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School of Modern Languages

Dr Anna Saunders

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Name:

Anna Saunders

Position:

Head of School / Senior Lecturer in German

Email:

Location:

Room 342, New Arts Building

Phone:

01248 382135 (2135 internal)

After graduating with a BA in French and German at the University of Bristol in 1999, I stayed on in Bristol to work on my PhD, which examined the concept of patriotism amongst young people in Eastern Germany between 1979 and 2002. During this time I also taught a number of modern German history and language units at the university, as well as working for a national charity. After completing my PhD, I worked at Bristol as a temporary lecturer, before taking up my current post as Lecturer in German in January 2005. I enjoy spending my spare time either making music (singing or playing the violin in chamber groups), or in the outdoors, walking and cycling.

Teaching

  • German language
  • The German Film
  • Divided Germany
  • The Struggle for Identity: Modern German Fiction since Bismarck
  • East Germany and its Legacy
  • Heimat: What is Germany?
  • Words and Music (in conjunction with Schools of Music and English)
  • MA in European Studies (Research Methods; European Novel; Sites of Memory)

Postgraduate Supervision

  • Dilek Batmaz, 'The Breaching of Taboos in the Novels of German Post-War Female Authors'.
  • Sadiqa Riazat, 'Memory and Anniversary Commemorations of the GDR'.
  • Stephanie Bostock, 'Exhibiting the Everyday: The Musealisation of Material Culture in France and Germany'

School Responsibilities

  • Head of School
  • Head of German
  • Blackboard/Web Officer
  • Research Forum

University Responsibilities

  • Senate Regulations and Special Cases Committee

Research Grants

  • 2007: British Academy Small Research Grant
  • 2009-2010: AHRC Network Grant (Principal Investigator)
    ‘After the Wall: Reconstructing and Representing the GDR’, in collaboration with Dr Debbie Pinfold, University of Bristol.
    Further details at: http://afterthewall.bangor.ac.uk
  • Jan-Sept 2011: AHRC Early Career Fellowship, to complete a monograph on memorialising the GDR.

Research Interests

  • Social and political history of the GDR, with particular emphasis on youth culture, education and the employment of quasi-religious propaganda.
  • East Germany and its transformation since unification; development of East German identities; Ostalgie; memory of the GDR.
  • Monuments and memorials in post-Wende Berlin, in particular: Hans Haake’s Rosa Luxemburg monument (2006); Wolfgang Rüppel’s 17 June 1953 monument (2000); Übergänge installations (various artists, designed 1996); Lew Kerbel’s Ernst Thälmann monument (1986); Berlin's proposed Freiheits- und Einheitsdenkmal.
  • National identity and historical consciousness in twentieth-century Germany

Main publications

Book

Edited Volume

  • ed. with Laura Rorato, The Essence and the Margin: National Identities and Collective Memories in Contemporary European Culture, 'Studia Imagologica' series vol. 15, (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009) (link)

Articles and Chapters

  • 'Thomas Brussig's Heroes Like Us’, in The German-Lanugage Novel since 1990, ed. Stuart Taberner (CUP, 2011), 50-63 (link)
  • ‘The Luxemburg Legacy: Concretising the Remembrance of a Controversial Heroine?’, German History, 29 (2011) 1, 36-56 (link)
  • ‘The Ghosts of Lenin, Thälmann and Marx in the Post-Socialist Cityscape’, German Life and Letters, 63 (2010) 4, 441-457 (link)
  • ‘Challenging or Concretising Cold War Narratives? Berlin’s Memorial to the Victims of 17 June 1953’, in Memorialization in Germany since 1945, ed. by Bill Niven and Chloe Paver (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 298-307 (link)
  • Remembering Cold War Division: Wall Remnants and Border Monuments in Berlin’, Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 17 (2009) 1, 9-19 (link)
  • ‘Junge Identitäten und die Wende’, in Views from Abroad: Die DDR aus britischer Perspektive, ed. Peter Barker, Marc-Dietrich Ohse and Dennis Tate (Bertelsmann, July 2007), pp. 137-147 (link)
  • ‘Normalising the Past: East German Culture and Ostalgie’, in German Culture, Politics and Literature into the Twenty-First Century: Beyond Normalization, ed. by Paul Cooke and Stuart Taberner (Rochester: Camden House, 2006), 89-103 (link)
  • ‘Growing up on the Front Line: Young East Germans and the Effects of Militarism during the 1980s’, Debatte, 13 (2005) 3, 283-97 (link)
  • 'Wenn es so wäre wie im Geschichtsbuch': The Historical Consciousness of East Germany's Youth before and after Unification', Field Studies: German Language, Media and Culture. CUTG Proceedings, vol 5, ed. Carol Fehringer and Holger Briel (Bern: Peter Lang, 2005), 177-95
  • '"Schrecklich leere Gemüseläden", "nicht wirklich Sozialismus" and "Gemeinschaftsgefühl": Young East Germans' Perceptions of the GDR', German as a Foreign Language, (2004) 3, 25-42 (link)
  • 'Ostdeutschland: Heimat einer xenophoben Tradition?', Berliner Debatte INITIAL, 14 (2003) 2, 50-59 (link)
  • 'The Socialist and Post-socialist Jugendweihe: Symbol of an Evolving East(ern) German Identity', Focus on German Studies, 9 (2002), 43-60

Reviews

  • Reviewing activity for: German History, European History Quarterly, Journal of Contemporary History, Slavonic and East European Review, Modern Language Review, Journal of Contemporary European Studies, H-Net, The Historian.
  • Review Article: ‘Constructing and Maintaining Socialism in the German Democratic Republic’, European History Quarterly, 39 (2009) 4, 653-661
  • Review Article: ‘“Who has the youth, has the future”: Three youth movements in twentieth-century Germany’, Journal of Contemporary History, 41 (2006) 1, 175-183

Other academic-related work: