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KURT KOENIGSBERGER

 

 

Associate Professor of English
Director of Graduate Studies



Since August 2000 when I joined the Case faculty, I have taught courses in nineteenth- and twentieth-century British literature, twentieth-century Anglophone literatures, literary theory, cultural studies, and methods of research in English. In any given year, students can expect me to offer courses treating the novel in Britain in the twentieth century, a course in postcolonial literature, a theory or methods course, and a course in nineteenth- and twentieth-century literary history, on a genre, or in the SAGES program. I taught the Department's annual graduate publication seminar from 2001-2005 and in 2011, and served as Director of Composition at Case from May 2006 - January 2009, and May 2010-June 2011.

My research concentrates on nineteenth- and twentieth-century English-language print media as they refract various traditions and institutions of exhibition, especially zoos, circuses, menageries, panoramas, parades, and other spectacles. My first book, titled The Novel and the Menagerie (Ohio State University Press, 2007), explores the ways in which the novel and the zoological collection in Britain similarly consolidated and dissolved views of the British Empire as an integrated whole. More recently, I have turned to the difficult problem of disentagling notions of globality and globalism from those of imperialism in the period from 1851-1951 in Britain, a period conveniently bounded by the Hyde Park Great Exhibition of Works of Industry of all Nations (1851) and the Southbank Exhibition of the Festival of Britain (1951).

I coordinated and hosted the 2010 International Conference on Narrative, held 8-11 April 2010 in Cleveland. From July 2011, I serve as the Director of Graduate Studies in English at Case.