Angela Caren Borchert
(Undergraduate Chair)
Modern Languages and Literatures
Assistant Professor of German and Comparative Literature
(BA Queen’s University, MA Princeton University, PhD Princeton University)
Room: UC 161
Phone: (519)661-2111 ext. 82210
E-Mail: borchert@uwo.ca
Areas of Interest
- German Literature 1700 to 1900
- Comparative Literature 1650 to 1900
- 18th and early 19th Century cultural studies, art history and cultural history
- Gender studies, literary, narrative and genre theory
- German language
Research
Current Book Project
“Reflecting changing conceptions of culture around 1800: the Journal des Luxus und der Moden, the Cabinet des Modes and the Journal des Dames et des Modes.”
- SSHRC Standard Research Grant (2004)
- project development financed by AHSS - International Grant, UWO (2003)
Publications
Books
Gelegenheitsdichtung und Geselligkeitsdichtung an Herzogin Anna Amalias Hof in Weimar und in Tiefurt (1754-1807) (Re-framing Literature at the Weimar Court: Duchess Anna Amalia and Literature in the Landscape Garden.) Rote Reihe der Stiftung für Romantikforschung. Würzburg, Königshausen und Neumann: expected 2008.
“Das Journal des Luxus und der Moden”: Kultur um 1800. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Carl Winter, 2004. Ed.with Ralf Dressel.
Articles
“Ein Seismograph des Zeitgeistes: Kulturgeschichte im Journal des Luxus und der Moden,” in Das Journal des Luxus und der Moden”: Kultur um 1800. Ed. Angela Borchert with Ralf Dressel. (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Carl Winter, 2004) 73-104.
“Introduction,” in Das Journal des Luxus und der Moden”: Kultur um 1800. Ed. Angela Borchert with Ralf Dressel. (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Carl Winter, 2004) 11-20.
“Goethe’s Eulogy for Duchess Anna Amalia: re-membering classicism,” in Remembering Goethe: Essays for the 250th Anniversary, ed. Clark Muenzer, Modern Language Studies 31.1 Spring 2001: 59-77.
“Mode und Groteske: Die “Tirella” eines Frauenporträts,” in Kleinodien für Günter Oesterle, ed. Almuth Hammer, Christiane Holm, Guy Simonow, Harald Tausch. (Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2001) n. pag. 2 pages.
“Auswahlbibliographie zur Geschichte der deutschen Lyrik,” in Geschichte der deutschen Lyrik vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Walter Hinderer (Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2001) 621-81.
“Die Entstehung der Musenhofvorstellung aus den Angedenken an Anna Amalia von Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach,” in Der Musenhof Anna Amalias. Geselligkeit, Kunstliebhaberei und Mäzenatentum im klassischen Weimar, ed. Joachim Berger. (Weimar: Böhlau, 2001) 165-187.
“Übersetzung und Umschrift: Kulturtransformation am Beispiel von Bertuchs Blauer Bibliothek,” in Friedrich Justin Bertuch (1747-1822) - Verleger, Schriftsteller und Unternehmer im klassischen Weimar, eds. Gerhard R. Kaiser, Siegfried Seifert (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2000), 169-194.
Articles on “Grotesque,” “Naive,” “Narration” in Feminist Encyclopedia of German Literature, eds. Friederike Eigler and Susanne Kord (Westport, CT; London: Greenwood Press, 1997), 221-223, 346-348, 349-350.
“‘Oh was ich ein Kind bin!’: Two Perceptions of Childhood in Goethe’s Die Leiden des jungen Werther.” Lumen X11 (1993), 113-121.
Translations
“Discrizione di Tiffort, Villa di S.A.S. Anna Amalia Duchessa Vedova di Sassonia Weimar ed Eisenach ec. Nata Principessa di Braunschweig,” by Christian Joseph Jagemann in Animo italo-tedesco. Studien zu den Italien-Beziehungen in der Kulturgeschichte Thüringens 3 (2000), 17-28.
“An Analytical Bibliography of the German Reports from and about Paris (1789-1933),” by Christoph Grubitz, Gerhard R. Kaiser in Forschungsmagazin der Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena 7.1 (1998), 47.
“Speech of the Minister-President of the State of Thüringen,” by Bernhard Vogel and “No idyll in a park. From Hudson River to the Saaletal,” by Lothar Späth in Frank Stella in Jena, ed. Klaus Manger, Jenaer Universitätsreden 3 (1997), 25-28, 38-43.
“Introduction: Youth a Romantic Concept?” by Günter Oesterle in Jugend. Ein romantisches Konzept, ed. Günter Oesterle, (Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 1997), 31-43.
Research Groups
To visit th Romanticism at Western Research Group click on:
http://publish.uwo.ca/%7Enassr/romanticism.html
To visit the Fashion Research Group click on:
http://publish.uwo.ca/%7Ekolson2/FashionGroup.html
Recent and Current Courses taught at UWO
Graduate Courses (Comparative Literature)
CL 688A Space of Aesthetics: 18th-Century Paradigms
CL 687A Perception: Eye, Ear and Hand around 1800
Undergraduate Courses (Comparative Literature and Culture)
CLC 293G Fashion, Fiction and Fantasy
CLC 270G The Romantic Period
CLC 260G The Culture of the Enlightenment
CLC 204F/ GER 204F/ SPA 204F Research Methods: Reading and Writing
Undergraduate Courses (German Language and Literature)
GER 311F German Classicism and Romanticism
GER 250E Introduction to German Literature
GER 020 Intensive Intermediate German
GER 100F Introduction to German Studies
Selected Course Descriptions
CL 688a - Spaces of Aesthetics: 18th Century Paradigms.
Theodor Adorno and Immanuel Kant agree: artistic beauty and everyday life need to be separated. Both the concepts of the modern avant-garde and of the autonomous artwork find the aesthetic to be bound to art and excluded from the land of the everyday. To counteract such considerations, we will focus our exploration of the aesthetic not on a territory, but as a phenomenon of the boundary, of perception of all kind, sensual and spiritual, everyday and sublime, worldly and artistic. As style becomes lifestyle, the everyday is “the place” of a number of aesthetic phenomena and practices found in design, architecture, fashion.
Our focus will be on the question: how do conceptions of space inform the aesthetics of the everyday in the 18th Century? While for example new and extraordinary pleasures for the senses were sought in the landscape garden as a form of “heterotopia” (Michel Foucault) at home, travelling or participating in a carnival seemed to present a type of “extraterritorial” aesthetic space based on limited time (Michael Bakhtin). This course will go on location to London, Paris, Berlin, Weimar and Rome with authors like Alexander Pope, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Louis Sebastian Mercier in order to investigate aesthetic paradigms formed around the changing boundaries of gender and genre during the 18th Century.
CLC 260G - Culture of the Enlightenment
The 18th Century called itself the “Age of Enlightenment.” And it immediately debated what the term might refer to. This fundamentally critical attitude is characteristic of Enlightenment thought and culture in philosophy, art, literature, and music. The objects of criticism ranged from institutions such as the church and marriage to visions of the future. While France was the focal point of the comprehensive movement of reform, this course deals with classic French, English and German works by Voltaire, Rousseau, Fragonard, Locke, Pope, Hogarth, Mozart, Kant and Goethe. We will consider the following questions: Was the Enlightenment a unified body of thought generated by such an established canon of thinkers? Or were there many areas of contradiction and divergence? Did it mean the same for men and for women, for rich and for poor, or for the European and non-European? Certain is that the Enlightenment formulated a series of problems and ideals that still inform Western society today. By the end of the course you will be able to discuss different concepts that are key to the Enlightenment for example happiness, wit, nature and love, genres like the novel, satire, opera and landscape painting and major developments such as rococo, neoclassicism, empiricism and sentimentalism.
German 311F - The Culture of German Classicism and Romanticism
Usually considered to be opposing ideas, Classicism and Romanticism are in fact intimately interwoven. They are competing and complementary aesthetic models that function as answers to the crisis of modernization. Classicists and Romantics both create innovative artistic visions to make sense of rapid changes in society between 1750 and 1830.
We will examine the mentality and everyday culture around 1800, consider conceptions of subjectivity and aesthetic ideals, discuss concepts of genre and reflect on the movements' affinities to different media like sculpture and music. We will study the use of various cultural models from the past and the integration of foreign cultures into Classicism and Romanticism.
The material of this course about German 18th and early 19th Century literature and culture should function as a platform for you to enhance your ability in a wide variety of skills: reading comprehension, oral comprehension, oral expression, written expression, critical thinking, literary analysis, cultural competence, research skills, abstract thinking. These skills are transferable to a variety of fields.
