Zoom lecture: Maryann Piel (Ph.D. UIC, 2023) on Literary Celebrity
February 1, 2024
4:30 PM - 5:30 PM
Location
Zoom
Zoom Link for Piel Lecture
https://uic.zoom.us/j/86123354924?pwd=RGdDOGl3V201dVc1Y2trWlVBa1VuQT09
Calendar
Download iCal FileMaryan Piel, Ph.D.
"Exile, Eminence, and Celebrity Authorship: Irmgard Keun’s Kind aller Länder and Thomas Mann’s Lotte in Weimar"
This talk explores representations of literary celebrity in Irmgard Keun’s Child of all Nations (Kind aller Länder) (1938) and Thomas Mann’s The Beloved Returns (Lotte in Weimar) (1939). Both novels were written during the authors’ exiles and critically reflect on literary celebrity, particularly in the context of Hitler's rise, highlighting the intersections of celebrity, gender, and class. Through the comparison of their novels the democratizing, yet potentially corrupted nature of modern (literary) celebrity is highlighted. A close reading of the novels in combination with a thorough engagement with the author’s self-fashioning choices, media representations, and biographical literature shed light on the divergent, and arguably gendered, trajectories of each author’s rise to literary celebrity and their ability (or inability) to maintain this elite status.
Bio:
Maryann Piel currently holds the Juliana Thompson Endowed Visiting Assistant Professorship in the Department of German and Russian at the College of Wooster. She earned her Ph.D. in Germanic Studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago in August 2023. Her dissertation, titled "Self-made Royalty: Celebrity in German Literature," explores the development of German literature in the Goethezeit, the early 20th century and the contemporary era through the lens of celebrity studies, focusing on the intersection of gender and authorship in relation to literary market conditions and the development of the German literary canon. Her research engages a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including celebrity studies, gender studies, media studies, and theories of the novel. Her work has been featured in the Goethe Yearbook (2023) and literatur für leser*innen (2023). Her current research projects explore the intersection of gender and Jewish identity in the early 19th century German literary and the role of the literary prize in authors’ ability (or inability) to achieve and maintain literary celebrity.
Date posted
Jan 29, 2024
Date updated
Jan 29, 2024