Annette Gilbert

 

Annette Gilbert studied General and Comparative Literature, Eastern European Studies and Communication Studies in Berlin, Paris and Kazan’ (Russia). After holding university positions in Moscow, Novosibirsk, Tomsk, Göttingen, Berlin, Boulder/Colorado and Mainz, she is now Academic Director at the Department of German and Comparative Literature at FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg.

As a literary scholar, she is particularly interested in the mediality and materiality of literature and phenomena on the border between art and literature. She specializes in avant-garde and experimental literature and art in Europe and North America. Even if these artistic radical approaches tend to be on the fringes of literary practice – some even beyound it – they can be read as a substantial contribution to foundational literary research, as they bring to light the subliminal prerequisites, but also the neuralgic issues and contradictory aspects of how we deal with literature. In this way, they contribute to the discussion of fundamental questions of literary theory, such as authorship, the concept of the work, the understanding of literature, the original and the copy.

In addition, she has been working for years on the historical changes in cultural techniques as well as publishing and distribution practices. This adresses issues of publicity, circulation, censorship, subversion, underground, samizdat and copyright, which are also of central interest to the Research Training Group. Following a research project on “Artistic Print on Demand” with exhibitions at the German National Library in Leipzig (2023) and the Villa Stuck in Munich (2024), she is currently leading the DFG network “The Knowledge of Digital Literature”. She is also working on Wikipedia as a new consecration authority in the literary field and on the pirated prints of the West German student movement of 1968, which has lost none of its relevance given the digital shadow libraries of the present day (which, incidentally, are also very popular in academic circles).

Publications on the topic of literature and the public sphere from recent years:

• Library of Artistic Print on Demand, https://apod.li/ (the printed catalogue will be published soon: Library of Artistic Print on Demand. Post-Digital Publishing in Times of Platform Capitalism, together with Andreas Bülhoff, Leipzig: Spector Book).
• Literature’s Elsewheres. The Necessity of Radical Literary Practices, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press 2022.
• Digitale Literatur II, together with Hannes Bajohr, Munich: Text + Kritik 2021.
• Die Zukünfte des Werks. Kleiner Abriss der Gegenwartsliteratur mit Blick auf die Werkdebatte von Morgen. In: Gilbert, Annette/Spoerhase, Carlos/Danneberg, Lutz (eds.): Das Werk: Verschwinden und Fortwirken eines Grundbegriffs, Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter 2019, 495–555.
• Under the Radar. Underground Zines and Self-Publications 1965–75, together with Jan-Frederik Bandel and Tania Prill, Leipzig: Spector Books 2017.
• Publishing as Artistic Practice, Berlin: Sternberg Press 2016.