniel Kehlmann's Die Vermessung der Welt and the rehabilitation of Enlightement". Held at the Twentieth Century and Contemporary Studies Panel at the CUTG in Nottingham
  • 15 June 2007: "'Von der anderen Partei': Uncanny homosexuality and the crisis of the bourgeois self in Sebald's work".  Held at W. G. Sebald and the European Tradition symposium, at the University of East Anglia.
  • 27 March 2004: "Romantic Transformations of the Self: W. G. Sebald and the Network of Subjectivity". Held at Approaching W. G. Sebald conference, at Yale University.
  • 27 December 2003: "Parodies, pastiches or deconstructive plays? Botho Strauß' Der junge Mann and W. G. Sebald's Austerlitz as homages to Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre".  Held at the Modern Languages of North America Convention in San Diego, on panel Parody: Revisioning Goethe.
  • 26 November 2003: "The imperative to remember the unbearable: Sebald, Nietzsche and the re-discovery of the subject as the locus of morality".  Held at postgraduate symposium Memory, Memorials and Testimonies: Framing the Past, at Nottingham Trent University.

Impact, outreach and teaching enhancement activities

From September 2011, Dr. Finch is responsible for research-led teaching enhancements in the School of Modern Literatures and Cultures. Dr. Finch has a particular interest in teaching enhancement activities in the areas of translation and contemporary literature, and in promoting German literature to the Yorkshire community and beyond.

  • 21 September 2011 and 27 October 2010: Held talks on 'W. G. Sebald: Memory, History, Identity' at the York Anglo-German Society and at the Scarborough Anglo-German Society
  • 2 July 2011: Organised sandpit event on 'The Resurgence and Rediscovery of German Literature in Translation', exploring ways to link publishers, readers and teachers of German literature in translation locally around Leeds
  • 28 March 2011: Hosted visit of German writer Larissa Boehning to the University of Leeds, including a translation workshop with MAATS and undergraduate students and a reading from Boehning's work
  • 6 December 2010: Hosted 'Teaching Translation' workshop at the University of Leeds, together with colleagues from the Universities of Liverpool, Lancaster and Salford. Held talk on 'Teaching Translation and Employability'
  • February 2009: Held introductory talk to the film The Death Mills as part of the public screening series 'Injustice on Film' at the University of Liverpool
  • 2007-2008: Ran Dissertation e-Learning Project at the University of Leeds